CENTERTON — The opening of Bentonville West High School provided the extra credit for this town’s rapid growth.
“I think that the high school was a great catalyst for bringing more residential, and with the residential more commercial is coming,” said Lorene Burns, the city’s planning director.
The 430,000-square-foot high school opened last year with 1,240 students in ninth through 11th grades. The school has 1,800 students this year with a 12th-grade class included, according to Principal Jonathon Guthrie.
“We have housing neighborhoods going in on the north, west and east sides of the high school right now,” he said.
Guthrie believes there is a correlation between the school’s presence and Centerton’s growth, although he adds development of some of those housing subdivisions started long before the school opened.
All the development increases sales and property tax revenue for the city. Officials plan to pay for road improvements with the additional money. Property tax revenue rose from $808,165 in 2015 to $879,504 in 2016, according to Pam Grant, the city’s financial director.
The growing business presence has increased sales tax revenue, too.
“In 2011, the average tax collection was $26,000 a month,” Mayor Bill Edwards said of sales taxes. “Now it’s $108,000 a month. That’s over four times more.”
The increase in sales tax proceeds since 2011 has been steady, Edwards said. Centerton was on the rise before West opened and would have seen growth regardless of its presence, Burns said.
“I believe there would have been development of Centerton because of our proximity to Bentonville,” she said. “People like that we’re on the outskirts of the bigger city and have less. But West High School definitely had an impact.”
Residential Development
The city has approved development of about 21 subdivisions with a combined 1,227 residential lots since 2013. Most of those lots received preliminary approval in 2015 and 2016 after the high school’s construction began, according to Planning Department documents.
Morningside subdivision, which has more than 250 residential lots, received preliminary approval in 2016 and is located within one-half mile of the high school, Burns said.
Jan Holland, senior vice president of Coldwell Banker Harris McHaney & Faucette, has sold homes in Centerton. She said while prices for Bentonville homes have skyrocketed over the past few years, Centerton is popular with prospective homeowners because it’s more affordable.
The Centerton housing market has become especially strong over the past year or so, Holland said.
“You have a lot more new construction out there, new subdivisions,” she said. “They’re literally selling the homes prior to them being built.”
The U.S. Census Bureau website shows Centerton had an estimated population of 9,487 residents in 2010. The Census estimates the city has 12,861 residents as of 2016.
The high school is a selling point for families, Holland said.
“If you drive around the new high school, you’re going to see so many subdivisions coming out of the ground,” she said.
Multifamily apartment buildings are also going up. The Watercolor Apartments are under construction in the area of Greenhouse Road and Arkansas 102, and Center Pointe West Apartments will be built in the area of Arkansas 102 and Arkansas 279, Burns said.
Commercial Projects
A slew of commercial projects have opened with more in the works, Burns said.
Greenhouse Plaza, 1801-1807 E. Centerton Blvd., opened in July 2016. Starbucks opened in the plaza shortly thereafter.
Both a Taco Bell and First Security Bank are under construction in the southwest corner of Greenhouse Road and Arkansas 102, also known as Centerton Boulevard, and both will open within the next month, Burns said.
Centerton Plaza is being developed at 300 E. Centerton Blvd., west of the Sonic at 360 E. Centerton Blvd. It has eight units, five of which have been leased: two to a Mexican food restaurant, two to an American food restaurant and the fifth to a nail salon, said Jordan Jeter, co-owner of Abbey Fund, which is developing Centerton Plaza.
Abbey Fund has land to expand the plaza by building a second, 10,000- to 11,000-square-foot building with six to eight units and has an offer from a business that would be an “anchor tenant” in the building, Jeter said.
Legacy Sports Academy, a youth indoor sports facility, will open in September with a 9,000-square-foot batting cage workout facility and 12,000-square foot, full-size regulation baseball infield, said Gary Hamm, a Legacy principal owner.
“We chose Centerton because it’s in a critical mass area of kids,” he said.
Many of those kids go to West High School, and the school factored into Hamm and his partners’ decision to develop in Centerton.
