Meet Arkansas' office of the future: Ledger

I put on a hard hat and took a tour of the under-construction Ledger in downtown Bentonville on Friday. Now I’m ready to tell you all about the massive project that’s impossible to miss.

Why it matters: The flexible coworking space was planned before the pandemic, but it couldn’t come at a better time given changes in working habits. Mary Best, who’s on the operations and community team for the Ledger, called it the "evolution of the coffee shop worker."

• It'll be a place that startups can use while getting their businesses off the ground, where self-employed and remote workers can rent office space, and where business people from out of town can get some work done.
• Coworking space exists in Benton County, but not on this scale.

1 cool thing: Perhaps the most glaringly unique part of this building is that you can ride your bicycle up to any floor — including its in-building coffee shop.

• If Bentonville is going to proudly be the "mountain biking capital of the world," then a workspace like this should celebrate the bike community, Best and developer Josh Kyles tell Axios.

Details: The Ledger will be six stories and 230,000-square-feet with a bar and retail space. It will be able to accommodate about 1,500 workers at full capacity.

• It will include a variety of offices, such as coworking space and private offices of different sizes.
• Workers will not commit to leases. Instead, the building will be membership-based, allowing people to pay for day or month passes, Kyles says.

Unlike most office spaces only open to the people who work there, the Ledger will be community-oriented, Best says.

• The space will be open to some ticketed events.
• And the adjacent parking garage, a joint project between the Ledger and the city, will have an 80-foot mural painted on the side. (No, they wouldn't tell me what it'll be yet.)

Flashback: This was originally supposed to be a joint project between Kyles and WeWork, but WeWork is no longer involved.

What's next: The Ledger is expected to open summer 2022. It will at first only be open to a limited number of people to work out any kinks, Best says.

• Also, I'm told there are a few more features up the Ledger's sleeve that the developers aren’t ready to share. Stay tuned.