Want to Move to Our Town? Here’s $10,000 and a Free Bike.

Jennifer Hill Booker has spent much of her professional life on the road. Ms. Booker, 45, a chef and entrepreneur, is the author of two cookbooks, and her travels on the lecture circuit have taken her around the country — but always back to Atlanta, where she lived with her two children. Then, last year, with her daughters off at college, she realized there was nothing keeping her there. “I am an empty nester looking for that next stage in my life,” she said.

Last winter, as the pandemic kept most Americans confined to their homes and flattened local economies, she learned that the Northwest Arkansas Council had launched a program offering select remote workers $10,000 and a free bicycle (the region has 322 miles of biking trails) if they relocated there within six months.

Ms. Booker had been to the area a few times and found the budding restaurant scene exciting, so she decided to give it a shot. “The $10,000 would give me an opportunity to put down a down payment on a small little bachelorette pad,” she said. “I also like that the program introduces you to other transplants, plus people who are already residents of northwest Arkansas. They can tell me where to shop, where to eat, where to worship.”

Nearly 30,000 people applied for the Life Works Here initiative, said Nelson Peacock, president and chief executive of the Northwest Arkansas Council, with slots for only a few dozen in the first round of selections. Ms. Booker was one of the winners, and is preparing to move this summer to Springdale, a small city outside Fayetteville, home to the University of Arkansas and about 85,000 residents. She’ll have to stay for at least a year as part of the program, which is fine with her. “Seeing people who are so excited to welcome me into the community, it’s like, I want to go there,” she said.

The Fayetteville region — including Bentonville, best known as the home of Walmart’s global headquarters — is one of several smaller metro areas and states across the country, from Georgia to Hawaii, trying to lure high-net-worth workers who can increasingly do their jobs remotely. The idea is that they’ll shop in local stores and pay real estate taxes, but they won’t take jobs away from locals. For regional economic development organizations, it’s an effort to build communities with high skill sets to attract start-ups and larger companies in the future. For the migrating workers, it’s a chance to try out an up-and-coming place alongside other newcomers.