“You have to drive by our facility to get to the high school,” Hamm said. “We’re about youth sports, and there’s a bunch of youth over there.”
Jeter agreed the high school is a major selling point for the city but said it has many attributes.
“We had heard whispers that the high school was going to go to Centerton. We were going to build the building there regardless because Centerton is on the way to the airport, and we think the airport is going to grow and be there long term. And then, just from an economic standpoint, Centerton is flat and full of cow pastures, which is easy to develop. If you go too far north, going to Bella Vista, it’s mountainous and too hard to develop.”
Jeter, who is also a partner for Flake & Kelley Commercial Real Estate, said Centerton Boulevard (Arkansas 102) is going to be the town’s College Avenue, referring to the busy Fayetteville thoroughfare.
“In the last two years, it really has become that way. You have a lot of different players out there. You have investors who are buying land and holding it on Arkansas 102,” he said.
Willow Crossing, another plaza, is in the beginning phase of construction at 1409-1423 W. Centerton Blvd., and will be comprised of two buildings with four units each. Burns said the plaza could have either restaurants, retail stores or offices.
“A lot of our residents have to go to other cities to get the amenities that they are looking for, especially the restaurants,” Burns said. “Now that we have the population to support the businesses, they are investing in property here.”
Jason Holyfield, president of West’s parent teacher organization, said more restaurants will be needed for visitors when a football stadium is built at the school. The school board pledged last month to invest nearly $2 million to build a stadium, leaving district administrators to raise about $2 million more to finish the job.
Holyfield wants to see more small businesses in the city because they could support school fundraisers and enterprises, such as the student yearbook.
Spending the money
The city completed extensive road improvements last year in preparation for the high school and the heavy traffic it would bring.
It’s working with Benton County to connect Arkansas 272 to Gamble Street by way of Walters Road.
“That’s one we got planned for this year,” said Rick Hudson, the city’s public works director.
The project will cost $1 million, and the cost will be split evenly by the city and county. The Walters Road project is designed to create an access point to the high school from the north.
Another project is installing traffic signals at the intersection of Seba Road and Main Street, which will cost $1.2 million, Hudson said. The busy intersection is a quarter-mile from the high school, and installing traffic signals will make the intersection safer, he said.
“We’re in the process of working on utility relocation and right-of-way acquisition for the traffic signal project,” he said.
City leaders also have plans for improving the city with the growing tax revenues.
Edwards said the city is working on building a new city hall, which would continue to house district court sessions.
“We’re trying to do an extension of our one-cent sales tax, and if it’s extended, we’ll get to work on it right away,” he said.
The vote to extend the tax, which was originally passed in 2006, will be Sept. 12.
City leaders have yet to sit down with an architect to discuss the new city hall’s design, Edwards said.
“I want to keep it realistic and not too expensive,” he said. “I want to be cautious with taxpayer’s money. I don’t want to spend more than I really have to.”
The current city hall building would be repurposed, Edwards said.
The city is also interested in park development and has applied for an Arkansas Parks and Recreation matching grant to build a splash pad and restrooms at McKissic Park on Allen Road.
The splash pad will cost about $400,000 and the restrooms about $100,000, Edwards said.
He also hopes to build a park in the city’s northwest corner. Morningside subdivision’s developer donated 9 acres of land in the area of the subdivision to the city to build the park although there’s no time frame for when.
A new school could be coming to Centerton as well. The Bentonville School District owns 80 acres of property at 279 Holloway Road, Edwards said.
”A new school is in their five-year plan,” he said.
The district owns land in Centerton, Rogers and Bentonville. The Rogers land, located on Haxton Road, is the location for an elementary school currently in development. A new junior high will follow the elementary school and will be built in either Centerton or Bella Vista, said Superintendent Debbie Jones.
“Before we develop each of our buildings, we look at population growth,” Jones said.
“The location will be determined on what the greatest population growth and need is.”
The new junior high will arrive within the next five years, Jones said.