Zoning for the Future in Northwest Arkansas

For the past several years, Fayetteville — with a growing population of 100,000 — has been slowly awakening to the fact it’s no longer as sleepy as it once was, and it’s grappling with what sort of place it wants to become. With Walmart and Tyson Foods headquartered nearby, nearly unchecked growth at the University of Arkansas (which leapt from 21,000 students to nearly 34,000 over the past 15 years), plus eight consecutive years of landing on U.S. News & World Report’s top 10 ​“Best Places to Live” list, Fayetteville stands at the center of a rapid population boom across Northwest Arkansas. But the influx of new people and money has forced the city to weigh growth against the well-being of current residents.

In August, Core Spaces was appealing a previous denial of its request to rezone the property its Hub development would be built on, offering a new proposal that promised to, as Core Spaces’ representative put it at the council meeting, ​“set a standard for responsible and balanced student focused development,” protect affordable housing and mitigate the displacement of non-student residents. Current lessees living at the proposed site of the Hub would be offered $10,000 to relocate and, in some cases, have priority on the new apartments.

But when the semantics were stripped away, the proposal amounted to yet another student-housing complex catering to largely wealthy, out-of-state students — one of nearly 20 such private dorms built in the past 15 years — that required the demolition of two affordable apartment complexes and a historic home in one of the most desirable (and last affordable) areas of the city.

As the public comment period suggested, with 18 of 23 people speaking against the rezoning, this meeting wasn’t the beginning of the debate, but another installment in a drawn-out fight over the past year — which has included the creation of a housing crisis task force, a slew of city code proposals, a cap on short-term rentals and untold comments across social media.

“The University of Arkansas burdened the city of Fayetteville with housing students that they over-recruited,” said one resident, noting the school failed to ​“work with the city on a timeline to house these overly recruited students.”

“Inconvenience is when your DoorDash shows up late or your pizza is cold,” said another. ​“It’s not being asked to find a new place to live in one of the most challenging rental markets in the country.”

“Core Spaces does not come to Fayetteville with a beaming national reputation,” said a third, citing the firm’s D-minus rating from the Better Business Bureau and a 2023 Vice article about a tenant union that had formed in California to fight the ​“Google of student housing.”

While student housing has become a hot-button issue in Fayetteville — with the college student population forecast to peak in 2026 — the bigger-picture issue is that the city was caught flat-footed in figuring out how to handle its own growth.

Before May, for example, the city’s code didn’t distinguish between student-housing complexes and multifamily development, creating a loophole for out-of-state developers to build ​“multifamily housing” properties that are, in reality, high-end, privately owned student dormitories. Legally, the city could do little to stop them, since the developers were following the city’s own rules.

Earlier this year, speaking about another controversial student-housing proposal, council member Scott Berna said, ​“I’d vote no on this in a heartbeat if I could, but I don’t feel like I can.”

Before the city closed that loophole in the spring — giving Fayetteville’s planning commission added discretion to approve or deny student-housing projects before they move into development — the project Berna spoke against came up for consideration: a seven-story, 185-unit building proposed by the Indiana-based development corporation Trinitas Ventures. After Fayetteville’s planning commission denied the proposal, Trinitas filed a lawsuit against the city, which is currently working its way through the courts.

Similar fights have unfolded in college towns across the country. In Tuscaloosa, Ala., in 2014, Trinitas forced through a 266-unit project as the city tightened its zoning laws ​“to curb the recent unchecked growth of student housing apartment complexes,” as the Tuscaloosa News reported. Likewise, in Oxford, Ohio, and Ann Arbor, Mich., lawsuits filed by Trinitas over the past decade have forced the cities to allow new private dorm construction.

Whether it’s bad-cop lawsuits from Trinitas or good-cop inducements from Core Spaces, it’s hard not to see growing desperation from developers as they search for new places to build.

At a national industry conference in 2024, the CEO of Trinitas and the managing development director for Core Spaces spoke on a panel, warning about the proliferation of new regulations and permitting processes that could slow construction. ​“A lot of council members and planning staff [have] become savvier,” said Jonathan Kubow, of Core Spaces, ​“because they have seen more student housing and know what to look for.”

Back in Fayetteville, the city council seemed to prove this point, voting 5-1 to uphold the denial of Core Spaces’ proposal — perhaps not just becoming savvier to developers’ tactics but also more honest with themselves about the city they want to be.