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Walmart Announces Plans For a New Headquarters in Bentonville

BENTONVILLE (KFSM) — Walmart has announced plans for a new headquarters in Bentonville, according to Arkansas Talk Business and Politics. Walmart corporat...
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BENTONVILLE (KFSM) — Walmart has announced plans for a new headquarters in Bentonville, according to Arkansas Talk Business and Politics.

Walmart corporate spokesman Randy Hargrove said associates were made aware of the plans Friday (Sept. 15) morning in an announcement from CEO Doug McMillon.

The project will be built in phases, and Hargrove said the company anticipates construction will take between 5 to 7 years. He said there are no immediate plans for a groundbreaking.

“This is something that has been under consideration for a few years,” Hargrove said. “We will formally begin the process of working with county and state officials and other stakeholders to begin to move the process forward. There’s a tremendous amount of planning and coordination that needs to take place before construction.”

The new corporate campus will be built on the east side of Southeast J Street, bordered by Arkansas Highway 102 to the south and Arkansas Highway 72 (Central Avenue) to the north.

Walmart’s home office is now at the corner of 8th and Walton has grown since first established by Sam Walton in the 1970s. Hargrove said it would be hard to say how many square feet the property is.

“The buildings we have are really beyond their shelf life,” Hargrove said. “It has grown into a patchwork of locations through the years. This will get everybody together and will help us attract the next generation of talent to compete.”

As reported in July by Talk Business & Politics-Northwest Arkansas Business Journal, Walmart has been busy acquiring land in the area in anticipation of moving forward with the new home office. At the time, Walmart Director of Communications Anne Hatfield said the property purchases were simply to give the retailer “options if we decided we need (additional land) one day.”

A search of Benton County real estate records found more than two dozen land acquisitions completed by Walmart or related entities between June 2016 and July 7, 2017. The properties, totaling 31.09 acres, are along East Central Avenue, Southeast Moberly Lane, and Southeast Eighth and J streets. They range from single-family homes and commercial buildings to vacant lots.

Hargrove told Talk Business & Politics on Friday that most home office employees working at multiple locations in Northwest Arkansas will work at the new headquarters, with the exception of Sam’s Club employees. Sam’s Club is headquartered in a 382,000-square-foot, four-story building just off Moberly Lane in Bentonville.

Hargrove said “a lot of planning and design work” need to take place before a construction cost would be known. He said he anticipates there are some Walmart-owned buildings at the new home office site “that will no longer be in place” to make way for the new construction. Most of them were once Walmart warehouses that have since been converted for a variety of uses (associate store, layout center, employment center, office space, etc.) There’s also a large amount of property used for trailer parking and truck maintenance.

He said the campus would include a new fitness center, meal center and would be integrated into the community trail system.

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