About the Show:

“I hope there’s silver buckshot… a lot of small action in a lot of areas is what will really help us get where we need to be.”

– Jessica Lewallen

This episode is part of a special series supported by the Walton Family Foundation. Through their Home Region program, the Foundation is investing in the people and ideas shaping Northwest Arkansas—across housing, entrepreneurship, transportation, and leadership.

In this episode of I Am Northwest Arkansas® host Randy Wilburn and architect Jessica Lewallen discuss housing, growth, and what it takes to keep Northwest Arkansas a place where people can actually afford to live.

Through her work with ULI's Faithful Foundations program, the Fayetteville Housing Crisis Task Force, and as founder of Gemstone Design Studio, Jessica's tackling one of our region's biggest challenges—making sure explosive growth doesn't price people out or erase what makes this place special.

You'll hear stories from Jessica's journey, practical ideas for housing solutions, and why fixing this requires everyone—homeowners, churches, policymakers, planners, and regular folks—to show up. Whether you're a longtime resident worried about preserving open spaces, a newcomer searching for affordable housing, or someone wondering how to get involved, this episode offers both wisdom and hope for building a Northwest Arkansas where the next generation can thrive.

Key Takeaways:

1. Shifting Household Needs: Nearly three-quarters of households in Northwest Arkansas are made up of two people or fewer, highlighting a need for smaller, more affordable homes, not just large family houses.
2. Smarter Land Use & Infill: Thoughtful infill development helps preserve access to parks, farmland, and green spaces, by building density where infrastructure already exists—instead of sprawling into new areas.
3. Transportation’s Hidden Costs: Affordable housing isn’t just about rent or mortgages—long commutes and car dependency mean Northwest Arkansans face combined housing and transportation costs rivaling larger metro areas.
4. Local Action, Local Solutions: Real change comes from community-led efforts—whether it’s homeowners building accessory dwelling units (ADUs), churches repurposing land, or neighbors engaging in city committees.
5. Education Fuels Empowerment: Programs like ULI’s READY and Groundwork’s Chats help citizens gain the knowledge to shape housing policy, dispelling myths and fostering supportive, effective advocacy.

All this and more on this episode of the I Am Northwest Arkansas® podcast.

Important Links and Mentions on the Show*

1. Jessica Lewallen, Gemstone Design Studio
2. Email: jessica@gemstonedesignstudio.com
3. LinkedIn: Gemstone Design Studio
4. Instagram: Gemstone Design Studio
5. Facebook: Gemstone Design Studio

Organizations & Programs:

1. Urban Land Institute (ULI NWA) — Including Faithful Foundations, READY Real Estate Diversity Initiative, PLACE Summit
2. Groundwork NWA — Public education and community building for housing solutions
3. Fayetteville Housing Crisis Task Force
4. Ozark Regional Transit
5. Confident Coffee (Fayetteville): Example of successful infill development

This episode is sponsored by*

The Walton Family Foundation

The Walton Family Foundation is, at its core, a family-led foundation. Three generations of the descendants of founders Sam and Helen Walton, and their spouses, work together to lead the foundation and create access to opportunity for people and communities. The foundation works in three areas: improving education, protecting rivers and oceans and the communities they support, and investing in the home region of Northwest Arkansas and the Arkansas–Mississippi Delta.

Learn more at waltonfamilyfoundation.org

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FindItNWA.com

It's time for another episode of I Am Northwest

Arkansas, the podcast covering the intersection of

business, culture, entrepreneurship, and life in

general here in the Ozarks. Whether you are considering a

move to this area or trying to learn more about the place you call

home, or we've got something special for you. Here's

our host, Randy Wilbur.

Hey, folks. And welcome to another episode in our Walton Family

foundation series, the Future Is Local. In this

series, we spotlight local leaders and community builders who are

shaping the future of northwest Arkansas Today.

I'm joined by Jessica Llewallyn, an architect and

advocate deeply involved in housing and development

conversations. From her leadership in ULI's Faithful

Foundations program to her work in Fayetteville's Housing

Crisis Task Force, Jessica brings a systems

level view of how design, policy and community

intersect to create local solutions for the future of

housing right here in Northwest Arkansas. So without further

ado, Jessica Llewellyn, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing

today? Great. Thanks so much for having me. I'm really

excited to get to talk to you today. Yeah, no, I'm excited as well.

And, you know, our paths have crossed over the past few years,

no pun intended. And so we've had a chance to kind of get to know

each other. And of course, for people that are not from northwest

Arkansas, the circles in northwest Arkansas are quite tight. So

if you run in one circle, you're probably connected to somebody that's in another circle

and so on and so forth. So you have that. And I know we're both

involved or have been involved with some Urban Land Institute

or ULI programs, especially the PLACE Summit

that ULI has every fall here in Northwest

Arkansas. And so there, there is a lot of, a lot of people that are

super interested in housing and housing related

issues and just development as a whole here in northwest

Arkansas. And so we wanted to bring Jessica on because,

you know, as a practicing architect, among other things, she

kind of walks the walk and talks the talk. And so I'd love for you,

Jessica, just to give our audience a quick superhero origin

story for who you are before we jump into some of the questions that we

have for you today. Yeah, so I'm Arkansas born

and raised originally from central Arkansas

and came to the University of

Arkansas in Fayetteville as a freshman to study

architecture. And been here ever Since.

Yeah, for 25

years now. I've been practicing

and it kind of blows my mind that I'm that old and

that's my path so far. But I've worked for a couple different

firms over the years, a very large national

firm doing a lot of military and government and city

and state work, and then for a smaller

Arkansas based firm and then for a very small

firm. And then now I'm on my own, Gemstone Design

Studio, doing a lot of small projects, everything

from, like I said, military and government stuff early in my career to

like high end commercial and small

residential. I really love hospitality spaces and

housing. I specifically myself live in a

small scale 1950s home that I love

and I really love helping people find compact design

options for new homes. So I've really enjoyed doing that a lot in

the past couple years since I started Gemstone Design Studio and done

a few really fun commercial spaces too. Hospitality

spaces. Yeah. Well, no, I love that. And sometimes

less is more when it comes to the size of a house, right? Cause I

mean you get all these big mansions and ginormous homes, but I

mean you have to heat those homes. I mean, you have to do so much

to those homes to ensure that they remain what you

originally purchased. And so sometimes, I mean, I think the whole movement

to tiny homes and to people just going in, getting into really

thoughtful design processes to create the perfect

type of abode that serves all of the needs

that we have in a physical home, but without being so big

that they take up an even extra large footprint, if that makes

sense. Yeah, for sure. And honestly that ties to one of the big

kind of subtopics within housing that I find myself talking

a lot about is household sizes are much

smaller these days than they were 50 years ago. So like

I live in a two bedroom house built in the 50s. My mom, her sister

and her parents lived in a home this size. And now it's just me

and you know, I think it's roughly 3/4 of households in

northwest Arkansas are 2 people or less with no children. And in

most cases they don't actually need a lot of square

footage unless they have a specific purpose. You know, families

need large homes. For sure. When you have several children in the home, of course

you may have other special reasons that you might need more square footage.

