Boomtown, U.S.A.
In Arkansas, a new economy--and an unlikely Xanadu
It wasn't that way when would-be barons like Walton, Hunt, and Don Tyson got their start. Tyson's "daddy" arrived in a battered truck 70 years ago and survived by hauling poultry to Chicago. By 1947, he had incorporated his chicken business. Two decades later, Hunt, a trucker with a seventh-grade education and a silky business touch, bought his first rigs and carried Ralston Purina's local feed. And in 1950, an eccentric entrepreneur named Sam Walton opened a five-and-dime store on the main square in what his wife, Helen, called "a sad-looking country town" of fewer than 3,000 people. Two years later, Walton launched a second store in Fayetteville. Wizened locals gave him 60 days before Woolworth's would run him out of business. So much for their soothsaying.
The rest of the story is now local legend. Wal-Mart, Tyson Foods, and J. B. Hunt Transport became a recession-proof triad of money and power, and tiny Bentonville grew in tandem, its population soaring by 557 percent in 40 years, to 19,730 people in 2000. Neighboring Rogers mushroomed by 682 percent, from 4,962 in 1950 to 38,829 in 2000. Scores of residents who bought in early to Walton's concept became magnificently wealthy through their holdings of Wal-Mart stock. "I'm 43 years old, and I could retire if I wanted to," says Loretta Hartgrade, a manager who built her dream home with stock proceeds from 25 years at Wal-Mart.
The economic benefit is undeniable--but at what price? Wal-Mart's hometown now seems as much theme park as real. Walton's original Five and Dime is a museum. Along Walton Boulevard, a prefab silver Denny's Diner competes with Ruby Tuesday, Dairy Queen, and the other familiar chains. The mother of all Wal-Mart Supercenters offers everything from groceries to tuneups. There's a $1.9 million project in the works to transform the downtown into a quaint square with brick-lined walkways and retro lamps, a plan critics say is a tacky attempt to fabricate a small-town atmosphere. On the residential side, McMansions have risen in outer developments like Stonehenge that ring downtown Bentonville, encircling the shotgun ramblers built closer to town. The average house price has soared 73 percent in 25 years to $135,000, and $1 million homes are no longer a rarity. Bentonville attorney Gary Kennan says the area has changed from a friendly town without stoplights into a divided small city that's "very wealthy and very poor and little in between."
Charity at home. That may be a bit harsh, considering the new churches, boys and girls clubs, and youth sports facilities subsidized by the area's richest denizens. Earlier this year, retired Wal-Mart millionaire Ferold Arend and his wife, Jane, donated another $5 million to the new $18.5 million Bentonville High School for an auditorium and arts center. "If people wanted to live based on their net worth, you'd see a whole lot more wealth than you're seeing now," says David Short, president of the Walton-owned Bank of Bentonville. A flood of new wealth, though, is likely in Bentonville. In the next five years, thousands of well-heeled Wal-Mart suppliers are expected to move into the region to service their main customer, perhaps doubling the population. The $107 million airport built in 1998 near Bentonville on 2,700 acres of cow pasture is also sure to spur development. Five airlines now offer direct jet service to nine cities, including New York and Chicago. Plus there are 66.7 miles of new Interstate 540, one of only seven "high priority" future federal highways.
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