Dive Brief:
- Walmart on Friday officially opened the first two of 12 new buildings at its corporate headquarters campus. The next 10 buildings on the 350-acre site in Bentonville, Arkansas, will open in phases throughout this year, the company said in an announcement.
- Sam Walton Hall, a two-story, 200,000-square-foot auditorium and conference center, is one of the campus centerpieces. Other spaces include an amphitheater, a food hall and a rooftop lounge. The campus also features publicly accessible retail shops and eateries that are slated to open this spring.
- Walmart touted the multibillion-dollar project’s sustainable design. The project uses the largest application of mass timber construction in the U.S., the company said. Green space comprises 50% of the campus, which includes 300 electric vehicle charging stations. Additionally, the buildings feature LED lighting, are designed to achieve LEED Platinum certification and run on renewable energy.
Dive Insight:
The debut of Walmart’s new corporate campus brings plans first announced in 2017 to fruition.
CEO Doug McMillon said at the time that the company needed new facilities that accommodate a digitally native workforce. Additionally, the CEO said the logistics of having a large workforce spread out across over 20 buildings throughout the region was inefficient and limited collaboration and speed.
In developing the new headquarters, the company considered “thousands of ideas, suggestions and dreams to create a space that truly serves the people who bring Walmart to life,” Cindi Marsiglio, the retailer’s senior vice president of corporate real estate, said in a blog post.
The amenities include a 73,000-square-foot, on-site child care center with accommodations for 500 kids that opened last year, a 360,000-square-foot fitness center and seven miles of walking paths and bike trails, as well as a rentable bike fleet. Drones will wash the windows and autonomous machines will vacuum rooms and mow the grass. About 5,000 trees were planted throughout the site.
Also this year, Walmart expects an AC Hotel to open in the northwest part of the campus. The Marriott-branded hotel will be integrated into the site’s recreational trails and workforce facilities, providing overnight accommodations for visitors and employees traveling for business purposes.
“Our founder, Sam Walton, knew that when we all work together, ideas flourish, and this campus will allow us to keep making a positive difference in our customers’ lives for generations to come,” McMillon said in a statement. About 15,000 people will work at the campus, a company spokesperson confirmed to Retail Dive.
In 2022, Walmart asked home office associates to return to in-person work at campus offices throughout the U.S. Last spring, the company confirmed that it would lay off hundreds of corporate employees. As part of that workforce change, the retailer also asked most of its associates who worked remotely and in offices in Dallas, Atlanta and Toronto to relocate. Many of them were asked to move to the Arkansas headquarters. Others were asked to move to the New York City or San Francisco areas.
Clarification: This story has been updated to clarify which groups of associates were asked to relocate.