Guests adorned in team apparel appear at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville whenever the Arkansas Razorbacks play a night game in Fayetteville.

Fans view works by Andy Warhol, Norman Rockwell and Thomas Hart Benton decked in the sometimes equally colorful jerseys of their favorite sports team. Both Razorback supporters — often from the far corners of the state — and fans of their opponents flood the two-year-old art museum before heading to tailgate parties and the game.

Sandy Edwards, deputy director of the museum, knows the two activities meld into one for traveling fans. The guests come to experience Northwest Arkansas, and they get the most out of the weekend. That means hopping the borders among several Northwest Arkansas towns.

“There is only one place to experience SEC athletics” in Arkansas, and there’s only one place in the area to see a world-class collection of American art, Edwards said.

The Census Bureau estimates between 2010 and 2012 Northwest Arkansas’ population grew by 16,000, bringing it to an estimated 482,200. New cultural amenities followed the uptick, and with the opening of Crystal Bridges, it seems Benton County has the cultural momentum.

That thinking is too parochial, experts say. The advantages flow to the entire region.

Cultural impacts remain hard to quantify, but the amount of money spent in the various cities on hotel rooms and at restaurants is one indication. Revenue from taxes on hotel stays and prepared food continues to grow in both Bentonville and Fayetteville at almost the same rate.

Analysis of the ZIP codes of people attending shows at the Walton Arts Center and Arkansas Music Pavilion, which is owned by the arts center, indicates people from throughout the region head to shows in Fayetteville.

“People that move in don’t see (city) boundaries as a way to define things,” said Mike Malone, president and chief executive officer of the Northwest Arkansas Council, a nonprofit group with a goal of improving the region. “They don’t come in with history or baggage.”

Bentonville Buzz

The beginning of the cultural revolution in Northwest Arkansas started in Fayetteville with the Walton Arts Center’s opening in 1992. The center changed the game. Fayetteville’s entertainment options, in particular Dickson Street, transformed around it.

Other organizations, such as TheatreSquared, were also born in Fayetteville. From humble beginnings, that theater company, now a Walton Arts Center partner, grew to receive national recognition and awards.

More recently, cultural institutions have decided to call Bentonville or Rogers home. The biggest and best-attended of them, Crystal Bridges, opened just north of the Bentonville square in November 2011. More than a million visitors have since passed through the roughly $1 billion attraction’s doors.

The museum was destined for Bentonville, Edwards said. That’s in no small part because the museum’s founder and primary source of money, Walmart heiress Alice Walton, grew up near the location, and her family owned the land now covered by the sprawling museum campus. Other cultural institutions have followed.

Not long after the museum’s opening, the Walton Arts Center confirmed plans for a 2,000-seat performing arts facility to be built in Bentonville as a complement to the Fayetteville location. Several top-flight restaurants opened in Bentonville in recent years, and they built enough acclaim several chefs working in that town were invited to cook for the New York City food tastemakers at the James Beard House.

The streak of Benton County gains continued this year. 21c Museum Hotel, a 104-room, art-minded luxury hotel within walking distance of the downtown square and museum, opened in February. Then, in mid-June, a long-rumored children’s museum announced its name and location. The Amazeum, with an expected opening date sometime in 2015, will be built adjacent to Crystal Bridges.

That announcement came just weeks after the officials at the Walton Arts Center, which owns the Arkansas Music Pavilion, voted to establish a permanent home in Rogers for the outdoor music venue.

Bentonville also has the population momentum. Between the census data collected in 1990 and 2010, the city’s population more than tripled from 11,257 to 35,301. Fayetteville’s population also grew in that time frame, but not at the same rate. The population there more than doubled, gaining 30,827 residents to reach 73,580 at the time of the 2010 census.

Matthew Petty, a Fayetteville alderman with a particular interest in city planning, has watched the growth accelerate north of the Washington County border.

“We did a lot of growing. Now we’re starting to see our family grow up with us,” he said of Fayetteville.

Singing For Supper

People who attend cultural events spend money on meals, lodging and other amenities, according to studies.

An indicator of growth in cultural activities is the hotel, motel and restaurant taxes. In Fayetteville, proceeds from the 2 percent tax are split equally between parks and recreation and the city’s advertising and promotion commission. Bentonville levies a 2 percent tax on lodging and a 1 percent tax on prepared food. It gives the entirety of the collection to the city’s advertising and promotion commission.

The collections cannot be directly compared because the rates differ in the two cities, but the rate of change for the collection showed nearly parallel growth.

Bentonville’s advertising and promotion revenue increased 16.2 percent from 2008 to 2012. Fayetteville’s tax revenue has increased 16.1 percent during the same time period, from January 2008 and to December 2012.