But generally almost three quarters of households

need smaller homes. And that's part of one of the

challenges in our current environment is there's a big mismatch

between what's needed and what is commonly produced and

has been produced for the past 50 plus years. You know, the

norm is to build like three to four bedroom single family homes on large

lots, which is great for a family with kids. But as

children age out of the home, as people become into empty nesters, or

even if you're a single person or a couple with no children, looking for

a home that doesn't always meet your needs and contributes to

the lack of affordability for smaller scale households. I find

myself talking about that a lot. I fit that demographic

and I know a lot of people who do also fit that demographic. Whether

it's single people or couples aging people. There's just a

lot of need for smaller scale options. And we've had some hurdles over

the years to get that built. Yeah, no, you're

absolutely right. And I'm always looking at different

ways to, you know, how can you get more

with less. Right. In the sense that sometimes, you know,

we overextend the footprint that we need to have, and

in that overextension of that footprint, we end up taking up

valuable resourceful space and land when we don't

necessarily need to. So on the one side, you have a place like

northwest Arkansas that from all appearances on the outside looking in,

you would say, oh, we have so much space, we have so much land available,

so we could really, really grow and build and really make it happen.

And then on the other side of that conversation is simply, okay, if we're going

to do that, how do we do it in a thoughtful way

that makes the most of our local environment,

but at the same time doesn't use up all the natural resources

that we have around us? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I know as

a homegrown Arkansan, I love the

access that we have to open spaces, Whether it's our, you know, really

nice parks in the middle of our cities, or outdoor

places to go hiking or biking or swimming or

whatever. I also know some local farmers who

have land kind of near our cities, and I think

that's a common thread across northwest Arkansas. That's part of what makes

this such a wonderful place to live, is the access to those

spaces. And once they get used up, they're gone.

Yeah, they're gone forever. And so by

choosing wisely how we develop and strategically

using things like gentle density infill

development, those kind of things, we can really help preserve those kind of

spaces that we all love. I mean, that's one of the big reasons I

think a lot of people are in northwest Arkansas. I personally love the

aspect of, like, I live in the heart of Fayetteville and

I can cycle a lot of places because I have easy access to the

greenway. And I sometimes kind of challenge myself, how many days can I go without

getting in my car when the weather cooperates And I don't have to go too

far. And at the same time, I also love being able to,

like, go visit my friend's farm that's just south of Fayetteville,

and go swim in the creek with them and hang out in this really

wild area or go find. Yeah.

Wild green spaces within a really close

distance. And there's not a lot of places in the world you can do both

of those things. And I love that. And I would hate

for us to lose that. Yeah. And I think that's why for

all of the planners out there and everybody else that

are, are, have descended upon northwest

Arkansas by virtue of being invited in by

organizations like the council and so many other organizations,

it's really incumbent upon them to kind of find that happy medium

where we can still preserve that natural beauty, but at the

same time, really be prescriptive

of how we do infill development so that it makes sense

for everybody. And so that, you know, a dishwasher that works for

Chef Raphael at Yayos doesn't have to live in southwestern

Missouri and then commute 30 miles or 40 miles down the

road to come work in Bentonville. And these are like real life

problems that have. That have to be resolved. And

so, yeah, you made a really good point about travel

and transportation and how it's tied to housing. I

mean, something that I've seen lately. You know, you can talk about housing

costs, but there's also costs for transportation. So C T

is a common kind of term for that in northwest Arkansas,

although our housing costs is still in the grand scheme of

things in other places in the country a little bit more affordable. If

you add in the transportation costs. We are on par with places

like New York City and San Francisco, places that people

know are notoriously expensive to live. But it's because your

travel cost in places like that is significantly lower, even though

our housing cost is relatively

comparably less than those places. So it's a good

kind of reality check of there are major trade offs when

you have to live so far from where you work.

Not only just like the cost of maintaining a car and

insurance and all that stuff, but like, I personally, almost 20 years ago

was in a major accident on 49, and I still occasionally

have some minor PTSD whenever I'm driving home and hit

that spot again and traffic backs up. And just the stress level of that

is, you know, that doesn't contribute to, you know, a

calm, peaceful life. So. Yeah, yeah, lots of factors

like that. Absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, I. We had Joel Gardner on,

which was also part of this series as well. And Joel Gardner is the executive

director of Ozark Regional Transit. And we just talked about how

valuable it is to have a proper transit system in place

in a location that's growing, because then that takes some of

that burden off, right, that you don't have to always be in your car. And,

you know, I just think of it this way, like my son has to commute

from Fville to Bentonville to go to Inwack. And, you know, it

would be great if there was a straight line bus that went. Or

obviously you. You can. One can dream, but a monorail that just

ran all up and down the corridor. Right. And these are things that we would

love to see happen. But I think, you know, we

have to take all of that into consideration when you're talking about development

and what we're building and how we're building things, because everybody's not

going to just stay in their one little square corner of the

universe. They're going to get out and go places. So in order to do that

and make it as easy as possible, we have to be thinking down the

road for what this population will need when

it comes to transportation, when it comes to housing, when it comes to,

you know, local city centers and what that entails. And I think the challenge

that we face here, and I don't envy people

that are in your profession, because it's a very

difficult challenge. And that's just simply the growth is

so fast and furious that it's like, how do you catch up?

Right. As so many new people are coming to northwest Arkansas? And

it's like, you can't design yourself out of this problem. It's

like you have to kind of keep up with the level of growth that

northwest Arkansas is experiencing. Yeah, absolutely. And

recognize that it brings challenges, but also opportunities.

And recognizing that a lot of people who are moving to

northwest Arkansas are coming from places where they didn't have to drive their car

everywhere. And they're probably eager to find that option for

themselves, even if people who live here aren't

necessarily looking for that. I think we have a mix of people who have

lived in northwest Arkansas for a while and would welcome those kind of opportunities.

