The Downtown Bentonville Workforce Housing Initiatve is a pilot project part of the Walton Family Foundation Design Excellence Program providing a realistic vision for workforce housing using “missing middle” housing principles for the citizens of Bentonville.

In 2022, Community Development NWA (formerly known as Community Development Corporation of Bentonville/Bella Vista) initiated a project to address the need of housing for local Bentonville employees in the Downtown Core. The project included an initial research phase which was followed by two public forums with an objective of raising regional awareness of and support for “missing middle” workforce housing as a valuable option for the community. One of the initial thoughts was that new development had to include both new infrastructure and architecture hand in hand.

CDNWA currently owns several properties within this area and these aging properties have reached their useful lifespan. Bentonville’s growth over the last 20+ years has significantly impacted property values generating economic strain in its community which has created few new housing opportunities for its residents. With the redevelopment of CDNWA’s holdings imminent, they seek to offer new housing opportunities that are inserted contextually and sensitively to the scale of Bentonville.

One site, out of three sites, was chosen to develop a Planned Residential Development. This allowed us to increase the density of a site from four units to fifteen units by rezoning. The ethos of the project was threefold: to introduce missing middle housing principles by increasing the density yet also retaining the scale and overall proportions of the neighborhood, to provide a public inclusive design that would be accessible to all people, and that it would be innovative in its construction using novel materials like CLT.