Bentonville is close to finalizing its Future Land Use Map, which will outline where and how the city should grow in the next coming decades. Residents have additional time to provide feedback on the proposed map before it’s presented to City Council for approval in December.

On Tuesday, Oct. 29, dozens of residents attended a Planning Commission meeting, where Tyler Overstreet, the city’s planning and community development director, presented updates on Plan Bentonville, the city’s two-phase community planning project. 

The current phase of Plan Bentonville, which began in September 2023, includes the creation of the Future Land Use Map, while phase two will update city zoning code to reflect the map.

After the presentation, attendees were given the opportunity to comment, and over a dozen spoke.

The Planning Commission will have two more public hearings Nov. 19 and Dec. 3, and feedback on the Future Land Use Map will continue to be accepted by email or through the Plan Bentonville website. If approved by the Planning Commission on Dec. 3, City Council will then consider final approval of the map on Dec. 10.

City officials have spent the last year gathering feedback and input from thousands of residents online and at in-person events on how and where Bentonville should grow. Once finalized and adopted by City Council, the map will inform zoning regulations and development for years to come.

“From the beginning we thought public engagement was so important,” Overstreet said during the meeting. “We were very intentional in our efforts to reach as many people as we possibly could through the avenues available to us.”

The draft of the Future Land Use Map is composed of 12 new “place types,” which are the activity centers, neighborhoods and corridors at varying scales of development, arranged to create a growth vision for the community. The map will influence other city plans in regards to transportation, utility and parks planning.

“What makes the land use plan so important is it feeds into every other city plan. … It creates the growth projection so that then when we are master planning our infrastructure, it’s accurate to what the projection shows,” Overstreet said.

The most recent draft of the Future Land Use Map is available on the project website. A new slider-bar functionality was recently added that will allow residents to compare July’s draft to the most recent updates.

Overstreet said the city has heard a lot of feedback from residents who live downtown, and they have taken several steps to address concerns in the latest land use map. Refinements to downtown zoning and cottage courts will be discussed in detail at the next Planning Commission meeting on Nov. 5.