Bentonville Plaza Refills After Hillshire’s Departure

Bentonville Plaza

When Tyson Foods of Springdale acquired Hillshire Brands for $8.55 billion last year, it cost Bentonville Plaza its seventh-floor tenant.

As it turns out, Hillshire’s vacating of 27,000 SF turned out OK for the plaza, which is across Eighth Street from the Wal-Mart home office.

Grady Mathews of Sage Partners, who manages the building for owners FBE Limited of New York, said Hillshire’s departure allowed other existing tenants to expand their leases within the 270,000-SF office building.

Mathews said there is still about 9,000 SF vacant in Bentonville Plaza, but he expects that to be leased in the coming weeks.

“We have a Rubik’s Cube we’ve been working on for about six months,” said Mathews, referring to the rearranging of space he had to do. “It’s finally all falling into place.”

It’s no secret that FBE is interested in a second office building at the 20-acre site; the plaza takes up about 4 acres of that 20 acres.

Mathews said he is working on pre-leasing some of that expected space, which would be similar to the 270,000-SF plaza, but a final decision won’t be made until all the due diligence research is done.