In 2022, Community Development NWA 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. Sanders Pace Architects was commissioned to engage a planning study to evaluate housing needs and trends within Bentonville, and ultimately, to design a pilot project that exemplifies a new vision for Missing Middle housing within close proximity to downtown and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
What is Missing Middle workforce housing?
Missing Middle workforce housing is a key strategy to provide housing opportunities for residents that live and work within our cities that struggle to afford market rate housing costs but do not qualify for subsidized housing programs. Missing Middle housing also refers to the scale of the housing itself. This type of housing is considered “missing” because restrictive zoning often makes it difficult or illegal to build, creating a gap between single-family homes and larger apartment buildings. Missing Middle housing focuses on re-zoning initiatives that increase urban neighborhood density through infill projects that introduce smaller multi-unit structures that are sensitive to the form and scale of their surrounding context.
Strategic Growth and Downtown Intensification
In 2018, Bentonville adopted the Bentonville Community Plan. This plan created a new land use strategy aimed with a goal of increasing density in areas closer to the downtown core and limiting an unregulated growth pattern as a result of population increase. This Strategic Growth Plan highlights opportunities to align City provided municipal services and infrastructure with projected increases, ensuring a higher quality of life for its residents. The Plan outlines priority areas for strategic growth for Bentonville.
The Community Plan identifies Downtown Intensification as the best candidate for increased density. This priority area has seen recent infill redevelopment and the plan recommends supporting this trend to transform single-family areas into blocks that can support a diversity of small-lot single family, townhouses, and multifamily housing. Supporting Downtown Intensification helps the community achieve several objectives, including 1) taking advantage of current market capacity; 2) providing a greater variety of housing options; 3) increasing the amount of people living close to jobs and commerce; and 4) enhancing access to downtown Bentonville.
Public Forums
From the onset of the project, stakeholder engagement and community outreach was prioritized. Grant metrics provided to Community Development NWA and the design team by the Walton Family Foundation included two public forums with an objective of raising regional awareness of Missing Middle workforce housing as a valuable option Bentonville’s urban communities.
CDNWA Missing Middle Workforce Housing Pilot Project
The site for the CDNWA Missing Middle Workforce Housing Pilot Project is located at the corner of NW A Street and & 7th Avenue, about a 7-minute walk from downtown Bentonville and a 10-minute walk from Crystal Bridges Museum. The property includes two existing lots two duplex houses with four units in total. The Pilot Project proposes to increase the density by consolidating the two lots and constructing 4 similarly scaled buildings which increases density from four units to fifteen units total. This increase is accomplished through site planning strategies that maintain the existing scale and character of the surrounding single-family lots. Site planning projects for the Pilot Project organize housing structures with close proximity to pedestrian circulation and distributed vehicular parking while maintaining 23% of the site dedicated to common usable open space and recreation opportunities which are accessible to both residents and non residents alike. The building locations and site access points limit disturbance by varying entry elevation points to closely match existing grade. This strategy preserves natural features and limits soil erosion while also providing a variety of high quality public spaces including an entry promenade, small group gathering areas, and access to a new trailhead entrance for Crystal Bridges Trail.
Consistent with Missing Middle housing principles, the proposed multi-unit structures are smaller in scale than typical apartment buildings, allowing the cluster of dwelling units to remain sensitive to the scale and character of the surrounding neighborhood. Each structure hosts a diverse arrangement of dwelling unit types, allowing a variety of dwelling demographics to create and experience a shared sense of community. The diversity of unit types also allows each structure to express itself as unique form with a unique set of rooflines. The collection of buildings on the site is easily understood as intimate neighborhood fabric within its surrounding context of single-family homes. Each housing structure of the Pilot Project is an innovative and authentic expression of its residents.
The design of the CDNWA Missing Workforce Housing Pilot Project introduces four new multi-unit dwelling structures on a site within one of Bentonville’s urban neighborhoods that remain sensitive to the built form scale and character of the surrounding community. The site is publicly accessible to the neighborhood, providing access to the Crystal Bridges Trail.
Project Replicability
The project uses a traditional Bentonville planned single family residential development lot as the start point for the design proces. This standard lot is then tested with a combination of studios, 1-bedroom, and 2-bedroom units in order to determine the maximum amount of dwelling units a single site can contain within sympathetically-scaled buildings while still maintaining a 1:1 parking ratio.
If replicated on sites currently under ownership of CDNWA, this approach could bring nearly 300 additional units into Bentonville’s downtown core. If expanded to vacant lots within the defined “Downtown Intensification Zone”, this approach could add another 1600 units.
