On Tuesday, Jan. 21, the Bentonville Planning Commission voted to approve the adoption of Plan Bentonville’s Future Land Use Map and zoning alignment policy. 

If approved by the City Council at its next meeting Jan. 28, the adoption will mark a significant milestone on a project over a year in the making that will serve as policy guide for future zoning and development.

What Is It?

Plan Bentonville is an update to the 2018 Community Plan, the city’s comprehensive planning document. It consists of two phases, including the creation of a Future Land Use Map and updates to the city’s zoning and land development code.

The Future Land Use Map outlines where and how the city should grow in the coming decades. City officials have spent the last year gathering feedback and input from residents online and at in-person events and public meetings to create map designations. Nearly 4,700 people gave their feedback on the map, according to city officials.

The proposed map goes beyond the traditional method of land-use planning by employing new “place types” that envisions the purpose and character of an area as Bentonville grows through 2050 and beyond.

Place types are activity centers, neighborhoods, corridors, recreation and specialized. Within each place type are three to four categories with varying intensity of uses and development patterns.

Typically, long-range city plans are updated every 10 to 20 years. The fast-paced growth in Bentonville combined with a need for a variety of housing types warranted an update at five years, according to a planning department staff report. The report notes the city projects a population of 217,000 by 2050.

What Does This Mean?

The potential adoption of the Future Land Use Map by the City Council on Jan. 28 will mark the culmination of phase one of Plan Bentonville. 

The Future Land Use Map itself does not change any zoning classification or affect existing rights on what can be built. Instead, it serves as a guide for future decision-making regarding development in the city.

The map will influence other city plans in regards to transportation, utility and parks planning. 

“When we’re looking at infrastructure planning — such as water, sewer, electric capacity — our master street plan, our bike/ped, our parks master plans, all of those things should and ought to tie back to the community plan and, more specifically, the future land use plan,” said Tyler Overstreet, planning and community development director.

The zoning alignment policy, to be adopted with the Future Land Use Map, sets the review criteria for rezoning requests in the interim between adoption of the Future Land Use Map and the new zoning and land development code. 

“Future land use and zoning are not one in the same, but they are closely connected to one another, so it’s important that in this interim six-month period or so while we’ve got a new plan, working on the code, that we have some sort of translation tool … to say how the new land use plan talks to the old zoning districts, and that’s where this alignment policy comes into play,” Overstreet said.

What Is My Neighborhood’s Place Type?

Residents can view an interactive map on Plan Bentonville’s website. Scroll around the map to find a parcel of interest or click on the magnifying glass in the upper right to search for an address. The map legend lists the place types by color on the left-hand side of the screen, and an explanation of each place type can be found here.

What’s Next

With the adoption of the Future Land Use Map, planning staff will then begin working on phase two of Plan Bentonville, which includes updating the city’s zoning codes to reflect the vision of the map.

The overhaul of these regulatory codes ensures that the vision the community has set in phase one is possible to be developed and constructed on a day-to-day basis.

The first draft of these codes is expected by this summer.

Planning staff expect to conduct annual reviews of the Future Land Use Map. Currently, property owners requesting a rezoning that conflicts with the new map must first seek a change to the map, often submitting a request for the map change and rezoning simultaneously. According to the planning staff report, this process has become cumbersome, with several requests to change land use at nearly every Planning Commission meeting.

The annual review will streamline the process, allowing property owners to request changes at that time.