Walmart celebrated the beginning of a phased-in opening of its new 350-acre home office campus in Bentonville Friday. 

The world’s largest retailer first announced plans to redevelop its Northwest Arkansas headquarters in 2017. The “multimillion-dollar investment,” features mass timber construction, smart building technology, offices designed to be powered by renewable energy and a design that seamlessly integrates the open campus into downtown Bentonville, according to a press release. 

“It feels like a day of new beginning,” CEO Doug McMillon said. “This isn’t a celebration of the past exclusively. It’s a moment for us to think about what the future can look like, and it does feel to me like in many ways this company is just getting started.”

Founder Sam Walton opened his first Walmart store in Rogers and launched the retailer’s original logo in 1962. The company’s first distribution center and home office opened in Bentonville in 1971.  

Walmart has since grown into a global retailer that generated $648 billion in fiscal year 2024. Walmart employs approximately 2.1 million associates who serve around 255 million customers each week in 10,500 stores and several eCommerce websites in 19 countries, according to the press release. 

Local and state officials attended Friday’s celebration, including Bentonville Mayor Stephanie Orman and Republican state Sens. Bart Hester and Jim Dotson. Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was also in attendance, thanked Walmart for its “investment and enormous commitment to our state.”

“I know I speak for this entire state when I say how grateful I am that Walmart has stayed true to its roots through all of the years,” Sanders said. “You’ve never turned your back on Bentonville, Northwest Arkansas or the entire state that we’re lucky enough that you call home. And we will certainly always return the favor and never turn our backs on you.” 

Walmart joins a trend of large companies investing in their corporate headquarters in recent years. Between 2018 and 2023, nearly a third of Fortune 500 companies took some major action regarding their physical headquarters, according to a study by CBRE, a commercial real estate company headquartered in Dallas. These actions ranged from full geographic relocation to sizable reinvestments in their existing space. 

The need for physical office space changed during the COVID-19 pandemic when many jobs allowed employees to work remotely. Once the pandemic subsided, some employers began calling workers back to the office, including Walmart. Officials last May announced they were eliminating hundreds of jobs and relocating most of the company’s remaining remote office staff to its Bentonville headquarters, CNN reported.

The newly built Bentonville campus includes Sam Walton Hall, a 200,000-square-foot building that includes a two-story, 1,500 seat auditorium that served as the site of Friday’s event. Dan Bartlett, executive vice president of corporate affairs, told the audience that instead of emulating other corporate campuses that “always go out of their way to wall it off from the community to make it exclusive,” Walmart chose to design an open campus. 

“This is going to be everybody’s campus, not just Walmart associates’ campus,” Bartlett said. “That’s one of the really exciting parts about it.”

The Bentonville campus features a welcome center, outdoor amphitheatre, food hall with global cuisine and retail shops run by local and national companies that will open to the public this year, according to a press release.

Walmart’s corporate headquarters include a dozen office buildings that were constructed with the largest application of mass timber in the country and designed to run on renewable energy and achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum certification. 

The campus design is focused on “comprehensive associate wellness” and includes a 360,000-square-foot Walton Family Whole Health & Fitness Center, as well as an on-site child care center opened last year, according to the press release. 

More than 30,000 members and their families made 750,000 visits to the fitness center in its first year, said Cindi Marsiglio, senior vice president of corporate real estate. There are also 400 kids enrolled in the childcare center, which opens up 15% of childcare capacity in the community, something that was “long overdue,” she said. 

The concept of “whole health” can also be seen in the nearby Heartland Whole Health Institute and Alice L. Walton School of Medicine, both of which are under construction and backed by Walmart heiress Alice Walton. The medical school, which will waive tuition for its first five cohorts, is scheduled to welcome its first class of students this summer. 

The focus on wellness extends outside corporate buildings where green space represents about half of the Walmart campus, and the landscape incorporates more than 750,000 native plants, shaded walkways and dedicated bike paths, according to a press release. Seven miles of pedestrian paths and bike trails connect to a rental bike fleet, more than 1,000 bike parking spots and 300 electric vehicle (EV) charging stations. 

These amenities support the company’s commitment to have 10% of campus associates actively commuting to work, Bartlett said. Walmart associates have already ridden more than 209,000 miles and a quarter of them have used a shared e-bike, which he said is encouraging. 

