Local Mayors Meet to Discuss Future of Northwest Arkansas

Five mayors met up in Rogers Wednesday morning to talk about the future of Northwest Arkansas. The leaders of Fayetteville, Springdale, Lowell, Rogers and Bentonville kicked off the Northwest Arkansas Regional Development Conference with a roundtable hosted by KNWA's Matt Turner. "People tend to listen to us more as a group than they do individually," Bentonville Mayor Bob McCaslin says. The mayors told the crowd their cities must cooperate to keep up with the area's growth. "We went from the worst recession since the depression to what I would call bottle rocket growth all of a sudden," says Fayetteville Mayor Lioneld Jordan. "It's not are we going to grow, but how we manage that growth." The mayors agree, the region's biggest hurdle is transportation. McCaslin asked for voters to support a half cent sales tax increase that would pay for the widening of interstate 540 to six lanes from Fayetteville to Bentonville. The project also includes completion of the Bella Vista bypass and part of a 412 bypass. "If you were to do that today that would still be fully utilized," McCaslin says. "We have to make those improvements." Jordan says if infrastructure doesn't keep up, it could eventually put a halt to the progress. "Every thing gets bottle-necked and you can't get anywhere," he says. The men are also excited about foot traffic that will come with the Razorback Regional Greenway, a project that will connect the cities with a trail system. Rogers Mayor Greg Hines believes these types of amenities are a must. "Folks today are deciding where they want to live before where they're gonna work, he says. "We've got to be competitive in Northwest Arkansas if we're going to attract the kinds of jobs and people that we want."