A June 27 article about the growth of upscale retailing around Wal-Mart's headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., misstated the location of Rogers, a neighboring city. It is southeast, not north, of Bentonville.
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Upscale Tastes Invade Wal-Mart's Hometown
Benton County, Ark., once a sedate backwater, is quickly morphing into a swanky, sushi-bar-filled enclave in the middle of the Ozarks. (Spencer Tirey -- For the Post).
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A new synagogue, Benton County's first, recently opened with 37 families, a large number of them transplants dispatched to Bentonville by a Wal-Mart supplier.
As suppliers move in, their spending power is transforming the lives of those with no connection to Wal-Mart.
Catherine Holmes, 31, bought a hair salon in 1997 that employed 12, most of them earning about $25,000 a year. As more suppliers arrived, she moved closer to an office park filled with executives from Eastman Kodak Co. and Kraft Foods Inc. and began offering exotic facial scrubs, massages and therapeutic baths.
Now she has a staff of 50, several of whom earn $100,000 a year. "Half of my clients are vendors," said Holmes, the daughter of a Wal-Mart employee who drives a $50,000 Cadillac Escalade. "They are a totally different customer than what we were used to."
But not everyone is overjoyed by the influx of high-rollers. Rising housing prices have cost long-time Bentonville residents hundreds of dollars in higher property taxes. "We used to have moderately priced homes here," said John Rickert, who has lived in Bentonville for 41 years. "Now it's all exclusive, planned developments."
At the same time, gentrification is creating some powerful--and, to some local residents, troubling--juxtapositions. In Bentonville, a Golf Headquarters shop that uses high-tech computers to analyze a player's swing opened next to the U.S. Army recruitment center. Nearby, a contemporary furniture store selling pink leather club chairs opened across the street from a pawn shop.
"Everything is higher-end now," said Rickert, who manages a cafe in downtown Bentonville.
Some residents are scrambling to slow the explosion of new housing and retail complexes that are gobbling up farm land and clogging traffic. But most are just watching quietly from the sidelines, with a mix of frustration and wonder, as the little-known rural community that Sam Walton picked to start his company four decades ago grows into a bustling global capital of retail.
"People are tired of sitting in traffic, tired of waiting in line for dinner at their favorite restaurant, tired of change, really," economist Collins said. "But Wal-Mart isn't going anywhere. You cannot put this genie back in the bottle."
Staff researcher Richard Drezen contributed to this report.
