A preview of Alice Walton's future health care campus
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A rendering shows the proposed Center for Advanced Specialty Care on the future Bentonville Health Care Campus. Photo: Courtesy of CannonDesign/Alice L. Walton Foundation
The Alice L. Walton Foundation has hired firms to design a new health care campus in Bentonville that will start with cardiovascular care.
Catch up quick: The Walmart heir's foundation announced in February it had purchased about 100 acres in Bentonville to develop a health care campus. The campus is separate from Walton's new four-year medical school and health care policy-focused nonprofit Heartland Whole Health Institute, both now open near Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
- This came after the foundation, Mercy Health System and Heartland Whole Health Institute announced a 30-year agreement to boost cardiac care. The organizations also have a 10-year agreement with Cleveland Clinic for consulting.
State of play: Global design firm CannonDesign and global planning, landscape architecture and urban design firm EDSA got the job, the foundation announced Wednesday.
- This first phase of the campus has three buildings, including the Center for Advanced Specialty Care, a parking garage and a central utility building, foundation spokesperson Diane Carroll told Axios in an email.
- The Center for Advanced Specialty Care will support the collaboration with Mercy and Cleveland Clinic and is planned as an outpatient care facility, she said.
The intrigue: "Rather than a series of clinical buildings connected with parking lots, the campus is a fully integrated environment design focused on enhancing whole-person health — physical, mental, social and emotional well-being," according to the news release.
- The intent is for the campus to have a café with healthy foods and gathering spaces and for it to be "surrounded with trails and nature experiences outdoors," Carroll said.
What's next: The foundation hopes to break ground on the project in 2026 and open the Center for Advanced Specialty Care in December 2028, Carroll said.