Bentonville Communications Center

Bentonville, AR

Size 22,500 sq/ft

Completion Date 2019

Project Details New Construction, Site Work

Services Planning, Programming, Architecture, Interior Design

WER Northwest Arkansas managing principal, John Langham, completed a full feasibility study for the City of Bentonville for a new Emergency Communications building located adjacent to, and on the same lot as, the Police Department Headquarters.

The building is organized around three main functions: the hardened Emergency Communications Center (dispatch), offices and secure storage for the Criminal Investigations Division (CID), and a flexible Multi-purpose space used for vehicle processing, storage, group fitness, and large group training. A major part of the feasibility study was analyzing the existing site to determine its capacity to house the project.

Programmatic requirements for each department and space were also studied in detail to produce a functional program spreadsheet listing out square footage requirements for each space. Those spaces were then organized into an adjacency diagram to determine which ones should be located in close proximity to each other based upon how the operation functions.

The project was approved in 2017 and the City engaged WER Architects to provide full architectural services. Among those services was assisting the City in the interview process for the Construction Manager to provide pre-construction services. The project was completed July 2019.