Scottsdale Gives Rogers an Upscale Alternative

For Tom Hopper, it’s all about quality.

He could build an average shopping center in Rogers, but what good would that do in what has become one of Northwest Arkansas’ most affluent communities?

Instead, he is the driving force behind the 120-acre, $50 million Scottsdale Center, a project that has been under way since 1993 and has landed some major retail, restaurant and hotel tenants.

“It’s fun to build quality,” he said. “To compete, you’re forced to build quality.”

Hopper hopes Scottsdale will keep Rogers residents in town for shopping and dining. It should. The “power center,” as Hopper calls it, has the best movie theater in the area, the largest Gap store and will be home to the only Belk’s store. (The Malco Theater, which opened a year ago, has 12 screens, all with stadium seating.)

Scottsdale has more than 500,000 SF of retail space. Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse, Kohl’s department store, Gap and Pier 1 Imports are currently open there. Belk’s, Old Navy and Linens & Things are scheduled to open in the spring.

Restaurants currently open there include Chili’s, Applebee’s, Kisor’s, Dixie Cafe and Colton’s Steak House. Johnny Carino’s Country Italian Kitchen is scheduled to open Dec. 7, and Copeland’s Famous New Orleans Restaurant and Bar should open by March. Two other restaurants, O’Charley’s and On the Border, are also planned for Scottsdale.

Two four-story hotels — Candlewood and a Hampton Inn — are already at Scottsdale, and a three-story Fairfield Inn is under construction.

First National Bank and Region’s Bank have parcels at Scottsdale but have yet to construct buildings.

Amenities at Scottsdale include three fountains and two sets of ponds “to give a more relaxed, upscale atmosphere,” Hopper said.

Hopper said it all should be finished in a year.

“It’s unbelievably close to what we had planned,” he said. “It always takes this long.”

Scottsdale is officially a project of Tallgrass Development, which Hopper and his wife purchased “two or three years ago.” Originally, Tallgrass was owned by a group of investors.

Hopper said the first tenant at Scottsdale was National Home Center, but the Springdale-based lumber and home improvement company has since sold that store to Lowe’s.

“We started about eight years ago,” he said. “It was a turkey farm then.”

Next came the Dixie Cafe and Kirby’s Grill & Bakery, which is now owned by Bill Kisor and called Kisor’s Grill & Bakery. Applebee’s opened in about 1995, and Chili’s followed in 1997, Hopper said.

Rogers’ booming population growth helped attract national chains like Gap and Pier 1 that had only come into the area a few years earlier with stores in Fayetteville.

“They sat down and looked at the demographics of Northwest Arkansas and looked at where the money was and looked at the rooftops, and that’s what made it work,” Hopper said.

Tom Ginn, vice president of business development for the Rogers-Lowell Area Chamber of Commerce, said Rogers’ population has increased by 57.3 percent (from 24,692 to 38,829) between 1990 and 2000. Benton County’s population increased by the same percentage to 55,907.

By 2005, the Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission predicts Rogers will have a population of 45,745 and Benton County will have surpassed Washington County with a population of 181,271.

Ginn said the Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers metropolitan statistical area ranked 159 out of the 323 largest in the nation in disposable after-tax income (with some 1,500 families that earn at least $150,000 per year). Rogers has a median household effective buying income of $39,087, Ginn said.

When one major retailer comes into a shopping center, others often follow.

“Everybody wants to be adjacent to somebody who’s going to draw,” Hopper said.

Work should be completed in March on a traffic light at the corner of 46th and Olive streets to help shoppers and diners get into and out of Scottsdale Center.

Hopper said he thinks Scottsdale will be an option for Rogers residents who don’t want to drive to the Northwest Arkansas Mall in Fayetteville to shop.

“Northwest Arkansas has more than one metropolitan community,” he said. “The demographics of Benton County have changed to the point they can support what we’re building here.”