Arkansas is suffused in rich history. From the storied streets of Little Rock to the goldrush of Murfreesboro, the state has inspired business for more than 200 years, beginning with the founding of the Rose Law Firm — the state’s oldest continuous operating business — in 1820. Each step through Arkansas promises a beguiling view, a culture of warmth, and years of industrial strength, leaving little thought as to why the state has seen so many people plant roots within its borders. Pick a corner, any corner, and stay for a while.
CENTRAL ARKANSAS
As the state’s largest MSA, Little Rock and North Little Rock have combined to welcome around one-quarter of all major corporate facility investment projects that Site Selection magazine has tracked in Arkansas since January 2019.
Packaging company Bryce Corp. is building a new manufacturing facility that will generate 142 new jobs in Searcy, known for its historic Rialto Theatre and Harding University. Building on an Arkansas presence that began with a roasting plant in Little Rock in 2010, Westrock Coffee in December 2021 announced the largest beverage production facility of its kind in the U.S. in Conway, 30 minutes northwest of Little Rock. Three years ago in the same town, DXC Technology invested in a 1,200-job expansion at its center of excellence, which offers IT services in Medicaid, life sciences, health care, automotive and security. Conway is home to 300 businesses, with employees and freelancers alike able to take advantage of gigabit Internet service through the Data District.
Home to the annual Toad Suck Daze festival (the World Championship Toad Race plus concert, carnival and bazaar), Conway is known as the “city of colleges” because of the presence of the University of Central Arkansas (UCA), Hendrix College and Central Baptist College. Conway’s cultural scene is further enriched by the state’s only professional Shakespeare company, Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre, the Conway Symphony Orchestra and the one of the nation’s most respected literary magazines, Oxford American, which makes its home on the campus of UCA.
Hospitality is even at the core of a diversifying business mix and stronger workforce education. Known worldwide for its work to end hunger and poverty, Heifer International has long maintained its world headquarters in Little Rock. But with half of its staff members working remotely since the pandemic struck in 2020, the organization in 2022 reached an agreement to move its staff to two floors and sell the building to Little Rock–based health care services and technology company OneHealth, which plans to work with Batesville-based Lyon College to open dental and veterinary schools in Little Rock.
The Clinton Foundation will also be a tenant in space at the Heifer International building, which is located in Little Rock’s East Village, a thriving neighborhood that is home to the Clinton Presidential Center. Known for welcoming dignitaries, thought leaders and everyday people from around the world to its premises, the new partnership has the entire world in mind.
“East Village is poised to be a hub of future economic growth in central Arkansas,” said Merritt Dake, a founding partner of OneHealth Companies. “We are excited to build upon the foundation that Heifer International has made in promoting health solutions for Arkansas and the world.”
The Windgate Hall of Art and Innovation soon will be the centerpiece of a new Art and Innovation District on the Arkansas State University campus in Jonesboro.
Photo courtesy of Arkansas State University
NORTHEAST ARKANSAS
Billions of dollars in steel industry investments from the likes of U.S. Steel, Nucor, Tenaris, Atlas Tube, and Zekelman have brought historic boom times to towns in the Upper Arkansas Delta of the Mississippi River such as Blytheville and Osceola. But the region is not a one-trick pony. In February 2022, as if U. S. Steel’s new $3 billion steel plant weren’t enough good news, Corona, California–based Envirotech Vehicles said that it would construct a new $80 million, 800-job manufacturing facility in Osceola to make its zero-emission, purpose-built electric vehicles.
“We are thrilled to announce that we have chosen Osceola as the home of our first U.S.-based manufacturing facility, backed with the support of the Great River Economic Development Foundation and the state of Arkansas,” said Phillip Oldridge, CEO of Envirotech Vehicles, in a company release. “We are confident that Osceola has the perfect business climate and local workforce to allow us to see growth and success in the region as the state’s first commercial electric vehicle manufacturer. This, and the plant’s location near the Mississippi River with access to the port of Osceola, will be vital as we position EVT to bring new innovation and technology advancements to the state.” The company purchased the facility from the city, and in April 2022 debuted the plant’s first, final assembled vehicles even as renovation construction continues on the final manufacturing facility with Arkansas-based Olympus Construction.
