Speaker numbers apply only to this recording. Names come from transcript evidence. “Possibly” marks uncertain attribution.
The Bentonville Planning Commission held its scheduled meeting on August 18, 2026, at 5:00 PM following a 4:30 PM Tech Review session at City Hall (305 SW A St). The commission approved a consent agenda encompassing nine items, addressed public testimony on several rezoning applications, and tabled significant code amendment packages pending further city-wide discussion on parking policy.
All right. Again, I hear no one. So uh let's move on to new business. Item number one is the STEM campus. Mr. Adler. All right. STEM campus. So this is uh our very first campus development plan off of the new code, CDP 26-0001, a 14-acre STEM university. It's got three main buildings, the academic building, a two, the crucible building, a three, and the residence hall, A1B. And uh yeah, so the residence hall is kind of in the back on F Street. The other two are right on eighth. Um the parking is all gonna be south of eighth. There are uh two streets E and D that are gonna be private but normally open to the public. There is a um a future phase that's gonna be brought back to the planning commission, as well as the lighting standard. It's still being worked on by a BUD, so that one uh we're proposing a condition that if you do prove approve it that it'd be uh conditioned for everything but the lighting. So since this is our first uh CDP campus development plan, um might be helpful if you just kind of walk us through what we are actually looking at and approving tonight. Will individual pieces then come back to us? What's that process look like moving forward? It would just be uh uh the key thing, like what I would describe as a campus development plan is this is your umbrella kind of framework approval. So we're looking at the connectivity layout, we're looking at the open and civic spaces, we're looking at the phasing plan. Like this is really setting the groundwork for how the rest of the campus itself will develop. Um and then yes, to your point, uh the way the code is written, those individual phases would then come through the large scale development process as well. Okay, so it's not like a PUD in the sense that we're approving materials, we're approving those kinds of things tonight, or we are and or we just approving lay uh general layout, the layout of these first three buildings. So the second page that Claire pulled up is the actual kind of written piece of here are the building standards. Like here is there are some allow uh modifications allowed within 50-50 c for connectivity, street design, lot and frontage, building orientation, parking and transportation, access management, their traffic mode, and those go go on through there. But they're it's not like a PUD in the sense that it still has to meet our building material standards when the large scales are coming through. Yeah. So it's it's more narrowly tailored and what is allowed to be modified, and all that is included within the summary on page two. Not only what they're modifying, but also the justification for doing so. And then Claire and Tom with an or Casey and Tom within the staff report kind of uh tailored that down, gave you the the reader's digest version of it. Um A Street and Walton and A Street and A, and then it's the eighth street and the drive on one, that'll all be part of the developers cost, and uh not sure what phase that'll be done with, but they'll uh um let us know that. The public package is actually making its way through the city right now for plan checks, so that'll be one of the first ones that come through the gate. Yeah. I noticed all the street trees are gonna be planted after the buildings are built, right? Correct. Which makes sense. If the applicant's here has any comments that they want to make, you're welcome to come to the come to the podium. Or if there are any questions, the commissioners.