Adopting a regional approach has served the communities along Interstate 540 well.
We reap the benefits on a daily basis, and the reminders are all around us. Northwest Arkansas, as we’ll often remind you, has the lowest unemployment rates in the state, thanks to many of the area’s employers working together and building off of one another. There’s a connected trail system. Flights are scheduled in and out of a regional airport. Baseball fans can root for a minor league baseball team named, not for the city where itplays, but with “Northwest Arkansas” on the uniforms so everybody up here can feel connected.
Make no mistake, though, these are very distinct towns with their own identities,success stories, and, for lack of a better word, egos.
Folks in each of the Big Five (Bentonville, Fayetteville, Rogers, Siloam Springs and Springdale) will gladly pitch you on why their specific towns are the best places to live and work in the state. They happily join together to make the region stronger, but each craves individual recognition and achievement.
A good reminder of this came in a Jan. 28 story regarding Bentonville’s efforts to accommodate future industrial development. Rarely has a day gone by in the month since that story ran that I haven’t thought about what Bentonville Community Development Director Troy Galloway told reporter Cyd King.
Bentonville, Galloway said, experienced “kind of a wake up call” when Redman & Associates LLC picked Rogers to relocate its manufacturing operation from China. With Redman and its goal of producing 600,000 items per year will come 74 jobs at an average salary of $18.55 per hour.
Redman relocated as part of a Wal-Mart initiative to buy $50 billion worth of U.S.-made goods over the next 10 years.
Somebody is going to reap the rewards of that. Why not Bentonville?
It was a question that hit Bentonville leaders hard after Rogers landed Redman.
Bentonville has art. It has fine dining. Having the corporate headquarters of Wal-Mart and the affiliated vendor community seems to be working out well.
An industrial park? Not so much.
Manufacturing isn’t anywhere on the list of reasons that Bentonville has national or statewide acclaim. In fact, two reminders of the town’s previous manufacturing efforts - the old Kraft and Tyson plants downtown - are being transformed to make them a better fit for the dining and art scenes.
Rather than being content to stay in their own lane and stick with the arts/dining thing, community leaders recognized a need. So during recent planning commission meetings nearly 50 acres were rezoned to accommodate potential manufacturing projects.
“When I made that comment, the biggest thing for us was the realization we did not have a lot of readily available industrial space,” Galloway said during a follow-up phone call. “In order for us to be competitive down the road for opportunities that might be coming, we need to put ourselves in position to accommodate the Redmans of the world.
“There is a healthy spirit of competition that exists between cities, but also a solid spirit of cooperation. We recognize what is positive for Rogers is typically positive for the region.”
Sure, Bentonville might root for Rogers to do well. That doesn’t mean, however, Bentonville wants to be outdone by Rogers. This holds true for Springdale and Fayetteville and Siloam Springs.
A healthy spirit of competition among towns isn’t much different from what you might find in your own office. Assuming your office is producing quality results.
During a recent lunch with a local banking executive, he explained why he liked his staff so much. Right alongside energy and work ethic, he mentioned their competitive spirit as being an important quality. Nobody, he said, was comfortable being outworked by a colleague.
If you follow sports at all you know this a common trait of great athletic teams. When each person is being pushed by the person beside or behind, the overall results tend to be positive.
Thankfully, leaders among the individual towns here get it. They don’t want to be outdone by anybody else. That attitude is a big part of what makes the region so great.
If you have a tip, call Chris Bahn at (479) 365-2972 or email him at cbahn@nwaonline.com
Business, Pages 69 on 02/23/2014