Advocacy in Action
Rogers, Arkansas, Planners Take On Regulatory Reform
Congressional support for housing and zoning reform has long been a top priority for APA and for thousands of planners across the country. From online meetings at APA's annual Planners' Day to in-person meetings on Capitol Hill, planners have been sharing stories of their own communities' challenges and successes in increasing local housing supply, hoping to spur federal action that empowers on-the-ground results.
John McCurdy, CNU-A (Bottom center) joins planning advocates from across the country on Capitol Hill to advocate for federal action on housing and zoning reform at the 2024 APA Congressional Fly-In.
APA Public Affairs Program Manager Brenna Donegan spoke to planning advocate John McCurdy about how his city of Rogers, Arkansas addresses housing challenges, and why other small to mid-size communities in Northwest Arkansas need federal investment and support to make smart zoning reforms happen.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
BRENNA DONEGAN: How would you describe the state of housing in Northwest Arkansas right now?
JOHN MCCURDY: Critical. We have a very high occupancy right now for rentals, and so there's just not a lot of stock on the market right now. It's having a significant impact on local businesses. People are having to live in Missouri and commute to Arkansas to work because they just can't get anywhere to live. It has become a regional issue.
DONEGAN: Do you know anyone personally who is forced to have a long commute due to lack of housing?
MCCURDY: Well, as a municipal employee, I have personal experience with city employees and my planning staff. Two or three of the people who work in my department live in a home they own in Rogers. Almost everybody rents and commutes. That has an impact on people's quality of life, on their work performance, on their stress levels, just everything. Even though we pay well with inflation and the cost of housing, it's tough out there. It really, truly is. It impacts our ability to recruit people.
Northwest Arkansas is the home to J. B. Hunt Trucking, Tyson Foods, Walmart Corporation, and the University of Arkansas, along with several health providers. Each of those major corporations and large local companies is struggling with being able to get people to work in Northwest Arkansas.
Then you look at things like the service industry, and if you're paying people competitive wages with the idea that they've got a difficult commute, that also requires more money and childcare and all these things that are related to affordable housing. It's a big issue.
DONEGAN: Are there any planning actions or reforms that seem to be working to help alleviate some of that pressure?
MCCURDY: Yes, is the short answer. What we've done in Rogers — and I think we're truly leading the way in this area — we recently did our first-ever comprehensive growth plan. It's not a mandate in Arkansas to have a true comp plan, and so we accomplished that and updated our future land use map along transit lines. We have adopted a polycentric center approach to managing growth versus what I inherited which was a sprawl projection map.
We've identified neighborhood centers, town centers, and regional centers, and drawn lines around those areas. We're also preserving single-family neighborhoods. Although we allow ADUs by right and some things like that, we have built a fence around existing legacy suburban neighborhoods to reduce the NIMBY effect. Then we've got a huge emphasis on development along our strip mall auto-centric corridors.
As part of all this, we completely rewrote our development code. I think one of the biggest things we did was [streamline.]
"Now, any development request that's compliant with the development code is subject to administrative approval. So it doesn't go to the planning commission, it's not subjected to a public hearing. We treat it like a building permit. If you're compliant, it's approved. If you're not, then we can either talk about how to bring you into compliance, or if you want a variance, then that goes through a public process."
We incentivize compliance with the development code over every development being a discrete thing. I think that was pretty innovative.
We're moving towards being under contract to adopt a pattern zones approach to pre-approval of residential forms that are largely missing middle single walk-up, multifamily, and some things like that. Especially along these major corridors, our vision and what we're incentivizing and fast-tracking is the redevelopment of strip malls into multifamily mixed-use, up-to-the-street type development to transform these highways that go through Northwest Arkansas.
Highway 71 B connects the four cities, and regionally we're promoting and trying to lead on the idea that that highway could become the main street of Northwest Arkansas and be a major transit corridor and employment corridor. We're doing a lot of things.
Photo Courtesy of the City of Rogers, Arkansas
DONEGAN: Can you elaborate on why federal investment in planning and zoning reform is important for communities like Rogers?
MCCURDY: What gets built is what's legal, what's convenient, and what is profitable. The profitability piece is something that we don't have a whole lot of control over. That's why I'm a fan of where APA is emphasizing federal assistance in managing processes finding best practices and investing in programs that could show people the way toward a better future.
"I think in any political environment, [it's important to be] pragmatic — what are we trying to accomplish that we can all agree on just as humans? What makes sense for humanity and for our cities in the world that we want to live in? Then, how do you, in the real world, make that thing happen?"
DONEGAN: What impact does having access to resources like national data, best practices, and funding make for communities trying to advance housing solutions?
MCCURDY: Northwest Arkansas is very fortunate, in that we're in a very affluent, growing area where we've got philanthropic money from the Walton Family Foundation for city staff, city elected officials, and commissioners to attend planning conferences like APA's National Planning Conference and to become educated and to see how the best practices are working out around the country and the world. We've got grant money that we can tap into to help us hire the very best consultants in the world to come and help manage our growth and help our staff be better. That's a pretty unique situation that other communities don't have access to. "I don't know how other cities manage this."
It's hard if you're just working in a small to medium-sized city with a limited staff, and a limited budget, to even be aware of what you're supposed to be doing and to be able to combat NIMBYism and political uncertainty, and frankly, just the lack of competence of elected officials, appointed officials, at the level that they need to be competent to be able to effectively manage growth for a city. We need to be sharing information.
That's something that APA is advocating for, that you're seeing in PRO Housing and the other legislation that we're here to support. We're a case study of what the federal government could be doing.
Housing Supply Accelerator Playbook
Speed Up housing development
Get tips on how to expedite your permitting process and more in the Housing Supply Accelerator Playbook.
Call for Federal Action
APA encourages the following federal actions:
- Renewed funding of the Pathways to Removing Obstacles to Housing (PRO Housing) grant program
- Co-sponsorship of the Housing Supply and Affordability Act
- Co-sponsorship of the Reducing Regulatory Barriers to Housing Act
- Co-sponsorship of the Yes In My Back Yard (YIMBY) Act
Stay up to date on the latest in federal housing action by joining the Planners' Advocacy Network.
Top image: iStock / Getty Images Plus-Michael Warren