BES Plans Large, Upscale Complex for Bentonville

Kevin Harrison, project manager for BES LLC, said a hotel/convention center and three office buildings planned in Bentonville will be an $80 million-$100 million project.

Construction on the 8.8-acre site is expected to begin this fall on the Bentonville Plaza with a target date for completion within the next five years. It will be directly across Eighth Street from Wal-Mart’s Sam’s Club headquarters. Financial backing for the project has been secured from Elliot Spence and Michael Steinberg of New York.

The development has not yet received large-scale development approval, but Harrison said 37 pieces of property have already been acquired at the site and most of the area has already been rezoned to commercial.

The hotel and convention center will be 200,000 SF. Two of the office buildings will be eight stories and about 200,000 SF each. A third office building will be 12 stories and 500,000 SF. Restaurants and retail spaces also will be available at Bentonville Plaza.

There will also be 1 million SF of parking available.

The complex is surrounded on the east and west by Wal-Mart corporate parking lots. But Harrison said the intention is not just to pull vendors in to Wal-Mart. He hopes to recruit local physicians, dentists and other professionals as well.

“They’ll have quite a captive audience across the street there,” Harrison said. “How convenient would it be for people to just be able to walk across the street. We’d like to have restaurants and dry cleaners and other things like office supply firms there. We’ve met with Wal-Mart, and we’ve had quite a bit of interest from potential tenants.”