Developer brings global experience to Bentonville townhome project

A 15-unit luxury townhome development recently opened at 500 S.W. B St. in Bentonville that draws on the attention to detail and experience of a successful real estate developer in China.

The $17.5 million Oak One development includes premium features such as a 1,000-teardrop light chandelier, smart toilets and chevron floors. They also have fenced yards and attached garages, and some units have elevators. The developers are James Wang and his wife, Alexandra Tirado, of Bentonville-based Sun Group.

“We wanted to do something that was within the essence of what classic Bentonville is instead of going more of a modern route,” Tirado said. “Our look that we typically like is the timeless, classical façade but not overly classic, so a brick exterior with cast stone. There’s over 1,200 pounds of cast stone just over the door surrounds. Then all of the windows have details, and it’s very small details that elevate the look.”

She added that chevron floors are something one might find in a $100 million Manhattan penthouse.

“This is even harder to install than herringbone (floors) because the herringbone has the 90-degree install, but this (chevron) is a 45-degree [install],” Tirado said. “Every floor has that.”

The couple traveled overseas to the factories that made the materials and imported them. She noted that the cost was lower and the quality was the same as or better than ordering the materials online.

The three- to four-story development on 0.49 acres includes three- to five-bedroom units that range from 1,658 to 3,042 square feet. Tirado said six units were available. Limbird Real Estate Group in Rogers is the property’s listing agency. Listing information shows the townhomes range from $869,622 to $1.47 million.

CHINA DEVELOPMENTS
Wang’s mark is apparent throughout Oak One, as is the brand. He designed the 24-karat gold-plated chandeliers that double as ceiling fans with the push of a button. Tirado said it’s a “fandelier” and that it has “Oak One” inscribed on it. The brand is even inscribed on its custom gold-plated clothes hangers.

Wang has brought to Oak One his attention to detail and experience as a large-scale developer in China. He’s traveled globally, including to Dubai, Europe, Hong Kong and Japan, to study successful developments.

Between 2014 and 2017, Wang led more than 3 million square feet of residential and commercial development in Chongqing, China, a municipality in the country’s heartland that covers about 31,800 square miles — roughly the size of Austria — and has about 32 million residents. Wang’s project included 2,200 residential units and 180 commercial spaces, with its buildings ranging from 24 to 32 stories tall.

He said China is a competitive market because of the number of large projects. More than 500 other projects like his were being developed at the same time, and he attributed his project’s success to his experience, attention to detail, the research on successful projects worldwide and his project team.

“There are 7,000 people that live there now,” Tirado said. She joked that Wang completed a 3 million-square-foot project in three years, and they spent three years working on the Oak One development.

“That’s just the difference of … China time,” she added. “Things are faster. Workers are faster in China. They live on site. Most come from other places … And we had a lot of learning to do with this one.”

Tirado said residential developers here might start with a single-family home. “In China, there’s kind of no other option. But you either do something big or you don’t do development.”

Asked what led him to become involved in real estate development, Wang said, “You could make money.” He also liked building, designing and mechanical engineering.

“James was born a little bit outside of Chongqing, but in that time of China, that was like one of the very poorest times,” Tirado said. “His parents were farmers that kind of lived off of what they made.”

In college, Wang studied mechanical engineering and was an entrepreneur. In the early 2000s, the real estate market began to boom and became lucrative.

“He had a good background with this detail and engineering mind,” Tirado said. “He could succeed at that.” He started his first development in 2009, a 440-unit, high-rise project.

BECOMING FLUENT
Tirado attended Duke University, Columbia University and Harvard University. She earned a master’s degree in finance from Harvard in 2023.

At Duke, she earned a bachelor’s degree in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies in 2011, began learning Mandarin and often traveled to China. She lived in China for two years, splitting her time between the rural countryside and Beijing. She was one of two to receive a J.P. Morgan fellowship to teach English in rural China. She taught high school students in an impoverished area impacted by the 2008 earthquake. She spent the following year studying Mandarin at Peking University in Beijing and became fluent. At Columbia, she earned her master’s degree in East Asian Studies in 2014.

“After that, I was very tired of China,” she said. “That was a long journey of China, and just learning Mandarin … It’s kind of entrepreneurial. You start out knowing nothing and weeding through the darkness and figuring everything out.”

Her first job was in Atlanta and had nothing to do with China. She was managing an industrial supply operation that was similar to construction.

Tirado said Atlanta and Chongqing are sister cities, and their residents travel between the cities and share practices. The economic development department of Atlanta traveled to Chongqing to study Wang’s large-scale development there. In 2017, Wang came to Atlanta to see and learn about the city’s real estate. Living in Atlanta, Tirado was involved with Chinese associations, and someone suggested she meet Wang. They met.

At the time, she’d left her first job in Atlanta to become an entrepreneur. They had the same goals and values, and both wanted a family business.

“We wanted to build something,” she said. “We had the shared drive to do that. James did not want to continue doing it in China anymore because at the time the market was already becoming quite mature, and he sensed risk, even back in 2018.”

She said they were unsure whether the family business would initially focus on real estate, but with Wang’s background in the industry, they wanted to remain in real estate.

LEAVING CHINA
“We were living in China when COVID happened,” she said. “We got married in China. We had our first kid in China in Chongqing … At that time, we were still looking at real estate in parts of East Asia. We went to Laos, Vietnam and those types of places, but because of COVID, we left. We thought it was just temporary …

“Then, through just a bunch of fortuitous circumstances, we found Northwest Arkansas. When we saw it, it was so different than all the other cities, even in the U.S., that we had seen.”

They moved to Northwest Arkansas in 2021 and started working on Oak One. Wang said they selected the B Street property for its downtown location. Tirado added that B Street had the highest multifamily comps in Northwest Arkansas because of the adjacent apartments.

“Also, it was kind of a hidden gem,” she said. “It had the Gilmore Park right beside it, which is just great for walking and then immediately accessible to the Skylight Cinema. At the time Pedaler’s Pub was there, and then you can walk to the square.”

Tirado said Sun Group has other projects in the works in Bentonville, including converting a downtown church building into a 14-unit luxury townhome project and developing property on McCollum Drive along Interstate 49 at the East Central Avenue interchange.