But culturally, I know growing up in Arkansas, it's not common

to want those alternatives, But I love to encourage people

to have empathy and to recognize there's people who want things

that you might not want, and that not

only does that help them, but it helps you. If there's a bus line

and bike trails and people are like me. And maybe

10% of my car rides get switched to bike rides. Like

that takes me off the road 10% of the time. That's a reduction in traffic

for you, even if you take your car everywhere. So helping people

understand the connection between those things is really important. I also

think a lot about, I know we started a minute ago talking about

how commuting from your house to your work and knowing that for a lot

of people it's going to be a distance. But that part of that

has been driven by our zoning, like kind of standard zoning of keeping

jobs and homes in separate

locations. And I'm really excited to see

us build, moving forward in a much more kind of integrated

way. I think about something that happened in Fayetteville

in the fall was the rezoning of College

Avenue to include housing for the first time and think in 50

plus years. And that is a key

kind of first step to build out the

possibility of a good, solid transit line along that

route is by getting more housing

opportunities there along the 71B. What

used to be 71B, now College Avenue. So it allows

people to not have to take their car everywhere, as well as the

improvements that we've already seen in the south part of College Avenue with

better trail crossings and wider sidewalks.

And I think back for myself, you know, I've been cycling off and on for

years, and just in the past few years, there's places along

College that I've felt safe for the first time to ride my bike to because

there's been crossings added and wider sidewalks. And there's no

way I would have tried to cross College Avenue a few years ago if it

weren't for that. Yeah, no, well, that. I mean, that all plays into

this process of how do we think about the growth that we want to experience

and what does that look like? And, you know, who's, you know, everybody

needs to be at the table in order to make informed decisions about what we

want for our area. I mean, you mentioned College Avenue. You know,

I've had people on this podcast talk about, I remember a

day when we would just drive down College Avenue and it was like a country

drive. And, you know, it was just different because 49

didn't exist. Right. And so. And actually it hasn't been that long

that 49 has been around. So people take it for granted that that's always been

here or that the Bobby Hopper Tunnel has always been here, but that's not the

case. And I think it's. It is important for people

to Kind of understand that we're still in the early phases of

growth. And I know we talk about a lot of different, I mean, people

use a lot of different pieces of language to identify

the, the planning and development of an area like northwest Arkansas. And you used

one word that I would love for you to maybe define for our audience

so that the layperson has a better understanding of it. But when

you say infill development, can you maybe just quickly

articulate that and maybe share what that actually is?

Yeah, I hope I'm getting this right for everyone. But I typically think

of it as developing new

construction in areas that already have

infrastructure. So think about areas of town

that have roads and utilities and all that. So

it can be like existing downtown area, that maybe there's an empty lot

that can be converted, maybe in an existing

housing neighborhood with single family homes and large lots, maybe

that's splitting a lot and adding another home. In a neighborhood

like mine where the lots are larger size and the

homes are on the smaller side, maybe that's an accessory dwelling unit.

It's adding things gently to provide more

opportunity for homes and businesses, for that matter.

But in an area that's already being supplied by existing

utilities and things, something I think a lot of people don't realize

is that kind of suburban layout with large

lots and large homes that are kind of far apart, if they're on the edge

of town, there's a lot of extra resource that goes into

providing the utilities and the streets and things like that,

even the services like trash service and police coverage and

mail delivery, those kind of things. And it's spread across

fewer paying customers. So it costs more to your

city government, costs more to the different providers of those

services to cover those areas than if

you weren't able to add more units of housing

within areas that are already developed and already covered by those services. So.

Yeah, well, and that's probably one of the reasons why, like, the west side of

Fayetteville has just recently been starting to really be

developed. Right. I mean, when I first moved here, and that has only been

11 years ago, nobody was really talking about the west side of Fayetteville. And

now it's, it is a thing. Right. And so I think that's really important.

And as, as you were describing your definition of infill development,

I was thinking about the brand new Confident Coffee that just

opened at the corner of Rolling Hills and Old Missouri

right near my neighborhood on the east side of Fayetteville. It's just about, it's

several blocks down from where Rolling Hills and College Avenue

meet near the Fiesta Square shopping center. But in

a largely traditional single family

neighborhood, there's a brand new bunch of multifamily

dwellings. And there's a confident coffee coffee shop

which opened up, which everybody in my neighborhood is extremely excited about

because none of us have ever had a coffee shop that we could walk to.

Now I could get on the greenway and ride for, I mean,

maybe 20 minutes or 30 minutes and get to a place and get coffee, but

I can literally leave my house now and in less than eight

minutes be at a coffee shop, which is great.

And I live in one of the older subdivisions in Fayetteville. And

you know, I think everybody wants that type of

experience. Right. Whether they realize it or not. I think we all

do, so. Yeah, exactly. And I think it's easy to

love that. I think when people see it and see how it works,

sometimes it sounds scary. When you hear people talk about it though, you know, if

you. I think a lot of people who live in traditional older neighborhoods or even

newer neighborhoods and they hear, oh, somebody wants to put a

commercial lot in the middle of our neighborhood, it's

can feel scary. You can imagine it's a Walmart with a huge

parking lot or it's a drive thru restaurant with tons of traffic. Yeah,

but usually that's not what people are trying to do when they are talking about

adding mixed use or infill development in an existing

neighborhood. Yeah, sometimes looking a little deeper and

not jumping to assumptions and conclusions can be really

helpful. Yeah, no, without a doubt. And I hope that

more, you know, not necessarily this one location, Confident

coffee opens up in other places. I just hope that outlets like

that get opened up in other neighborhoods in this area. So that

to the point where people can literally like walk or a quick

bike ride to, you know, to some of these resources that they would

really, you know, would really gravitate towards. So. Yeah, absolutely. I

love that in the area that I'm in, I'm a quick walk or bike ride

to a couple of restaurants, to a grocery store, to a couple of coffee

shops. And yeah, I think having that option

is so nice. Like, in fact, it sometimes draws people to come meet me at

my house and let's walk or buy something because it's fun.

You get some sunshine, you get a little wind in your hair

and you get to maybe take your dog with you or whatever. And

yeah, it's universally appealing and yeah, that's cool. I

love that. Okay, so I want to talk about specifically, I mean we.

There's A lot that I'd love to cover here. And, and man, if we have

to end up putting a comma in this conversation and continue it, we'll do that.