Building a “culture of cycling” on campus aligns with members of the Walton family’s passion for biking, as evidenced by them investing around $85 million in trails in Northwest Arkansas since 2007, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

As the Walmart corporate campus rollout continues, Marsiglio said the goal is to open about a building a month throughout the year. Roughly 8 million man hours have been invested into the project and she expects that to grow to 10 million when all is said and done. 

“Open campus, unique challenges, more work to do, but we’ll do it together, and we’ll do it the Walmart way,”  Marsiglio said. 

HIGHFILL — Northwest Arkansas National Airport surpassed the 1 million mark for passengers flying out of the airport for the first time in 2024 making it the busiest year in the airport’s history.

The airport recorded 1,147,947 enplanements in 2024, according to airport staff.

“Surpassing the 1 million enplanement mark is a significant achievement for XNA and Northwest Arkansas,” said Aaron Burkes, airport CEO. “It reflects the incredible growth of our region and the rising demand for air travel. We’re committed to providing a smooth and convenient travel experience for our passengers.”

In 2023, Northwest Arkansas National set its previous record with 991,489 passengers. The 2024 total is a 16% increase over that record. The record prior to 2023 was set before the pandemic, in 2019, and totaled 922,533. The 2024 passenger total increased 25% over the 2019 record.

The airport’s record-breaking year was driven by Northwest Arkansas’ rapid growth and a surge in air travel demand, according to a news release from the airport.

Northwest Arkansas National is the primary commercial airport for Northwest Arkansas, offering 26 nonstop destinations through six airlines.

The airport continues to expand its connectivity with several new nonstop destinations announced for late 2024 and early 2025, according to the release.

Delta Airlines launched service to Detroit in November and will add flights to Salt Lake City in February.

American Airlines launched service to Philadelphia in December.

Allegiant Air will add flights to Gulf Shores, Ala., in May.

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has appointed Sydney McKenzie, wife of Rep. Britt McKenzie, R-Rogers, to the Arkansas State Library Board.

She replaces Donnette Smith, whose term expired last year. McKenzie’s term will expire Oct. 18, 2031.

McKenzie described the appointment as a “great honor.”

“As a mother of four young children and a passionate supporter and frequent patron of our local libraries, I am grateful for this opportunity to advance access to safe learning environments and promote greater literacy for children across our state,” she said in a statement. “My goal is to enhance the local impact of the communities our libraries serve, ensuring that every Arkansan can experience the unique value libraries provide in shaping informed and engaged citizens.”

Sam Dubke, spokesman for the governor’s office, did not immediately provide a comment on the appointment.

Seven members comprise the State Library Board and are appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Arkansas Senate. It was established by Act 489 of 1979, according to the Arkansas State Library website.

A single member is appointed from each of the state’s four congressional districts, while three members are selected from the state at large; no more than two members can come from any individual district.

Among the Arkansas State Library’s responsibilities is the administration of state and federal funds to be appropriated for libraries and library development, according to its website. It also gives library and information resources to both state government and its citizenry, seeks to improve access to libraries and other information resources, and supports public libraries.

Library funding, as well as children’s access to certain materials in libraries, has come under increased scrutiny in recent years across the state and the country and has been the source of intense clashes in recent State Library Board meetings. Many leaders who have expressed support preventing for minors from accessing materials containing sexual content at libraries have described the issue as a matter of safety.

A federal judge recently struck down as unconstitutional two provisions of Act 372 of 2023 that sought to criminalize the furnishing of obscene materials to minors at public libraries and bookstores. Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin has said he will appeal the ruling. Britt McKenzie was one of 56 lawmakers in the House of Representatives who voted in favor of the measure as it made its way through the Legislature.

Former state Sen. Jason Rapert, who Sanders appointed to the board in 2023, has sought repeatedly to withhold taxpayer money from libraries that do not remove works containing sexual content from places where they can be accessed by minors. The rest of the board has voted him down each time, and in November he urged the state Legislature to abolish the board.

The member whose term will expire next is Jo Ann Campbell; her term ends Oct. 18.

The next State Library Board meeting is scheduled for Feb. 14.