City’s new website a business resource
BENTONVILLE — Bentonville created a website dedicated to economic development to attract more business to the community.
The website, called Invest Bentonville, provides information about the city’s economic development services; demographics, workforce and infrastructure data; as well as information about the city’s culture in respect to art and history, hospitality and dining, sports and recreation and livability.
The website includes recent articles about economic development in Bentonville and quick facts.
City officials identified the need in 2015 to have one comprehensive place where potential businesses could go to find specifics about the city’s economic development, said Danielle Shasteen, senior planner.
“A big part of it is that it ties into the Bentonville Blueprint,” she said, explaining that the website has links to each of the eight business sectors city officials are targeting for recruitment.
Those sectors are identified in the Bentonville Blueprint, the city’s five-year economic development plan. They are digital media; entrepreneurs; hospitality, culture and entertainment; light advanced manufacturing; retail supplier regional offices; retail technologies; specialty retail; and transportation and warehousing.
It also includes priorities such as business retention and expansion, art and culture, entrepreneurship and innovation, sustainability and education/ workforce.
Boyette Strategic Advisors of Little Rock was paid $76,450 to create the plan, which is the city’s first to focus on economic development. The city has entered into a couple of other contracts with Boyette so it can help with the plan’s implementation.
Economic development had been an afterthought because of the successes of WalMart and the vendor supplier community, Troy Galloway, community and economic development director, said when the City Council adopted the plan in 2015. The plan gives city leaders a strategy for economic growth.
“It will definitely create more opportunity,” Shasteen said about the website drawing more business.
She said there’s no way to know if opportunities have been missed because there hasn’t been an economic development-focused website, but she’s not aware of any.
The website may also appeal to people who are relocating and want information on the city, Shasteen said.
Fayetteville is the only other city of the region’s four largest that has its own economic development plan, which its City Council adopted in May last year. The plan calls for contracting with the Chamber of Commerce and Startup Junkie for its implementation.
Fayetteville recently hired Devin Howland as its economic vitality director who will oversee the contracts with the two entities. The city also has a Web page focused on economic development.
Springdale contracts with its Chamber of Commerce for economic development.
Changes in economic development over the past 10 to 15 years has spurred the chamber to make its outreach materials more personalized for specific projects it seeks to recruit rather than developing a data-heavy website, said Bill Rogers, chamber vice president of communications and special projects.
He said it used to be that a company or site selector would reach out to the economic development agency, whether it was a Chamber of Commerce or a city department, for information on items such as demographics or workforce.
“It’s almost as if you start at second base whereas the old days you were starting in the batter’s box,” Rogers said. “The economic developer’s job is to stay in the game. That’s why we use a much more personalized presentation approach.”