But for right now, I do want to talk about some of the overarching

concepts around housing that we have seen, whether through

uli, whether through Groundworks and the folks at the Northwest

Arkansas Council, or whether through the Walton Family foundation or any other

organization that is that has a vested interest in

how the infrastructure of Northwest Arkansas continues to expand and

expand properly. But you know, this whole concept of the future is local. Why

must the future of housing in Northwest Arkansas be

shaped through local solutions? Oh man. I mean, this

immediately takes me to one of my kind of pet topics that I love to

encourage people to do is, you know, I think having a whole

bunch of local people who are paying attention to the needs of the community

and who want to contribute in a small

way is so healthy for a community. Like we

all know someone who could use

an affordable option for housing, usually a small scale something. I

mean, I think about if you're a parent, your kids probably have

teachers who would love to live in a small

scale housing unit in an existing neighborhood, but they might have to

drive really far or they might have to live in a big apartment complex because

that's the only thing that's affordable for them. Or we might have aging

parents or you know, children who are starting

to ready to move out of the house but have a hard time finding a

place to live. So thinking about people like that and if

you have an existing home, we know how the lending environment is right

now. Interest rates are high. It's hard to want to sell your

home and move somewhere else for a higher interest rate to

be, you know, to get a smaller home, maybe that's not the best

option for you. You know, there's lots of options in terms of like adding

accessory dwelling units and potentially providing a really

great option for someone you know and care about. Maybe it's even the person who

checks your groceries or serves you coffee at your favorite coffee

shop. And that also keeps a lot of the kind

of ownership and wealth in our community too. I mean, it's real easy to

complain about big out of town developers like that's who is

going to come build big apartment complexes and we do need some of that. That's

who's going to build big single family housing neighborhoods

and we do need some of that. But you know, all the stuff in between,

it really needs local smaller scale people. And

there's options even if you're just a homeowner and you

want to add an accessory dwelling unit or there's an empty lot next to

you, you've thought about building or converting a single family home to multiple

units. Like, that's something that. It takes a little effort, it takes a

little risk. You know, there's some finance components to it, there's some

knowledge and learning components to it, but it actually is an attainable

way to provide options for people in your community and to

even build in potentially some stable income as you age,

passive income, those kind of things are really helpful for people.

So I love that idea. I really. In fact, there's

a program that I help lead with ULI called

READY Real Estate Diversity Initiative. And

it's for women and people of color to learn the land development process

kind of from start to front. It's an introductory course, but a lot of

people that come through there are local citizens who want to build

something small to provide some housing. I've been a part of two different

cohorts of that. There's another one coming up soon. So pay

attention to uli, social media and emails if you're interested.

But it gives such a great basic understanding of how

as a citizen, as a homeowner, as a landowner, you can

provide something great for your community and get good things in return,

too. Yeah, no, you know, and it's. I'm glad you mentioned ready.

It's a great program. I've had the privilege and the pleasure to speak to that

cohort. At one point in time, my wife actually participated in one of the

cohorts. And, you know, her perspective on land and

on land use changed once she went through that program.

And I think sometimes a little education goes a long way. Right. And

it helps all of us have a better understanding. And even those

people that may have been a little nimbyist in their

views. Right. Not in my backyard, folks. And now all of a sudden see

the value of an ADU or an accessory dwelling unit

and how that can really make a difference. And so, I mean, you said it

as perfectly as could be said that the value of being able to provide

housing for, you know, maybe somebody that locally serves you on

a regular basis, maybe it's a waiter at a restaurant, the cashier at your

local store. So, you know, the, the local mechanic. I mean, it.

There's just a number of different opportunities that local

housing can really help the situation. So

it makes a huge difference. So, you know, and I, and I also think about.

I will add this. I had a Gentleman named Bruce Katz

on a while ago and he talked about, you know, the new

localism. And one of the things that he said to me offline was that,

you know, the government's not coming to rescue anybody

when it comes to housing or housing related issues. It

all has to be solved on a local level. Right.

And that's something that I think it bears repeating over and over

again because people keep thinking, oh, well, somebody

down the road is going to solve this or somebody at a higher

level or at the state or at the federal level is going to come and

have all the. Provide all the solutions. You actually have to provide the

solutions. You, Joe and Jane, citizen of

Northwest Arkansas have to provide the solutions. And cities

where like Centerton and others are finding that out and coming up

with plans and ways that can meet the local housing

needs in their area. Absolutely. Yeah. That's

so key for people to see the connection between their lives and

how they can make a difference. And not everyone is a homeowner or a

landowner and may not be able to do some of the things I was talking

about earlier, but there are still ways to help participate in

that process. I mean, can volunteer or apply for different

city committees or boards. I mean, that's how I ended up on the

Fayetteville Housing Crisis Task Force. I just applied for it. And

there's lots. Each community in our area has different

types of things that are connected to housing and development in

your city. And so finding something that you care about, that

you can go contribute to is really important. Especially as you mentioned, there

are, there are NIMBYs a lot of times people who

speak out against certain types of things, from my

perspective and my knowledge that I've built, a lot of times are

very under informed or misinformed. And

so even just being a voice to people around you

in support of things that are good for your community from a

place of knowledge and understanding and compassion is

so important. I mean, one thing, during

my time at the Fayetteville Housing Crisis Task Force, after talking to different staff

members and other people at the city, I realized how important

it is for people to come out and support

things, not just to speak out against things,

because usually people that want to speak out against things are very angry.

And there's not a lot of people who are actively trying to

support things. So it's kind of like the Yelp reviews. It's like

if, if things are good, people just kind of don't leave reviews.

Right. But the people who are really angry are the one who leave the reviews.

So it's kind of similar in terms of feedback at the city level. Sometimes

it's usually only the people who are very angry, and they. A lot of times

are the people who have the most time on their hands, whether it's because they

maybe don't have to work the same hours as a lot of people,

maybe because they're retired, maybe because, I don't know. Lots of different reasons.

So it does take some sacrifice as a citizen to

have your voice heard. But that doesn't always mean showing up at

a city council meeting. That can mean talking to a representative.

That can mean sending emails, that can mean signing petitions.

So as someone who in my past has been very

apolitical and still see myself generally is

pretty apolitical, I see how valuable at the city level,

like you mentioned from Bruce Katz, it really is

needed and important and makes a difference. It's

like I, as a. As a voter, I have a very small

effect on national issues, but the issues that are happening in my

city and in my neighborhood, if I show up and voice my

support or my concerns, like, I can have a much more significant

effect on things that actually affect me on a daily

basis. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. No, and that goes

without saying. And so, you know, my encouragement is I tell

people all the time, I mean, the squeaky wheel always gets the grease,

and you've got to speak up when you. When you see something that you have

an issue with or concern about and how to, you know,

resolve those problems. But again, I think sometimes, you know,

even with folks that are the NIMBY folks, a lot of times, like you said,

it's just perspective and giving additional data points, which is really

helpful, because, you know, too often we fly off without

having all of the data points and information, and I think it's important

for us to have that. And the other point that you brought up is just

getting involved at a local level. Come to some of your city council

meetings, understand how they're operated, participate in the planning

commission meetings. Those are the real important ones, especially in every city in

town that has a planning commission, because if you want to figure out exactly what's

happening and not feel like you're blindsided by a new

development, because, like, nobody ever told you, well, if you didn't come to a planning

commission or if you didn't read the paper the next day to find out what

they talked about, you're not going to know. So, I mean, I think it. So

that's why that whole idea of localism and just getting

really involved at a Local level really can pay off for

everyone, not just for, just for those that are in, that have been voted

into office or that are running these meetings. Yeah, for sure.

