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Bentonville Urbanites Pick Pocket Community

5 min read

The Black Apple Community plans a soft launch this week for its pocket neighborhood concept that is almost in the backyard of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville.

Christy Walton, the daughter-in-law of Wal-Mart Stores founder Sam Walton, hired the Virginia firm GreenSpur to design the community on a 1-acre plot on NE A Street. GreenSpur founder Mark Turner designed a layout that places 11 residences, a common courtyard and a common-use building in the space.

The houses all open to the courtyard area and each has a front porch, following the pocket neighborhood’s ideal of compact, inclusive communities. Tara Limbird of the Limbird Real Estate Group said one of the houses is already under contract and interest overall has been strong.

“We’re excited about it and think it is going to be received pretty well in the marketplace,” Turner said.

Pocket neighborhoods are growing in popularity with people who are looking to scale down their residential footprint. Proponents said the concept is most popular with baby boomers who are looking to live out retirement in such a setting and millennials who eschew subdivision life.

Ross Chapin, whom Turner called the godfather of the pocket neighborhood concept, started the trend with the Third Street Cottages on Whidbey Island in Washington’s Puget Sound in 1996.

Pocket neighborhoods have since popped up elsewhere in Washington and in California, Oregon and Texas. They take advantage of the desire of some homeowners to live close to their neighbors, which encourages interaction and a strong community bond, proponents said.

“You’re not just buying a home; you’re buying into the community,” said Debbie Loudon, marketing director of Ross Chapin Architects in Langley, Washington. “It encourages a connection.”

Nothing Cut-Rate

Turner is a strong advocate of energy efficiency and sustainability and said the homes were built with high-performance materials such as insulation and crushed stone for the foundations. The home sizes range from 800 SF to 1,800 SF, but these aren’t tiny, cheap houses that just anyone can afford.

“It’s not cheap,” said Turner, who declined to give a pricing structure. “There’s value in the community.”

The architectural design by Turner gives the homes a rustic look, and that has been well received by visitors during open houses leading up to the soft launch. Milestone Construction Co. of Springdale did the construction, and Black Door Interior Design of Rogers did the interiors of the homes.

Limbird and real estate agent Michelle Dearing said the pocket houses are popular.

“Bentonville has been very cookie-cutter for a long time, and people are excited to have something different, a little bit more modern, more hip, if you will,” Limbird said. “It’s a throwback, merging the new and the old.”

The design is important because the people moving into pocket neighborhoods aren’t looking for cheap housing, just smaller and in a closer-knit community. Turner said the compactness of the neighborhood doesn’t mean the houses have to be glorified closets.

“The common feedback I get is, ‘Bentonville needed something like this,’” Dearing said. “They’re really happy to see we have this option available. Everyone is really intrigued by the design and the architecture and the sustainability issue. They’re really well-designed.”

Dearing said one woman at an open house was surprised that the 850-SF home had more closet space than her “McMansion.”

“It’s tough because, if you have 5,000 SF to design one, you can always design whatever you want,” Turner said. “With an unlimited budget, it’s pretty easy to design the big houses. It’s much tougher to design an appropriately scaled small house.

“The tiny house nation has exploded across this country, and they’ve built stuff that, to me, is too small. They’re not tiny homes, but they’re certainly not what we’re used to seeing.”

Limbird said the houses and scaled-down lifestyles go together.

“It’s creating a different lifestyle,” Limbird said. “I think people are tired of stuff, all the stuff in our closets and attics and basements. It’s just stuff that weighs us all down.”

Old & New

Turner said he wasn’t that surprised that a pocket neighborhood is getting such positive reviews.

Bentonville — as well as other cities in northwest Arkansas — has focused on cultural expansions and downtown improvements. The 37-mile Razorback Greenway, which has private bicycle trail access to Black Apple, according to the community’s website, and Crystal Bridges have made Bentonville more attractive to the type of people who are moving into the area and care about quality of life amenities.

“We were continually blown away by the richness in culture and sophistication of northwest Arkansas,” Turner said. “They’ve obviously put a lot of time and money into protecting that community. It’s very big city in a small town.”

Loudon said Chapin Architects receives numerous calls from cities and developers about putting pocket neighborhoods in their communities. It’s not a simple process because many zoning ordinances call for a certain amount of space per house and so on that can be a hindrance to putting 11 houses on a 1-acre lot.

“There is a buzz in the world about pocket neighborhoods,” Loudon said. “One reason people are interested is there has been an outcry about how neighborhoods look. There are a lot of boomers who want to downsize and age in place. It’s a different world we’re living in.”

Limbird said there are a lot of interested people watching Black Apple to see how the concept goes over with the paying public. As with most anything, if something is profitable, it will grow in popularity.

“People other than Christy are interested in doing this,” Limbird said. “Everybody is on standby watching it. They’re keeping a close eye on it, seeing how things go.”

Turner is confident in Black Apple’s success even though he said it is his first pocket design that has actually been built. He said Christy Walton is already looking into a site for a second pocket neighborhood in Bentonville.

“We’re getting tremendous feedback, almost to the point where it has been overwhelming,” Turner said. “It was really her idea to do a pocket community. We can’t take credit for it. We’re certainly not the catalyst for this party, but we’re happy to join in on it.”

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