SWA’s Post

Walmart has begun opening in phases the buildings that comprise its new 350-acre headquarters campus in Bentonville, Ark. The first two of 12 office buildings that will house 15,000 corporate employees opened last week. There are also 10 community buildings loaded with amenities, plus a welcome center, outdoor amphitheatre, food hall with global cuisine and street-facing name-brand retail shops run by local and national retailers. Shops include Bentonville Bicycle Company, Flyway Brewing Company, Gearhead Outfitters, The Gents Place®, Hatch Early Mood Food, Jamba juice bar, Riserva Bar + Tapas, Swig, Walmart Specialty Pharmacy, Wright’s BBQ and Yokozuna Sushi & Grill. All are planned to open this year. The shopping district is on-time to open by spring of this year. At the heart of the new headquarters is the Sam Walton Hall, a 200,000-sq.-ft. two-level auditorium featuring advanced conference, learning and development spaces. The master plan was designed by Gensler, but other architects worked on various elements including Miller Boskus Lack Architects, SWA and others. The campus features 6.7 miles of streets, walkways, bike trails and pedestrian paths. The dozen office buildings were constructed with the largest application of mass timber in the country and designed to run on renewable energy. Management will seek LEED Platinum certification from Green Business Certification Inc. (GBCI), an affiliate of the U.S. Green Building Council. The campus design is focused on “comprehensive associate wellness” and includes a 360,000-square-foot Walton Family Whole Health & Fitness Center, as well as an on-site child care center that opened last year.

Walmart has officially opened its new 350-acre headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, marking a significant step in sustainable and innovative corporate infrastructure. The campus features 12 office buildings, with the initial two now operational and ten more to follow. Amenities include bike trails, a food hall, childcare facilities, and a 360,000-square-foot fitness center. Notably, half of the campus is dedicated to green spaces, showcasing 750,000 native plants and 5,000 Ozark-native trees. The buildings are designed to achieve LEED Platinum certification, incorporating eco-friendly technologies such as dynamic glass and LED lighting. This development underscores Walmart's commitment to sustainability and fostering a collaborative work environment. Chain Store Age, Zachary Russell #Walmart #Sustainability #Innovation #CorporateHQ #GreenBuilding #LEEDPlatinum #Bentonville #Arkansas

Walmart celebrated the beginning of a phased-in opening of its new 350-acre home office campus in Bentonville Friday. Walmart’s corporate headquarters include a dozen office buildings that were constructed with the largest application of mass timber in the country and designed to run on renewable energy and achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum certification. The campus design is focused on “comprehensive associate wellness” and includes a 360,000-square-foot Walton Family Whole Health & Fitness Center, as well as an on-site child care center opened last year, according to the press release. The world’s largest retailer first announced plans to redevelop its Northwest Arkansas headquarters in 2017. The “multimillion-dollar investment,” features mass timber construction, smart building technology, offices designed to be powered by renewable energy and a design that seamlessly integrates the open campus into downtown Bentonville, according to a press release. “It feels like a day of new beginning,” CEO Doug McMillon said. “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.” Founder Sam Walton opened his first Walmart store in Rogers and launched the retailer’s original logo in 1962. The company’s first distribution center and home office opened in Bentonville in 1971.  Walmart has since grown into a global retailer that generated $648 billion in fiscal year 2024. Walmart employs approximately 2.1 million associates who serve around 255 million customers each week in 10,500 stores and several eCommerce websites in 19 countries, according to the press release. Local and state officials attended Friday’s celebration, including Bentonville Mayor Stephanie Orman and Republican state Sens. Bart Hester and Jim Dotson. Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was also in attendance, thanked Walmart for its “investment and enormous commitment to our state.” https://lnkd.in/gApgZxw6

Walmart Unveils Next-Gen HQ in Arkansas Walmart has officially opened the first phase of its new Bentonville headquarters, a cutting-edge campus designed for collaboration, sustainability, and innovation. Featuring state-of-the-art facilities, including an auditorium, food hall, rooftop lounge, and 300 EV charging stations, the campus will ultimately host 15,000 associates. With its eco-friendly design and community-focused amenities, Walmart is shaping the future of work and retail. #CorporateInnovation #Sustainability #RetailLeadership #Walmart #WorkplaceTransformation #RetailStat

According to Cindi Marsiglio, SVP of corporate real estate, sustainability and technology played key roles in every design decision. “Our campus is designed to reflect a sustainable future with buildings constructed from mass timber – the largest application of its kind in the U.S. – and designed to achieve LEED Platinum standards,” she wrote in a recent blog post. Smart building technology includes dynamic glass that reduces energy use, drone-assisted window cleaning and autonomous lawn care. Half the campus is green space, with more than 750,000 native plants, including 5,000 planted trees. It features 7 miles of walking and biking paths, more than 1,000 bike parking spots, 300 EV-charging stations and a rentable bike fleet. In addition to a centrally located food hall and a AC Hotel by Marriott, the corporate campus features a host of street front retail shops, including Bentonville Bicycle Company, Flyway Brewing, Gearhead Outfitters, The Gents Place, Hatch Early Mood Food, Jamba Juice, Riserva Bar + Tapas, Swig, Walmart Pharmacy, Wright's BBQ, and Yokozuna Sushi. These locations will open in the coming weeks and months.