Also think about the fact that we in Northwest Arkansas have such a

richness of very smart and very educated

experts, whether they are, you know, your city staff

or different people working for different organizations. We have a lot

of great people in the area who understand what's happening

at a broader kind of level than maybe an

everyday citizen and knowing who to check in with, who to be paying

attention to for the things that, that you care about, especially related

to development and housing. And yeah, we have really great

resources if you want to stay educated and you want to know what's going on.

Yeah, we absolutely, absolutely do. So listen, I want to ask

you, what has it meant for you personally to work on

affordable housing efforts in your own community?

Yeah, I will say most of my career before

being part of the Housing Task Force and before

really my involvement with ULI was either very kind of

government focused or kind of high end serving

people who want to spend money, which is great, we need lots of that stuff.

But I had never really had my hands in anything

related to affordable housing before. And as someone who

like, my faith and my values are really important to me and

to get to kind of connect this desire to help

serve my community and to serve people who need help in the way

that I have at the Housing Crisis Task Force and other

ULI things has just been really meaningful for me

to connect those things. In a way, it felt like most of my work had

been segmented from that part of me that's such a core thing,

a desire to serve and help. So, yeah, that's been an

exciting aspect. It's really opened my eyes to the complexity

of things. I mean, we've hit on several things already, but there's so many

complex forces at work that lead

to, you know, unaffordability, lead to people in

need not getting what they need. And so being able to understand that

and hopefully help move the needle a little bit. I actually

kind of accidentally, but kind of on purpose ended up with a catchphrase while

I was on the task force. You know, we all hear there's no silver bullet.

At one point I was like, there's no silver bullet, but I hope there's silver

buckshot. I mean, like I said, I'm an Arkansas girl. I come from a family

that hunts. I have friends that hunt. If you don't know what buckshot is, has

a bunch of little pellets in one bullet. And that was kind of the

approach we took as the housing task force is knowing you can't

just do one big thing and solve all the issues

related to housing. But our hope was, and

I continue to hope and believe that a lot of small action

in a lot of areas is what will really help us get to where we

need to be. Yeah, no, I love that. I love, I love that

silver buckshot that. Yeah, definitely. Because that those buckshots, they'll just

pepper you all over the place. So, you know, you, you think you may not

hit your target, but you, you will, you'll cover a lot of, lot of area,

that's for sure. So then obviously you took a lot of

lessons away from that task force and your participation. And

we should make people aware of, of. At the time of recording this,

that task force only had a limited shelf life. It wasn't to be

in perpetuity and it's technically over now. And, and one of the

big things that came for us was that they were going to hire create

a housing professional role for with the

city of Fayetteville to help with overseeing the housing

challenges and issues that a lot of the things that you

identified through the housing task force. I would be curious to know,

in addition to what you've already mentioned, what else was a key

takeaway for you from the housing task force?

Yeah, I really appreciated getting to

interact with just the task force members. We had a wide variety. We did have

three architects, but we were a variety of a group

even within the architects. But we were 10 volunteers

with a variety of backgrounds. And just to get to hear so

many different perspectives was really interesting. And then,

you know, something that we did that I really stand by

and love that we did was we had different guest speakers come to

our meetings because they were public and there were a lot of people

who were paying attention to what our meetings were in

including. And so we really wanted to not just us learn about

these different factors, but to help others who were interested to learn about

them too. So, yeah, I mean some of the things we've already talked

about I think really came to fruition in my own mind and heart through

the task force. Things like showing up in favor of things, not

just against things, small scale local

neighborhood involvement to help get

things built to serve the kind of the local

community. Yeah, just generally the recognition that

we have so many great experts too and that sometimes it really

just takes getting the right people in the room together and

sometimes it takes one person pulling the different

threads together to Braid them into a rope to actually get it to

where it's functionable, which is where I think that chief housing

officer position really came from. And I'm really

excited that they filled that position. I think they made a good choice.

Just announced a few weeks ago. I think it's going to be great for the

city to have kind of one person leading the charge and looking out for

how housing is affected by all the different departments across the city.

Yeah. And obviously, and I don't know, I'm assuming

every city in northwest Arkansas at some point in time is going to have to

have some type of housing task force program put together.

Are you aware of any other cities that have done a housing task force similar

to what Fayetteville has done? Yeah, we did during our task

force, hear from someone who was part of one in Bentonville a few years ago.

Okay. Granted, the environment there was a little different, and

I think they were. This person that spoke to our task force was

a little disappointed. They hadn't seen as much movement as they had hoped.

But I hope that Bentonville will revisit that.

And my hope is that other cities, even smaller

cities, will follow suit, even if it's

just within the city staff. Maybe it's not citizens, maybe it's

not volunteers, but to really look at housing as its

own thing. Because, you know, every department

in a city affects housing, whether it's trees

or streets or services. Like, housing is

affected by all of them and can affect all of them. And if you're not

looking at it as a whole, it can kind of just

sit there and languish or turn into something that you don't

necessarily want. You know, our smaller cities in the area,

surrounding cities have been growing so fast, and I think

some of them got hit so quickly with development that they

weren't prepared for, and they're having to kind of make it work

now. Right. And hopefully that is a little bit of

a little flag to say, hey, let's get ahead of the next wave.

Let's not accidentally end up somewhere we don't want to be, because

we really do have the chance to get it right around here if.

If we'll take action now, start putting things in place now. I

mean, people like to compare northwest Arkansas now to places like

Austin 20 years ago or Nashville 10, 15 years ago,

whatever. And, like, let's learn from what they didn't

do or learn from the things that they're struggling with now. How can

we head those things off now if we start now in northwest

Arkansas? Absolutely. Yeah. And actually, as of the day

that we are recording this, there was a recent article in the paper about

how fast a city like Taneytown has grown. Like maybe

2500 people not terribly long ago. And they're almost at

10,000, which. And that's a huge number. I mean, so every

small city, every city that is part of the spokes of

northwest Arkansas that come out or emanate out from, you

know, Fayetteville, Springdale, Rogers and Bentonville, they're all

experiencing growth. And I mentioned Centerton earlier and

Prairie Grove and Farmington. And, I mean, the list goes

on and on. West Fork, I mean, you name it. Places that, when I first

moved here, they were just like, I mean, these are pasture lands and

farmlands. And now it's like, where are you living? Oh, I live in West Fork.

