4 Crazy and Wild Things Happening in Northwest Arkansas

I recorded this a year ago. The road project is still a road project, the bookstore is still open, and Onyx has opened more locations since than I listed. Here is where all four stand today, plus one recommendation I made that I would phrase differently now.

1. The $100 million MLK interchange, and the Elkins advice I would walk back

My number was almost exactly right. The project is ARDOT Job 040846, "Hwy 62 Interchange Improvements, Fayetteville," awarded in June 2024 to Manhattan Road & Bridge and APAC-Central for $99.98 million. Construction started in August 2024, and the official completion date is mid-2028, close to the 2028 I gave.

The scope is larger than just the interchange: I-49 widened to six lanes from north of MLK to the US 71 and Highway 265 interchange, MLK widened to six lanes with a median, a new signal at South Oak, and a new two-lane overpass and interchange at West 15th Street with a roundabout on each side. As of late August 2026, crews are finishing the new I-49 overpass at MLK and preparing to demolish the old one, with nightly closures. The city's project page tracks the utility relocation side.

Two corrections, one of which matters more than the other.

The small one: I described the 15th Street interchange as a separate thing "very few people know about." It is not separate. It is inside the same contract and the same $99.98 million.

The one that matters: I said to "look into Elkins a little bit" because that interchange would give it direct access, and that once it was finished "it's going to be a no-brainer." I cannot support that. ARDOT does not describe the 15th Street interchange as an Elkins access project, and there is no published analysis of what it does to the Elkins commute. Elkins reaches I-49 today mainly via the US 71 and Highway 265 interchange or straight through town on MLK. A second, more southerly access point plausibly helps some of that traffic. Plausibly is not the same as a no-brainer. I had been skeptical of Elkins for years because of that drive, and I flipped to steering people toward it on an inference I had not checked. If Elkins appeals to you on its own terms, good. Do not buy there on my traffic math.

I also credited a finished "Weddington" project just north of this one. Two things got tangled. The I-49 and Wedington Drive interchange improvements were finished and open in December 2021, not recently. The big corridor project people are thinking of is Highway 112, the Fayetteville-to-Bentonville widening, and it had not broken ground when I recorded this — the first phase started in November 2025 and the full eight-phase build is years out.

2. Dad Suggests Books, and the bookstore trend I got backwards

Dad Suggests Books opened in July 2025 at 2526 E. Mission Boulevard in Fayetteville. Everything I said about it is right, including the part that sounded like exaggeration: there is a hobbit-themed reading room, and you enter it through a round green door. It carries curated children's books and family board games. The owner, Ryan Billingsley, is a lifelong Fayetteville resident and former middle school teacher who ran the DadSuggests.com recommendation site starting in 2018 before opening the store.

Where I was wrong was the framing. I said "how often do bookstores open" and treated Barnes & Noble as effectively the only game in town. The chain part is fair. The rarity part is not. The American Booksellers Association reported 605 new bookstores opening in 2025, up 87 percent over 2024, and a fifth consecutive year of more than 200 new independent stores. Membership grew 19 percent in one year to 3,783 locations, the highest since the late 1990s.

Northwest Arkansas has its own share of that. Pearl's Books has been on the Fayetteville square since October 2021, and Two Friends Books is in downtown Bentonville. Dad Suggests is not a rare survivor. It is part of a national wave, which is a better story than the one I told.

3. The niche bar trend, with the names fixed

The Blind Bear is real and open, at 202 E. Emma Avenue in downtown Springdale — a cocktail lounge with skee-ball rather than a hidden-door speakeasy, which is roughly the distinction I was fumbling toward on camera.

The other two names I gave need repair. What I called "the Heirloom" in Rogers is Heirloom at The 1907, and it is not a bar — it is an 18-seat, reservation-only tasting-menu restaurant at 101 E. Walnut Street, currently $145 per person. The Bentonville speakeasy I gestured at is Undercroft, in the basement of The Preacher's Son, a converted 1898 church at 201 NW A Street.

My larger point about Northwest Arkansas no longer shutting down at 10 p.m. holds up, and downtown Springdale is the clearest evidence. Since I recorded this: Big Emma, a 77-unit apartment building with a ground-floor coffee shop, finished in summer 2025. Via Emma, with more than 150 residential units and 11,000 square feet of commercial space, is reshaping the 500 block. The Sundry, a 124-room Hilton Tapestry hotel at 203 E. Emma, is slated to open in early 2027. Luther George Park is being rebuilt as a 14-acre park with a performance pavilion. The Downtown Springdale Alliance is the place to watch it.

4. Onyx's expansion, faster than I described and still only here

Every location I mentioned is real, and the actual names are better than my descriptions. The airport shop is Bionics by Onyx, a robotic-barista kiosk at XNA. The Walmart home office café is Doyenne Café by Onyx. The downtown Fayetteville shop attached to a florist is Fay Square, at 26 W. Center Street, sharing space with NWA Florist. The downtown Springdale location is a three-story café at 100 W. Emma with a chocolate production facility in it.

Since then they have kept going — the Preserve location, inside Bud's Preserve Park in Bentonville, soft-opened in June 2026. Counting concepts, Onyx now runs roughly nine or ten sites across the region.

And on my prediction that they would expand outside Northwest Arkansas: a year later, they still have not. Every location is in this region. I said I would be shocked if they did not leave, while granting they had probably said otherwise themselves. I am still waiting to be shocked, and in the meantime they won the world's number one ranking without opening a single store anywhere else.