I-30 Is More Than a Highway

What If Malvern Marketed Itself as a Place to Live?

When communities talk about growth, the conversation usually begins with jobs.

How do we bring more employers to town? How do we create better-paying jobs? How do we keep young people from leaving?

Those are important questions, and Malvern certainly needs to continue working to attract employers.

But maybe there is another question we should be asking:

What if we also started marketing Malvern to people who already have good jobs somewhere else?

Malvern has something that cannot be built with a grant, created by an ordinance, or purchased through an economic-development program.

It has location.

Sitting along Interstate 30, Malvern is within commuting distance of several of Central Arkansas’ important employment centers. Benton and Hot Springs are roughly 20 minutes away. Bryant is about 25 minutes away, and Little Rock is approximately 50 minutes away.

That creates an opportunity we may not talk about enough.

A person doesn’t necessarily have to work in Malvern to live in Malvern.

Work There. Live Here.

Imagine someone with a professional, technical, healthcare, manufacturing, education, or government job in Benton, Bryant, Hot Springs, or Little Rock.

That person may enjoy the job but not necessarily want to live in a larger or rapidly growing community.

They may prefer a smaller town.

They may want a quieter neighborhood, less congestion, a little more space, and a community where getting from one side of town to the other doesn’t require planning the trip around traffic.

Malvern could market itself to those people.

The message could be remarkably simple: "Work there. Live here."

Instead of thinking of Benton, Bryant, Hot Springs, and Little Rock only as communities competing with Malvern, we could also view them as employment centers available to people who choose Malvern as their home.

That’s a very different way of looking at our location.

I-30 Is More Than a Highway

Interstate 30 is one of Malvern’s greatest assets.

It connects us directly with the rapidly growing Interstate 30 corridor toward Benton, Bryant, and Little Rock.

Rather than thinking of Malvern as being removed from the Central Arkansas economy, we could market it as being connected to it.

The advertising almost writes itself:

"Close enough for the career. Small enough to feel like home." Or, "Malvern: Close to where you work. Closer to the way you want to live."

And today’s changing workplace may make the idea even more practical.

Many professional employees now work hybrid schedules, going into an office only two or three days each week. A commute that might seem long five days a week looks considerably different when it only has to be made occasionally.

That potentially puts Malvern within consideration for people who might never have thought about living here before.

But We Have to Give Them Something to Choose

Marketing alone won’t accomplish anything if the product we’re advertising doesn’t match the message.

If Malvern wants to attract working families and middle-income residents, we also have to ask what they will see when they come here looking for a home.

Are there attractive houses in the price ranges they want?

Are neighborhoods clean and well maintained?

Are the entrances to town inviting?

Do our streets, parks, schools, restaurants, businesses, and public spaces create the impression of a community where someone would want to put down roots?

Those things matter.

People rarely choose a community because of one feature. They choose the entire package.

And sometimes relatively simple things — clean neighborhoods, attractive properties, well-maintained public spaces, and community pride — can influence that decision as much as an expensive development project.

Bringing Residents Can Bring Economic Growth

There’s another reason this idea deserves consideration.

Middle-income families bring more than people.

They bring purchasing power.

They buy groceries. They eat in restaurants. They use local banks, contractors, pharmacies, repair shops, salons, healthcare providers, and other businesses. They purchase homes and pay property taxes. Their children attend schools and participate in community activities.

And as the number of households grows, the community becomes more attractive to additional retailers, housing developers, service businesses, and eventually employers.

In other words, economic development doesn’t always have to begin with recruiting a factory.

Sometimes it can begin with recruiting a family.

Malvern should certainly keep pursuing better jobs within the city. But perhaps our growth strategy shouldn’t depend entirely upon waiting for those jobs to arrive.

We already sit within reach of thousands of jobs throughout Central Arkansas.

Maybe one of Malvern’s greatest opportunities is convincing some of the people who hold those jobs that they don’t have to live where they work.

They can work there...And "Come home to Malvern."