Numbers are up in both towns since Crystal Bridges entered the equation in 2011, with both cities experiencing in excess of 9.5 percent increases in collection in 2012, the only full year of the museum’s existence.

Fayetteville is outpacing Bentonville in its percentage of tax revenue increases so far in 2013. If current collection rates hold, Fayetteville, based on data recorded through October, will experience a 15 percent increase. Bentonville can expect an 12 percent increase compared with 2012 using a monthly average through September extrapolated for the fourth quarter of 2013.

Traveling Fans

Arts and culture programs aren’t the only contributors to dining and hotel expenditures in the region. Razorback football games, Bikes, Blues & BBQ and fall craft fairs raise the total.

But culture certainly contributes its share.

A survey released earlier this year by Americans for the Arts called “Arts & Economic Prosperity IV” outlines the financial impact of the arts. The survey polled more than 150,000 arts patrons across the nation, including many at the Walton Arts Center, which was one of the more than 9,000 organizations that participated. In all, 26 arts organizations in Northwest Arkansas were surveyed.

The study concludes the typical arts event attendee spends $25 per event per person, excluding admission prices. Those coming from outside the region spend more, according to the survey, which said nonlocal patrons spend $40 per event while locals spend $17.

Specific to Northwest Arkansas, patrons spend $16 per event, according to the study. Nonlocals spent an average of $36 per event for food, lodging and other amenities.

The Walton Arts Center and other local participating organizations and their patrons spent more than $45 million in fiscal 2010 for the Northwest Arkansas area, according to the study. About $30 million of that came from expenditures made by the arts organizations, and the remaining $15 million from patrons. The $15 million contributed to the economy comes from an estimate of 746,655 attendees, according to the survey.

Numbers show Northwest Arkansas residents attend events throughout the region. More than half the attendees at shows in the Walton Arts Center’s Broadway series came from Washington County. More than 30 percent came from Benton County. At the Arkansas Music Pavilion, about 33 percent of pavilion attendees come from outside the two-county area in fiscal 2013.

Edwards said about 60 percent of the museum’s patrons come from Arkansas. About 20 percent come from what the museum calls its “touch states,” such as Missouri and Oklahoma. The remaining 20 percent come from national or international locations. Like the team-gear-clad museum guests, many of those who come to the museum from outside the area stay in Fayetteville or Rogers or elsewhere in the region, she said.

“They don’t see the dividing lines. They see something connected by a really great interstate,” Edwards said.

Walton Arts Center officials have said they looked for a Washington County home for the music pavilion before deciding on the Rogers location. The land came as a gift, and it satisfied the center’s desire for easy access to a highway, in this case Interstate 540. With that condition met, the location mattered less, considering arts patrons’ willingness to travel.

By a higher percentage than the national average of 45.2, audience members of cultural shows are willing to leave this market for the shows they desire, according to those surveyed for the art prosperity study.

According to the study, almost 30 percent said they would have skipped going to an event in Northwest Arkansas altogether if it weren’t offered here. By contrast, almost 50 percent said they would travel to a different community to attend a similar cultural experience. It means not only are Northwest Arkansas residents willing to cross a county line to see a show, they are willing to travel outside the region for a show they desire to see.

Brian Crowne, general manager and booking agent for the Arkansas Music Pavilion, wanted the venue to remain in Washington County. But the Benton County location provided a better financial and logistical opportunity. He expects the crowds to follow, even as he hears lingering resentment from some Washington County-based music fans.

“‘I won’t drive to Benton County,’” he has heard on more than one occasion.

“’You will if I book your favorite band,’” he usually responds.

Building Blocks

A regional approach to the area is an easier sell than a city-by-city approach, planners believe. Malone talks regionally when he pitches the charms of the area to prospective companies looking to move. He sees Northwest Arkansas ideally becoming something more like Kansas City, Mo., in the way it fosters pockets of cultural activities. Between Waldo, Westport, Brookside, downtown and the Plaza, that metro area features several entertainment destinations all within the same city, each unique.

Petty, the Fayetteville alderman, agrees.

“Even if we have a regional brand, we all have individual identity,” he said.

Recruiting people to live in a particular area, just like recruiting business ventures or cultural enterprises, is an inexact science. Petty points to some of the nation’s revered entertainment districts as models. Places like Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco of old or the Pearl District in Portland, Ore., of more recent vintage, grew that way without assistance.

“Those people weren’t recruited to be there. They (the districts) were generated out of the conditions.” Conditions, he said, such as having a lot of residents living in close proximity. Clusters of university students and downtown square residents make areas such as Dickson Street and Block Avenue in Fayetteville home to retail and entertainment options.