From those bottomlands it’s not far to Crowley’s Ridge State Park and Paragould and Jonesboro, two towns which have welcomed their own list of recent projects from such companies as Nestlé, Nice-Pak, Anchor Packaging, Prysmian and Hefei Risever Machine Co. Paragould has more than just corporate claims to fame though. In 1930, a historic meteorite struck nearby the one-time lumber capital, one part of which weighed in at 820 pounds. In 1936 two fishermen named Frank Reynolds and Lowell Rodgers uncovered the first bones of what turned out to be a 10,000-year-old mastodon.
Remnants of a literary giant can be explored at the Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum and Education Center in Piggott. Ernest Hemingway’s studio and many other heritage sites across the Arkansas Delta (like Johnny Cash’s boyhood home in Dyess Colony) are operated by Jonesboro-based Arkansas State University, a doctoral-level national institution with more than 14,000 students engaged in more than 150 degree programs and areas of study. An hour from Memphis, the Jonesboro MSA is home to more than 130,000 people and has attracted the lion’s share of company investments in the region.
One of the newest facilities in Jonesboro may point the way to companies of the future. Backed by a $25 million gift from the Windgate Foundation, the Windgate Hall of Art and Innovation will be the centerpiece of an Art and Innovation District on the Arkansas State University campus. Established in 1993 and based in Little Rock, the Windgate Foundation’s purpose is to advance contemporary craft and strengthen visual arts education in the United States, and two-thirds of its largest grant recipients are based in its home state. The district on A-State’s campus will herald a new era for the type of cross-disciplinary education so many employers seek.
“We know from our recent alumni and from industry and employers that an interdisciplinary mindset is vital,” said former Arkansas State University Chancellor Kelly Damphousse in December 2021 when the major gift was announced. “The marketplace of tomorrow demands that we all have crossover skills. What we do today prepares students for a future economy that changes not every few years, but every few months.”
The project is emblematic of the university’s #Discover2025 strategic plan.
A competitor can’t help but smile at the 2021 GudRun Mountain Bike Festival in Cedar Glades.
Photo copyright Arkansas Department of Parks, Heritage and Tourism
“Our campus agreed that a revamping in our core curriculum was an important goal,” Damphousse said, “along with identifying new and innovative areas of creative endeavor and research, creating new chances to collaborate with our communities — both on and off campus — and building a campus climate where we have a sense of place that invites people to want to come work, teach, learn, research, and yes, live and play.”
SOUTH ARKANSAS
Hostess Brands in Arkadelphia. Radius Aerospace in Hot Springs. Resolute Forest Products and Continental Carbonic in El Dorado. FedEx’s $100 million freight service center investment in Texarkana … dare we call it FedExarkana?
The spread of companies investing in South Arkansas is as wide-ranging as the region’s landscapes, from the Lower Delta of the Mississippi to Ouachita National Forest and the quartz crystal capital of Mount Ida in Southwest Arkansas.
Among the busiest is El Dorado, once an oil-boom town in Union County, the largest county in the state by land area and home to second largest brine reserve in the world behind the Dead Sea. The county and its neighbor Columbia County still account for 40% of global bromine production.
To the west, Texarkana, because of its position on the Texas state line, not only hosts two public university systems — Texas A&M University Texarkana and University of Arkansas Texarkana — but is also home to a branch of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), the state’s only academic health sciences center and teaching hospital. Add in two community colleges and you’re talking about a workforce pipeline peopled with nearly 10,000 enrolled in the region and more than 2,700 degrees and certificates awarded annually, according to AR-TX REDI, the area economic development organization.
