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BENTONVILLE, Ark. — After formally incorporating Walmart in 1969, Sam Walton made plans for a headquarters and distribution center, investing $25,000 for a 15-acre site here. Planned on a much vaster scale and for the 21st century, the company’s new home office, which debuted last month, is intended to meet the needs of Walmart, now the world’s biggest company with $648 billion in annual sales, for decades to come.
“It feels like a day of new beginning,” said Walmart chief executive officer Doug McMillon. “This isn’t a celebration of the past, exclusively. It’s a moment for us to think about what the future can look like, and it does feel to me like in many ways this company is just getting started.”
Although the scope of the project might have surprised Walton, he would certainly recognize the sense of purpose and vision behind it. The 350-acre campus, half of which is devoted to green space, includes 12 office buildings; meeting and parking facilities; health and fitness and childcare centers funded by the Walton family; multiple dining options; even a hotel. As McMillon noted in his remarks at an opening ceremony attended by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Bentonville Mayor Stephanie Orman, and other state and local leaders, a key to Walmart’s success is getting people at all levels of the organization to work together. The new home office was created with that idea in mind.
“We’ve got some momentum, but we believe this is going to unleash even more, enabling us to become a high-performing culture in which our teams can work in ways they never have before,” noted executive vice president of corporate affairs Dan Bartlett. “We’re really excited about that.
“From the start of the project, we’ve taken a principle-led approach to this winning work environment, one that is flexible, tech-powered, and delivers on collaboration and space and saving time, all with tons of daylight. At the same time staying true to who we are, which means we put the needs of our associates first while reflecting our values, including our commitments to EDLC, regeneration, an abundance of natural spaces and a seamless connection to the community.”
The focal point of the new campus is Sam Walton Hall. The 200,000-square-foot structure includes a 1,500-seat auditorium, as well as meeting, learning and development facilities where Walmart associates and business partners can come together. Adjacent to the building is Helen’s Ampitheatre, an outdoor meeting space named after Walton’s wife.
“This building is all about communication,” Bartlett explained. “One thing that was really a core tenet of Sam Walton was that when we were communicating as a team, we were always doing better — Saturday morning meetings, officer meetings, associate meetings. We’ll have TV production and Walmart radio here in this hall. On the second floor is the Walmart Academy, which is where we bring our associates in from the field. We do a lot to build out and scale the company’s culture in these training centers.”
References to the retailer’s history and past leaders are evident throughout the campus. The names of office buildings reflect different milestones in Walmart’s growth and evolution.
“The Cheer building is where we moved our fashion team just a few weeks ago,” said Cindi Marsiglio, Walmart’s senior vice president of corporate real estate, who oversees the headquarters project. “They’ve been kicking the tires, and, as they’ve settled in, helped us a lot. Old Roy is the second of the 12 buildings we’ll open. Each building has a very special name that relates to our culture. It’s been really fun to make sure that our purpose, values and that special Walmart story come to life.
“All of the office buildings include a lot of fully flexible spaces. The variety of spaces enables associates to work independently, in small groups or in large groups. That’s what this campus is all about, and I think that is going to be a big unlock.”
Work on the project, which the Walmart board first approved in 2017, continues, with the remaining 10 office buildings slated to debut by the end of the year. Open to the public, street-front retail outlets on campus — including Bentonville Bicycle Co., The Gents Place, Jamba Juice, Wrights BBQ and Walmart Pharmacy — will be available starting this spring.
In constructing the home office, Marsiglio and her team faced formidable challenges. In addition to the buildings and amenities, the work included installation of 100 miles of underground infrastructure and execution of an extensive landscape design. The Big Nature concept incorporates more than 750,000 plants native to northwest Arkansas and 5,000 trees. Shaded walkways and dedicated bike paths connect to the Razorback Regional Greenway and downtown Bentonville. A pedestrian bridge linking the new campus to Walmart’s David Glass Technology Center is also part of the project.
“A lot of this job has had all of us swimming upstream,” noted Marsiglio. “We’ve asked a lot of you to do things differently, to challenge the status quo, to be modular, to be elegant, to be efficient — to be Walmart.”
That imperative makes the company’s commitment to everyday-low costs top of mind for the people involved in the multibillion-dollar project. Marsiglio noted that 8 million man-hours have been required to date, with the total expected to reach 10 million by the time work is finished.
“Getting more for less. That was a challenge [Walmart chairman] Greg [Penner] gave us from the very beginning, not through cutting corners in design, but we needed to save money so we could invest in modern, contemporary amenities like the auditorium we sit in today,” she said.
“How did we do it? We bought a lot direct. We bought a lot early. The structures are modular. These are a kit of parts. Ninety-five percent of the light fixtures on campus use the same bulb, so it’s just one bulb we that have to stock and maintain. Everything is function over form. While some things are absolutely beautiful, they all have flexibility and functionality.
“And sticking to our decisions. In a job like this, change orders will kill you, impacting your schedule and your budget. We know we’ll learn a lot along the way and make the minor revisions we need to, but we do so without sacrificing the schedule or the budget.”
Seth Roy played a pivotal role in helping make the plan developed by Walmart’s leaders and Gensler, the executive architect for the project, a reality. As senior director of campus construction, Roy worked closely with Marsiglio to manage the seven different contractors involved in the job.
“That was a strategy from the beginning that allows us to mitigate risk, have access to a deeper and wider management pool, and tap the labor market evenly across contractors,” said Roy, who previously managed the construction of Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. “To gain that benefit, Walmart decided to take the construction management capacity and bring it in-house. So we built a team of professionals that were highly experienced and had deep industry knowledge and assigned the different scopes to these folks.
“Having the project split up, how you pay for that is with complexity. What’s important for all of the contractors to know is they don’t have contracts with each other, creating what’s called the contractual gap. In order for them to interact, they have to understand that their success depends on the success of the others. That’s part of what I do as leadership on the project.”
Walmart’s commitment to environmental sustainability is evident in the design of the new home office. Powered by renewable energy, the buildings are constructed to qualify for LEED Platinum certification. Water management for 13-plus acres of lakes and reservoirs on the site is facilitated by smart technology. Dynamic glass that reduces use of energy and LED lighting are utilized throughout all of the structures.
Much of the construction involves mass timber, an innovative building material made of soft wood trees, which regenerate quickly. The Walmart campus is the largest application of mass timber in the United States.
“Mass timber is made of engineered wood products like cross-laminated timber and laminated linear lumber, which would stack together glued,” Roy noted. “And it’s a strong, durable and renewable alternative to concrete and steel in buildings. We used it for our floor plates, columns, beams, even some sheer walls. It is environmentally friendly and has benefits of carbon sequestration and more efficient construction methods.”
Unlike companies that wall off their headquarters from the surrounding community, the new Walmart home office is integrated seamlessly with other parts of Bentonville. In addition to the public roadways that run through the site, seven miles of walkways and bike trials connect the campus with surrounding neighborhoods.
“We’re right here in the community,” noted Marsiglio. “You can keep the physical spaces secure and still be welcoming and open. We want people to know Walmart. Even if you don’t have a business purpose when you visit the campus, you’re going to see things about us and know things about us and really start to understand who we are.”
In addition, the new headquarters should serve as a catalyst for further development in northwest Arkansas, while increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the people who work there.
“This home office campus will be the cornerstone of Walmart’s future,” Roy said. “It will attract talent. It will provide a space that’s tech enabled, forward looking and connected with nature in the community. It will be a force multiplier for our associates to connect, collaborate and innovate — all to the end of helping customers save money and live better. So that’s what this place really is — a force multiplier for our associates to do better for our customers.”
