In its rise as the nation’s largest retailer, Walmart has pushed millions into the grinder of working poverty — employed but lacking a living wage, health insurance, job security, dignity, and a voice in the workplace — while decimating the community fabric of many suburbs and small towns. But while recently visiting my mother in Bentonville, Arkansas, my husband and I were astonished to discover that the Walton family is also building a professional-class urban utopia in and around its headquarters.

The Waltons are using their charity, the Walton Family Foundation (WFF) to bankroll the conversion of small-town Bentonville into a playground for Walmart’s management class and supply chain vendors, with expansion of the arts, foodie culture, education, transportation, and mental and physical health associated with the consumption norms of a professional-class labor force.

The WFF presents itself as an altruistic, philanthropic charity dedicated to the well-being of the wider Northwest Arkansas (NWA) region. But the foundation’s self-appointed role of NWA’s regional developer actually functions as a three-pronged accumulation strategy for the Walton family. The WFF serves as a tax shelter in which the Walton family stashes its financial largesse to avoid paying Uncle Sam. In turn, the Foundation uses the Waltons’ sheltered fortune to finance public improvement projects that are intended to attract skilled workers to Walmart headquarters region as it shifts to e-commerce retailing. Then, as Bentonville develops economically, the Walton family is well-positioned to capture rents that flow into the region as a consequence of the Foundation’s efforts to make the place a more appealing location to do business.