Another asset in AR-TX REDI’s holster is the REDI Arkansas Manufacturing Center, a 1,350-acre industrial site fronting I-49 and the future I-69. The megasite has Union Pacific rail on property and sits within 300 miles of eight major cities: Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Oklahoma City, Little Rock, Memphis, Shreveport and Baton Rouge.
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville (right) and the Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs (above designed by Arkansas architect E. Fay Jones) are two of many not-so-hidden jewels to be found in Northwest Arkansas.
Photo courtesy of Northwest Arkansas Tourism Association
Many regions can lay claim to hidden jewels such as that megasite or Bathhouse Row in Hot Springs. But South Arkansas takes that phrase literally: Murfreesboro, home to the nation’s largest diamond, dubbed Uncle Sam, is now neighbors with the nation’s largest barbecue wood pellet mill and distribution center. Nearby in the city of Hope, Dansons USA has announced a $50 million, 335-job investment.
“Dansons and Hope are a perfect match,” Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said in early 2021 when the project was announced. “Dansons needs wood. Arkansas has wood. Dansons needs a first-rate workforce. Arkansans are the hardest working and smartest employees anywhere. Dansons and Arkansas will set the standard for barbecue wood pellets, and soon grill masters will be serving barbecue with the distinctive taste of Arkansas.”
NORTHWEST ARKANSAS
Known as the headquarters region of globally successful companies Walmart, J.B. Hunt, Tyson Foods and Simmons Food, Northwest Arkansas offers a panoply of location options in such communities as Fort Smith (the top project attractor in recent years), Bentonville, Rogers and Fayetteville, home to the University of Arkansas.
Recent projects have come from Ferra Aerospace and freight company Transplace Texas in Rogers; JMP Solutions and software company Supplypike in Fayetteville; EV manufacturer Canoo Technologies and Walmart in Bentonville; and Hytrol Conveyor, Owens Corning, Mars Petcare and Gerber Products in Fort Smith.
Bentonville’s wealth of high-profile companies welcomed yet another member in November 2021 when Canoo announced it had selected the city for its headquarters, alongside an “advanced industrialization and low-volume production facility for small package delivery vehicles in the state” and an R&D center in Fayetteville. These and other investments will bring at least 545 high paying jobs to Benton and Washington counties. “We are proud to partner with the State of Arkansas to develop American-made clean energy vehicles,” said Tony Aquila, investor, chairman and CEO of Canoo Inc.
“Canoo is an American-made company with a vision for modernizing the future with its electric vehicle technology, and I am pleased that it will be making that vision come to life in Arkansas,” Arkansas Secretary of Commerce Mike Preston said. “Northwest Arkansas is one of the fastest-growing regions in the United States and a hub for technology and business development. I am confident that Northwest Arkansas and Canoo are perfect matches for each other.”
The region complements its fast-growing towns with slow-flowing country: the Ozark Mountains, the Buffalo and White Rivers, the German-Swiss heritage and wine country of Altus and Bull Shoals Lake are among the region’s many assets. One of several resorts just below the Bull Shoals Dam is Gaston’s White River Resort, known for some of the best trout fishing in the land, and graced with its own 3,200-ft. Bermuda grass runway where visitors have been known to fly in just for Sunday brunch.
“Northwest Arkansas is one of the fastest-growing regions in the United States and a hub for technology and business development.”
— Mike Preston, Arkansas Secretary of Commerce
The state also is home to five International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA) EPIC rides — the Upper Buffalo, Lake Ouachita Vista Trail (LOViT), Ouachita National Recreation Trail, Syllamo and Womble trails — which earn their EPIC status from IMBA by being a “true backcountry riding experience — one that is technically and physically challenging, more than 80% singletrack and at least 20 miles in length.” The Oz Trails overall offer 200 miles of mountain biking trails, or if hiking and backpacking is your preferred mode of locomotion, there is the 258-mile Ozark Highlands National Recreation Trail.