And it's like, really, like, yep, I live in West Fork. So, you know,

and again, that's nothing against West Fork. It's just that's where people are. People are

going to a lot of different places. So, you know, I suspect that in the

next 15 or 20 years, you know, you'll hear a bunch of different folks

that are talking about, hey, I'm in the greater northwest Arkansas

area. And that could be everything from Elkins to West Fork

to Siloam to. I mean, the list goes on and on and on,

so. Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. I love that we

have some great programs at uli. I'm not directly involved, but

there's some programs at ULI that really help support those smaller cities.

And I love getting to hear about all of that. Like I said, I'm not

directly involved in that, so I don't have a ton of info on it. Sure.

But I hope that all of our northwest Arkansas kind of smaller

cities outside the Big Four can get a turn to do that.

So, speaking of uli, before I go on to my next question, how has

your work, just your specific work with uli, maybe broaden

your view of development beyond the design aspects

of it? Yeah. So my first exposure to

ULI was probably three, four years

ago attending the PLACE Summit. And it kind

of exploded my brain a little bit. You know, as an architect,

I've mostly been focused on individual building projects. I did early

in my career work under a licensed planner and did some kind of

master planning for military bases, college campuses, small

housing neighborhoods, some of that early on, but hadn't really

ever thought at that bigger level. And as someone who really

loves to understand the way things work together, man, all the

ULI Stuff helped me understand so much

more about what goes into developing our cities and

towns and neighborhoods. And even, you know, some of the

conversations about potential problems that are up ahead

if we don't address them. Those things

really help me understand how important things like sewer lines

and water availability really do

affect us all, and not just. Not just

the people who can't find a house because they're not being built. You

know, there's so many things like that that I wouldn't

have had a clue. Even understanding that there are certain things that

city level governments can do, but certain other things that can only

be done at the state level in Arkansas has opened my eyes to

recognizing, oh, there's a need for people at a local level to

gel and work together to

get some things changed at the state level to allow for more

housing affordability. Like a couple things, for example, or one thing

that I personally am really hopeful for is, you

know, we have generally building codes are your

residential code or the standard fire protection

code, which is what everybody commonly calls the commercial code.

So right now, in the state of Arkansas, if you build three or more units

in a single building, you have to use that fire

prevention code, the commercial code, quote, and that

almost always automatically requires you to add full

building sprinklering for three or more units in a building,

which almost immediately kills a project

financially. That's part of why we don't see a lot

currently of those kind of 3 to 20

units in a building. The things that actually fit really

well with infill development and work well in our

neighborhoods. Don't stress our roads, don't stress our infrastructure.

That's one of the factors that I, as an architect, hope

to help progress and get adjusted

at the state level. There's a couple other states recently who have just changed

that threshold from 3 units to say 8 or 10.

There's other ways to kind of do it at the state level, too. So there's

some people I'm talking to and in preparation for our next state

legislature, thinking about how we can propose something that would

help open up more possibilities for housing that's affordable for people.

Yeah, and actually, you know, we had at the last Place Summit,

they had some folks come from another state. I want to say it was

Montana, I think. Yes. Where they did, they worked at

the state level to affect change that would impact all

of the cities that are in Montana. And I want to say it had to

do with ADUs and some other things. So I think it's important for

people to understand what are the Steps necessary in

order to affect the change that you seek in your community. Some of it

can be done at the local level. A lot of it can be done at

the local level. A lot of it has to be done at the state level,

too. And once you understand that and you can make an argument or a

case for why what you're proposing is so, you know,

perfect for your community as well as other communities throughout

Arkansas, it gives you a better leg up, you know, in terms

of building a rapport and a relationship with your

local state representatives, because they will be the ones that will

carry this with you through to the finish line, if that is such a

thing. Yeah. And related back to

ULI and my involvement there, a year ago I took

on a volunteer position as the lead for the

Academy of the Built Environments. That includes a couple of initiatives I've already

mentioned or you mentioned Faithful Foundations. I mentioned

Ready. We also have a program called Urban Plan. It's a gamified

city planning competition. It's really fun. You get to, like,

use Lego blocks and a computer simulation. And

we've done it with groups ranging from like high school students to

city leaders. I'm actually going to go help a group in

Missouri tomorrow, post a version of it too there.

And then an additional initiative called the Heinz Competition for college

students. All of those things are education specific

within the realm of the built environment. And for me, coming from an

architecture background, I would say I had a good, very good understanding of a

very specific portion of the process, you know, from like

design through construction. But there's a whole lot of stuff that

happens before design and a whole lot of stuff that happens after

construction that I didn't really have a clue about. And I've

really appreciated just participating in ULI content and then

helping lead these different initiatives and build committees and help

do lots of different things with these initiatives. My understanding of that process

has really grown and I'm really grateful. I think, yeah,

I couldn't have even had the right perspective that I have now about housing

without some of that background, understanding the way that things all work

together. Yeah. And I would encourage anybody listening to this

to, you know, potentially get involved with uli, even on the lay

person's level. They put on a lot of events, a lot of programs.

You know, they're training the next generation of planners,

land planners, urban planners, designers, landscape

architects and the like. But I think it's really valuable

to spend a little bit of time understanding what goes into the whole

planning process, because then I think you just have a Much more

a stronger appreciation for the work that is entailed

to affect the type of change that you might hope to seek in your own

backyard. So I think ULI is a great place to start.

Speaking of what you mentioned a second ago, I want to bring up Faithful

Foundations. Can you just quickly share? Because I heard about it

last year and I was blown away at how they were app the application of

this whole concept. But can you share how churches are stepping

into the housing conversation nationwide? But then

why this would matter for our region here in northwest Arkansas?

Yeah, we've mentioned nimby's a couple of times. Not in my backyard.

Right, right. The counterpoint to that is yimby. Yes, in my

backyard. So if you want to come support housing in your neighborhood, you're a yimby.

There's kind of a buzzword that's been going around for the past couple of

years. Yigbe. Yes, in God's backyard. So if you're interested in

this, you can Google that term. You'll find lots of great info

projects that have happened around the country. I know with

uli, there were so many conversations over the

past year. You know, I remember going to get a drink or food

with people after a ULI event and a bunch of us sitting around a table

talking about this, like, how can we bring this to northwest Arkansas. I was at

the point, you know, a year ago where I was driving around town and

seeing, going down the street and seeing several churches with extra land right

in the heart of a neighborhood, several on the same street going, oh man,

you could fit some great housing there. And you know, especially

with a church group that's already working on a

mission to support their community, to provide help for people

who need it. Like, what a great next step to be able

to actually provide housing. So those kind of conversations have

been happening for a while. And I will say the other

initiatives that we do within the Academy for the Built Environment are, were

all originated at the national level for uli and we've applied them here.

