Design team talks about new Helen Walton building in Bentonville

BENTONVILLE -- The design team for the Helen R. Walton Children's Enrichment Center's future building should think of how it could become a national model, David Lewis told community members Friday morning.

Lewis, with LTL Architects, was one of eight people on a panel discussing the approach and design behind the building that will be constructed on about eight acres on Northeast J Street, east of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and south of The Scott Family Amazeum.

The event, Kickoff to Excellence, was held at Avondale Chapel. It was a chance for the public to meet the design team, learn about the project and ask questions.

LTL Architects is a New York firm selected through the Walton Family Foundation's Northwest Arkansas Design Excellence Program, a pilot program seeking to elevate the quality of architectural and landscape design in Northwest Arkansas.

LTL Architects will work with local firms, as well.

The panel included Lewis, his brother, Paul Lewis, of LTL Architects; Lanie McKinnon with Scape/Landscape Architecture from New York; Van Tilbury with East Harding Construction from Little Rock; Larry Perkin with Hight Jackson Associates from Rogers; Larry Lott with Harrison French & Associates from Bentonville; Carl Crowe, enrichment center board member and vice president of construction for Wal-Mart; and Michelle Barnes, executive director of the enrichment center and Early Childhood Initiatives Center.

"This is going to be a phenomenal project because we're going to blend some new ideas from outside the area, and we're going to integrate them into what we all know and love here in Northwest Arkansas," Crowe said.

Crowe explained the center's building at 1701 NE Wildcat Way has been expanded four times and isn't laid out efficiently anymore.

The $14.3 million project will consist of 43,700 square feet, 35,000 of which will be the Children's Enrichment Center and 8,700 square feet will be the Early Childhood Initiatives Center, according to Sunny Lane, HWCEC development manager. Officials still look to raise $1.5 million.

The center will continue to serve 240 children, Barnes said. The building will increase the number of classrooms from 18 to 21, which will allow for the expansion of the quality of service, not number of children served.

For instance, there will be infant/toddler continuity rooms where infants to children up to 36 months old will receive higher quality one-on-one interaction that will simulate more of a family dynamic, she explained.

Barnes explained the importance of quality early childhood education, stating a child's brain is 90 percent developed by age 5.

The Children's Enrichment Center was founded in 1982 to meet the need of a high-quality, early-learning center in Bentonville, Barnes said. It developed the Early Childhood Initiative Center in 2009 to collaborate with other centers in the region in an effort to elevate the quality of early education across Northwest Arkansas.

"This is not about babysitting. Anyone who really knows me knows you never say the D word around me, 'daycare,'" Barnes said. "Because we're well beyond that, and that's what we're elevating and rising above is the simplicity of assisting with care needs of a young child and moving toward educating and laying a strong foundation."

The panel discussed how early childhood education is the beginning of workforce development.

The project is "so rare" because of the clear vision behind it, David Lewis said, adding few communities come around the idea of an early childhood education center because most still think about it as daycare.

"So having a community that is setting this up is not just a question of us coming in and thinking about it locally, but how does this become a national model," he said.

NW News on 03/19/2016