The Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission is considering the future of the Razorback Greenway and wants your input. E.V. Beyers has more.
As you stand beneath Bellevue Road at 9 in the morning, these are some of the things you might hear.
This natural trafficless symphony is all due to the Razorback Greenway. For the past decade, the more than 40 miles of paved greenway trail have served as the backbone of NWA, connecting the communities of Fayetteville, Johnson, Springdale, Lowell, Rogers, Bentonville and Bella Vista via a nature trail.
And now the Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission, or NWARPC, has announced the greenway's next phase — an expansion starting in Rogers, Bentonville and Bella Vista.
"So that is a land use plan. It's a master plan. And so we will, throughout this project, look and see where the best future location in Bella Vista will be."
That's Taylor Robertson, Bella Vista's planning and development director. Robertson says Bella Vista is unique compared to the other greenway cities. For other cities, expansion planning is largely focused on identifying pre-existing trail sections that may become key places for community gathering spaces. Bella Vista goes about it in a different way.
"Ours will encompass not only planning around our existing small portion, but future planning for location as well. Essentially with the goal: how do we get it, or where will we get it, through the city to get it to the Missouri state line."
For right now, though, the expansion isn't physical. Instead, expansion refers to planning for the future of the greenway as the region grows. Considerations include how individual communities will utilize the trail in the coming years, as well as the trail's future as a form of transportation and community space, among others.
These ideas are the result of earlier planning work done in 2025 as part of the plan's first phase. Tim Reavis, the NWARPC's multimodal transportation planner, highlights six big ideas or projects from the first phase of work that the region is now considering as they move forward.
"The six big ideas: one is to protect and restore creek corridors. Then also rewilding the greenway. Whenever you're riding up and down the corridor, it can get hot in the summer. There's an opportunity to plant a lot of additional trees, thousands of extra trees, to make it a more comfortable ride. The third thing is to manage stormwater and something called sponge parks."
Sponge parks are areas designed to flood during storms, absorbing excess water that would otherwise run off into other areas. During dry times, sponge parks can still be used as recreational areas.
"And then the fourth one is to grow new neighborhoods on the greenway or along the greenway. And this doesn't have to be right on the lots that abut the greenway, it could be somewhere nearby that's easily accessible. But being able to connect neighborhoods to the corridor so that it's easier to have access to the amenity and you're more likely to use it as a really an active transportation alternative. And then the fifth thing, complete the commuter bike network. And then the sixth thing, connect destinations and experiences. When you're biking up and down the corridor, there's quite a few really cool destinations that you can ride to — thinking about the south, you've got Kessler Park in Fayetteville, and you can go along downtown Springdale right there, uptown Rogers, all sorts of destinations in Bentonville. But there are some gaps of where are people going as a destination along the corridor. And this planning process is an opportunity to identify new places for destinations."
John McCurdy, the director of community development for the city of Rogers, described investing in the greenway as a form of social infrastructure. The greenway, he notes, is already exceptional, but expansion of its utilization will help the region make the most of the trail and what it has to offer, especially as the population continues to grow. Reavis feels similarly.
"This really signals that the greenway is going to be protected. It's going to be made better. It's going to continue to be a major anchor for Northwest Arkansas. This corridor is a unifying piece of infrastructure for Northwest Arkansas. It's an identifier for all the cities, for us. So this planning process reinforces that and it solidifies that."
However, before any plans can be put into effect, they must be reviewed both by the cities and by the citizens. After the cities formally signed on to the expansion project, they began coordinating with consultants. These consultants document current conditions and compare them to other regions with similar projects to develop a set of concepts, according to McCurdy. Throughout the entirety of this process, public engagement meetings as well as public workshops, surveys and one-on-one meetings with individual cities will occur.
Robertson is hopeful that presentations will be ready by December of this year, though there is no official timeline as of yet. To attend and participate in public engagement meetings, look for announcements on the cities' websites. Meeting times will be announced individually as the project progresses. For more information on the greenway expansion, visit nwarpc.org.
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