Well, Faithful Foundations is something that originated here in

Northwest Arkansas through uli and I'm really proud

of how we've been developing it. So we are

nearly through with our first cohort of six churches

across northwest Arkansas in four different cities who

have applied to be part of the program. We've had a series of education

seminars, so classes every other week where

industry professionals have talked about all the different steps of the

process, develop housing, what the options could be for

each of them, anything from single family homes to apartment Buildings

to stuff in between talking about things like finance and

property management and different things just to give people who are

involved in this decision making level the base level of knowledge that they

need. And each of those six teams are currently working

on preparing a feasible pitch

for their land, something that they would like to try to do.

And they'll be presenting it in a couple weeks at an event

in the hopes that at that event some of the local

charitable organizations, investors, development companies,

design companies, whatever, will pair up with some of these

groups who really need to build their team to start moving forward.

So ULI provides the education component and the capacity building,

the networking and connection component. And so after their

presentation, we hope to continue to support them in whatever ways we can.

But they really have to have the professionals on their side

to start moving forward. And it's really exciting

because I will say, I think every one of these six churches

already has at the minimum, like a food pantry or a community

meal. So they already have a group of people that they're helping support.

And most of them, as they're talking about their feasible proposal

for housing, that's the group that they're targeting to want to help provide

for. And we have, you know, it's such a diverse group of

churches and a diverse range of things that they want to do. But I'm really

excited and hopeful that we'll get to see some of them move forward soon.

And I also hope that we'll get to continue to do this program yearly and

have more and more churches take advantage of it. You know,

in northwest Arkansas, a lot of our churches have extra

land that is maybe just a greenfield.

Sometimes they have big parking lots that might be underutilized too.

And usually that land is owned outright because it's been

in possession of the church or the church organization for a long time.

And it's tax exempt because this of the status

of churches. And so when you develop housing, you

know, your land cost is usually a good chunk of 20 to

30% of your cost of building. And so to help eliminate

that from the equation automatically gets you to

a level of affordability, just to eliminate that cost. And then when you add

in mission alignment and the possibility that they're

maybe already providing some programs at the church facility for

people that need affordable housing, it's such a great

matchup. And I'm so excited to hopefully see this

develop further and further. Yeah. And there are some churches in the other, in other

parts of the country that are doing this as well, so. Yes, yes. So

it's been Done a lot. This is not like, oh, this is a pie in

the sky. We'll see if they can do it. No, it's actually been put in.

You know, it's like, all you need to do is see somebody get it done

once. And it's like, okay, how do I replicate that over here in my backyard?

So. Exactly. So, yeah. So there. I think there's some tremendous opportunities. I think it's

going to. I look forward to seeing how faithful foundations continues to grow

and develop, especially with the number of houses of worship here in

northwest Arkansas and the land that they have. I mean, it's just. It's a

perfect combination. So. So we'll see how it goes. Yeah, I think

we. We had some research done as part of the program. I think we have

over seven square miles of land held

by tax exempt religious organizations in

the two county area of northwest Arkansas. That includes everything.

So some of that is obviously used for church facilities and parking,

but that's a lot of land and not all of that is

covered. Yeah, that is a lot of land. Yeah, that's huge.

All right, so I do. I have a question I want to ask you as

a practicing architect, and this is kind of around the architectural

mindset. Why is the way architects think

in, like seeing ripple effects and systems valuable

in the policy and planning aspect of what we're talking about

here? I'm glad you brought that up there. Most

people know that an architect designs a building, right. But

they don't usually recognize that the architect is kind of the

linchpin connector for everybody that's

involved in that building, from the owner to other members

of the design team, including engineers, to members

of the construction team, the contractor. And as an architect,

in your training and your experience, you have to learn at least a little bit

about everything because you're the check to make sure that nothing

sounds too crazy and to know who needs to talk to who to get something

to happen and to understand the ripple effects, like you said,

of a decision here that may be about a structural

system and how it's going to affect, say, the plumbing and

H VAC system. So at a larger level,

that kind of thinking and the way your brain works

and is trained through school and through your work, man, it

leads to great understanding of the way systems work.

It's part of what drew me to be excited about, you know,

regional growth and housing. It's like, okay, I see how

this, my brain connects the dots in those things.

And not everyone naturally makes those

connections. And architects just generally, we are trained to do

that. And that skill is definitely applicable at the broader level

and getting people to work together. I mean, I have a story

from many years ago in my career. I was working with a

mechanical engineer and an electrical engineer on the same project

who were in a different state than I was in, but they

were in the same room and they never talked to each other.

They only talked to each other when I got both of them on the phone

together. So just as an example, like that

sometimes applies at a broader level with things like housing or city

infrastructure. Sometimes you just need someone, someone there

who recognizes that those two people need to talk to solve the problem

and actually kind of forces them to talk about it. So,

yeah, that's something that I don't think a lot of people recognize

architects do. On a daily basis. We, as architects, we kind of joke that we're

part time therapists, part time, you know, school

teacher, babysitter sometimes. But yeah,

those are such great skills that not everyone realizes we have. Yeah.

No, it's funny, I mean, having worked with design professionals for the many years

I had, it's always funny to see the reflection

from each of the different professions. So, you know, architects talking about

engineers, and engineers talking about architects. It's always funny. But.

But no, I think it does give a certain set of

skills that really lend themselves to some of the

issues that we're faced with here in northwest Arkansas, especially as it

pertains to, you know, coming up with real solutions

for planning and development and making sure that we have

the right housing stock for every segment of our

community. And, you know, and that it's more than an ocean,

I think, to do that. It's like there's a lot of hard work and a

lot of behind the scenes work that goes into making that happen.

Absolutely. And you definitely need those specialists,

like I mentioned, electrical engineers and mechanical engineers at the

building level. You need specialists in infrastructure and specialists and different

things. But sometimes they're not talking to each other. So that's where someone

like me maybe can help at that broader level to help bring

things together. Yeah, and I'm curious, just as a, as an

aside to this, that particular question, how has your like, career

journey shaped the way you think about like resilience and

community impact? Because you've worked with traditional design firms,

you've gotten involved with community based programs.