“You can’t build something big out of nothing,” Petty said.

Cultural amenities that outsiders seek are appearing.

The local craft beer scene is bubbling up with several locations in Washington County. The newest brewery is operating in downtown Rogers, which just months ago was in the center of a dry county. The Razorback Greenway series of bike and running trails will connect the major cities in the area, providing further recreation and transportation opportunities.

“If you tell the story city by city, it’s not as compelling,” Malone said.

Malone’s newest cohort is Dan Hintz, who recently received a contract from the Northwest Arkansas Council to help revitalize downtown areas of five regional cities. Hintz previously worked for downtown development groups in Fayetteville and Bentonville. He believes there needs to be cooperation between the cities.

Arts-based economic development takes planning. The Walton Arts Center’s early 1990s arrival and the planning that surrounded it transformed Dickson Street into the entertainment district it is today. Planning meetings as far back as 2007 — a full four years before the opening of Crystal Bridges — prepared Bentonville for the changes coming to that city, Hintz said.

“This is basic economic development formula. It’s about capital, both financial and human. If you don’t have it, it doesn’t happen,” he said.

Petty sees Fayetteville’s resurgence on the near horizon, even as multimillion dollar venues settle en masse in Benton County. With an additional 50,000 people expected to arrive in Fayetteville by 2030, Petty said, new entertainment needs and opportunities will follow.

“We shouldn’t see them as a threat. We should see it as an opportunity,” he said of Benton County.

Booking The Future

The future is becoming a little more clear.

Fayetteville residents on Nov. 12 voted to extend a bond measure to help pay for a regional park and renovation to the Walton Arts Center. The center will receive $6.9 million for the face-lift, which will change the venue’s facade but also build out the backstage areas. The center, now 22 years old, isn’t designed to handle the large-scale set pieces of modern Broadway-style shows.

“The main campus is the cornerstone,” said Peter Lane, the center’s chief executive officer. “We see it playing a main role.”

But even $6.9 million in improvement may not be enough.

A study commissioned by the center from the consulting firm Web Management Services, in conjunction with theater planners Schuler Shook, suggests Northwest Arkansas can support a larger performing hall. The center’s master plan reflects that vision. A proposal for a 2,000-plus-seat venue in Bentonville is moving forward, although no specific site has been named.

Comparisons show regions similar to Northwest Arkansas support larger theaters. The variables related to attracting an audience are nearly endless — the buzz surrounding the show or artist, the length of the run, the cities that surround the market that may have previously secured the same act and even weather conditions play a role. But an analysis of 10 similarly situated markets often used by the Walton Arts Center or the Northwest Arkansas Council as guides show those arts scenes supporting much larger theaters.

Areas such as Bloomington, Ill., South Bend, Ind., and Gainesville, Fla., all have similar qualities. At minimum, they all have an art museum, a major university and support a live music scene. Another common denominator is they all have a performing arts hall with substantially more seating capacity than in Northwest Arkansas. All of these areas also possess a population smaller than this region.

Larger facilities don’t necessarily mean larger crowds. But the 2,560-seat Morris Performing Arts Center in South Bend just had 16 performances of “Jersey Boys,” said Mary Ellen Smith, assistant director of administration and marketing for the center. The Walton Arts Center brought the production to Fayetteville in September for eight shows in the 1,201-seat Baum Walker Hall.

The Morris Center hosts about 76 events per year, drawing names such as James Taylor, the Steve Miller Band and the Goo Goo Dolls in the past few years. It also landed “Wicked,” a musical theater production Walton Arts Center officials have said will not fit on the current stage.

The Walton Arts Center runs a much busier schedule than the Morris, with about 360 events per year. And, like venues in Northwest Arkansas do, South Bend institutions compete with other regional markets. For every Tulsa, Okla., there’s a Fort Wayne, Ind. For every event on the University of Arkansas campus, there’s a competing event at Notre Dame University. And for every regional casino across the Arkansas border in Oklahoma, there’s one surrounding South Bend, too. In other words, South Bend’s metro area looks remarkably similar to Northwest Arkansas; it just has a larger theater.

What can this area support, entertainment wise? The region should learn soon.

Bentonville had a good run of cultural growth. It might again when a new Walton Arts Center opens there. Before that happens, the center’s location in Fayetteville will receive a major overhaul. That will create more cultural movement, planners believe.

“Just like what happened to Dickson Street in the early 1990s, it will likely happen again,” said Terri Trotter, the center’s chief operating officer. “We’re seeing cultural explosion again.”

Which means it may be Fayetteville’s turn soon. Until it’s Bentonville’s turn again, or maybe Springdale or Rogers’ time for cultural growth.