"The loop in Chicago has a vacancy rate of 30%, doubling the rate of 14.9% in 2019." Creative approaches are being discussed to fill these vacancies, including residential spaces, restaurants, and museum spaces. The trend is that individuals prefer experiences over material retail stores such as Macy's, Dillards, Express etc. The question remains: how do we reuse these empty retail spaces and turn them into experiences such as restaurants, gaming places, etc, as these often require vastly different infrastructure and amenities? Find out more in the article below: https://lnkd.in/ep_ZUsmu

In honor of the start of Season 2 of Apple’s dystopian streaming series “Severance”, let’s celebrate the real-life iconic building that stands-in for the fictional Lumon Industries office.  Sharp-eyed designers and residents of New Jersey will recognize this as the former Bell Laboratories campus – an iconic piece of mid-century modern design by noted architect Eero Saarinen.  The Holmdel (NJ) campus opened in 1962, but sadly, Saarinen died the previous year, never to see his vision completed. In its prime, Bell Labs was home to over 6,000 technicians and engineers, working in a massive 2 million square foot structure.  The design included four 5-story pavilions, each connected by a cross-shaped atrium with skylights and skybridges.  The quarter-mile long building is at the center of a 470-acre campus (planned by the former Sasaki, Walker & Associates).  A water tower – allegedly designed to look like a transistor – remains a key vertical element (and it’s still operable). Unlike the secretive world of Lumon, Bell Labs was an open idea factory, fostering technical innovations and where researchers could freely collaborate in the expansive atrium areas. The campus thrived for over 40 years. But after a series of corporate acquisitions, the campus was shuttered in 2006 and fell into disrepair.  Interior atrium landscaping became overgrown, “irrigated” by many roof leaks.  Attempts were made to subdivide or redevelop the site – some even proposed demolishing Saarinen’s signature structure.  Fortunately in 2017, Bell Labs was saved when it was added to the National Register of Historic Places. The Bell Labs campus is now being re-imagined as a mixed-use development called Bell Works.  In the words of the developers, the main structure will include “office, retail, entertainment, hospitality, residential, health, wellness, fitness - everything you would find in a metropolis”.  The surrounding acreage will transition from parking lot to multiple residential offerings. Quite the opposite of Lumon and its severed floor. Unlike Lumon, the Bell Labs site has a bright future rooted in place-making and mixed-use development. Trivia: the computers in Macrodata Refinement on the severed floor have no escape key!

https://lnkd.in/g-kTtq5Z Aldi is renovating and expanding its U.S. headquarters in Batavia, Illinois, construction company A M King, which is overseeing the project, announced last week.   The work entails refurbishing the interiors of three existing office buildings on the 60-acre campus to provide a “more open concept design,” A M King said. A fourth building will be designed and built, bringing the total office square footage on the campus to approximately 250,000 square feet.    The headquarters expansion comes at a time when Aldi is rapidly opening stores stateside and growing its headcount.    ALDI USA A M King Construction City of Batavia Illinois,   Instacart, DoorDash tackle consumers’ grocery affordability concerns - https://lnkd.in/gF3_cWNh

Big tech and big cities have a tense relationship. Silicon Valley is a place in the suburbs, and the industry grew up at a physical and conceptual remove from urban life. These days they make products to keep us indoors, buying stuff on our phones and swiping right, reported The Globe and Mail. "So there’s an inevitable question when Amazon opens a new downtown office, as they have recently done in Vancouver: Does the company really want to be part of the city?" "On the surface, the answer is yes. About 2,500 Amazon staff moved this year into The Post, a 1.1-million-square-foot complex on West Georgia Street designed by MCM Architects. Another 2,000 will join them in 2026. Yet the office space, designed by B+H Architects, is as tightly sealed as an Amazon package; a rich buffet of workspaces, cafés and amenities lies behind the security perimeter. This gargantuan facility is in the city, but not of it." https://lnkd.in/gu2FNY4k #vancouver #tech #office #development

Amazon.com signed a 50,333-square-foot lease in a new office building in Miami’s Wynwood, the largest office lease in the emerging neighborhood. L&L Holding Co. and Oak Row Equities, along with partners Shorenstein Investment Advisors and Claure Group, announced they signed a lease with e-commerce giant Amazon for Wynwood Plaza. The 1 million-square-foot mixed-use project is under construction at 95 N.W. 29th Street