How has your journey shaped how you look at and think about

resilience and community impact? Yeah, I think coming

my, my first job was for a very big company, a

small local office for a big Company. And I honestly

didn't get to do a lot of work locally and kind of missed

that. And I was really grateful when I transitioned to my next position that

I was doing local work. And as I've gone through my career,

I've gotten more and more. I've gotten smaller and smaller in terms of groups that

I work for. Now it's just me. And also more and more local

and close to my heart, I think that personal

investment is so much more evident whenever you

get to walk by or drive by or go into something that you designed on

a regular basis. It really helps you understand the life cycle

of a building, too. Like, if you design something far away and you

never go see it again, maybe you go to the grand opening, that's one thing,

and you get to take cool pictures. But to understand

more about what does it look like a year later or 10 years

later, that's a whole different level. And I really have

appreciated that more recently in my career. Yeah, no, as my

kids like to say, it just hits different, you know, so, yes, it

definitely does. All right, so as we talked about some of the

barriers to housing affordability, and, you know, I'd love to

know what makes you hopeful about this area,

northwest Arkansas, specifically, as it pertains to housing affordability.

Is it something that you think we will be able to overcome and.

Or at least in some way, shape or form, figure it out

or solve the problem enough so that a majority of our

population can benefit from it? I have a lot of hope. We have

organizations like uli. We've talked about a lot. I've also gotten to partner with

Groundwork some, too. They are doing such a great job

of educating normal, everyday people who don't work

in the government or in development about these factors.

I mean, they have done lots of just kind of public

education as well as this program they're doing right now called

Chats. It's kind of an orchestrated conversation that you can talk

through with a small group of people. And I love

getting to have those conversations. I personally have taken it upon myself

to educate a lot of my friends who don't work in this area in

this kind of realm. And a lot of times that I get this, whoa,

I didn't know that. You know, usually related to things like

household size that we started talking about or like things that are happening.

The factors that go into play, why traffic is getting worse and

what the actual solution to traffic is, it's not. Hint, it's

not adding more lanes to the highway. So,

yeah, I think that more and more everyday

people are understanding more and more. And I am hopeful

that we're kind of at this tipping point of

taking more and more action without as much resistance.

Like I said earlier in the conversation, sometimes people who speak out

against things are kind of under informed. They don't

really understand. And my hope is that they'll continue to be

able to learn from organizations like Groundwork and ULI and

other initiatives around northwest Arkansas about it and

have more empathy about it to recognize that just because

I want to live on 15 acres outside of

town doesn't mean that everybody wants that. And the best way

to maintain the lifestyle that you want is to help support things

like infill development and bike trails and

bus routes. That is how you preserve a lifestyle on the

edge of town, on your acreage, without a ton of traffic. So, yeah,

and don't forget coffee shops in residential communities. Yes, please,

more of that? Yes, more of that, please. So, all right, and then last

question. I promise if you could fast forward 10 years in your

minds, I'm just asking you what would a successful housing future

look like in northwest Arkansas? I think just having a

lot more variety. I know I mentioned this earlier, but

we've almost exclusively been able to build big apartment complexes

or big single family homes on big lots

and not a lot in between. And I think to really provide

options for all kinds of people, whether it's

people on the lower end of the income spectrum or people who just prefer

and are willing to sacrifice square footage or a

big yard to live in a walkable area. Having more of

those options is man, that would be ideal.

To be able to have more people opt out of taking their car

everywhere, that's huge too. And really seeing

like the entire spectrum of our population getting what they

need at a fair rate. You know, there are factors related

to affordable housing that aren't exactly housing. You know, they may be

things like, you know, economic factors or

personal challenges, but still, you know,

there are things that can be done to help people. And let's just remove as

many obstacles as we can to providing the variety that

we need. You know, those walkable communities are the most

beneficial for your cities and the most vibrant. I mean, there's

reasons that walkable areas of our towns are what you see on

the websites for our cities. Those are the pictures that you see,

you know, on brochures and on billboards

because people love them. We don't have to just travel to walkable

places that we love. We can build that here. And I hope we'll continue

to do that. That's my hope, is that we'll have those kind of options. Exactly.

Yeah. When I think of, like, dtr, downtown Rogers, the historic district

in Fayetteville, all of those areas off of Emma

in Springdale, and then, of course, anything off the square in Bentonville,

you know, just that walkability is huge. It speaks to

quality of life. It speaks to being in proximity to where

a lot of the activity and action is happening. And so, yeah,

I'm excited about it. I think that in the next 10 or 15 years, we'll

look back, we'll have a few more gray hairs then, but we'll also be really

impressed with the. Some of the changes taking place. And a lot of that's

happening because of the hard work that people are putting in

today. Your sacrifices and work that you've done with uli,

what you've done with the housing task force, as well as your other peers in

Fayetteville and beyond, it's all laying a foundation

for what we hope to see here in northwest Arkansas in the next

10, 15, 20, 25 years. So. And I certainly hope I'm

around to witness some of that and to see this area continue to

grow, because we are the heartbeat of America, and it's just a matter of

time to continue to strengthen all of the different

arteries of that heart so that things really flow smoothly here in

northwest Arkansas. Yeah, for sure. To be able to keep the

unique identities of each of our towns, to be able to keep that

aspect of getting to ride my bike places, but also go to the

edge of town, to a farm and a creek, like, to be able to keep

those things that we all love. That's what I want to see.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Jessica, thank you so much. If anybody

wants to reach out and connect with you, what's the best way for them to

do that? My business is called Gemstone Design Studio.

So my email address jessicaemstone

designstudio.com I'm on LinkedIn

and Instagram and Facebook with that. So,

yeah, we'll put all of that in the show notes, too. I mean, Jessica's already

shared her headshot with us and everything, so we'll. We'll make sure that anybody

listening to this that wants to reach out to Jessica and get some

additional data points or feedback from her or even just

enlist her for some help. I think it's. Please, please, please

support this young lady and the amazing work that she's doing in our community.

But, Jessica, thank you so much for joining us today. We really, really

appreciate it. Thank you. Absolutely. Well, folks,

that's my conversation with Jessica Llewellyn. Her insights

really remind us that solving big challenges like housing affordability

really does start at the local level. With neighbors,

churches, policymakers and advocates coming together

to shape our shared future. This is what the Walton Family

Foundation Future is local series is all about. So be sure to

check out the other episodes in this series and share them

with someone who cares about the future of Northwest Arkansas.

I'm your host, Randy Wilburn, and we'll see you back here next week for another

new episode of the I Am Northwest Arkansas

podcast. Peace.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of I Am Northwest

Arkansas. Check us out each and every week, available

anywhere that great podcasts can be found. For show

notes or more information on on becoming a guest, visit

imnorthwestarkansas. Com. We'll

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