Danielle Keller and her family moved into the Blueberry Heights neighborhood on the east side of Bentonville in 2015, choosing a home on a quiet dead end road that backed up to a farm. 

At the time, her son was 2 and her daughter had just turned 5 months old. Once they saw this particular house on the market, Danielle and her husband immediately knew it was where they wanted to raise their children. 

For years, cows living in the pasture behind them would wander up to their backyard fence to greet them. Memories created in their backyard included campouts, outdoor movies on a big screen, and a slip and slide. A few years ago, Danielle said the cows left, for sale signs went up, and they started to see surveyors out on the land. 

On Tuesday, Feb. 18, it was officially announced that the Alice L. Walton Foundation had secured 100 acres around the neighborhood for a new health care campus. The campus will border the Blueberry Heights neighborhood along two sides.

While they knew change was coming, Danielle said she has mixed feelings. She is supportive of the health care campus, and is excited for the progress in Bentonville because it means more jobs and more quality health care. 

But she admits that she also felt some sadness while looking through past photos of her kids playing in the backyard.

“This is where my kids are growing up, and we have so many memories in this yard,” she said. “It made me tear up a bit for sure, because I don’t know what’s truly to come for this neighborhood. I was recently in California where I grew up and I can still drive by my childhood home. I hope my kids will still have that opportunity.

“Change is hard, and when progress happens for a city, it can affect the livelihood of those in the path of that change.”

The Land Purchase and A Holdout

The 100-acre site is just off Exit 88 on Central Avenue, bordering Interstate 49. The land was purchased in a handful of transactions over the past few years that amount to over $35 million, according to public records. 

The health care campus emerged from a collaboration between the foundation, Mercy, Cleveland Clinic, and the Heartland Whole Health Institute. The initial investment will include a new cardiovascular facility, outpatient center and additional physicians for Northwest Arkansas. Planning and design is currently underway, with an intent to open in late 2028.

Not everyone in the area was willing to sell. Heather and Eric Wegner, owners of CoolWag, a dog boarding and training facility on Prairie Lane, turned down multiple offers, unwilling to part with the property where they’ve built their business.

“I gave them this insanely crazy number that not even the Waltons would do,” Heather told The Bentonville Bulletin. 

The 5-acre property, which they’ve been in since 2021, also has a café, training facility, agility obstacle course, dock-diving pool, and a farm housing donkeys, sheep, goats, ducks and chickens. With all of their amenities, Heather did not feel they would be able to find another property large enough to accommodate all of it in such an ideal location.

“We like our business, and we like what we're doing, and we don't want to stop,” she said.

However, Heather said she looks forward to the new clinic moving in behind them, and feels like the facility’s vision aligns with the focus on nutritious food at their cafe. She hopes to provide convenient pet boarding services to the people who come to utilize the medical facility. 

Kara Isham, who also lives in the Blueberry Heights neighborhood, said she believes the project will be good for the area because it will help address the need for more health care options. Her one concern with the project is the increased traffic it could bring.

“I am interested to see what plans the developers have for managing this traffic,” she said. “Our neighborhood currently has only one way in and out. The traffic on Central Avenue already makes it dangerous to turn left out of our neighborhood. Having a traffic solution, like a light or a roundabout, at the front of our entrance or another exit out of our neighborhood would be even more needed with this development being next door.”

The Effort to Improve Health Care Access

The 30-year, $700 million affiliation agreement was touted by the foundation as a joint effort to expand access to health care, reduce costs and improve health outcomes in the central United States. The collaboration includes Cleveland Clinic, which will bring cardiovascular knowledge to the effort.

The foundation will provide $350 million in part to develop the outpatient and cardiac services center in Bentonville. As part of the effort, Mercy committed $350 million to include building a new cardiac care center to its campus in Rogers. 

These initiatives followed studies showing that many area residents have to leave the region for specialty care, with cardiology services as an area of greatest need. The most recent study revealed that over $695 million annually leaves the region due to the outmigration of health care services.