When the Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce announced it would launch an official branding campaign for Midtown Fayetteville, it got some folks talking about the boundaries of Midtown and whether the neighborhoods to the east of College Avenue should be included.

Since the Chamber works solely for the business community, it’s natural that their boundary wouldn’t include residences. But that doesn’t mean we can’t consider residential areas to be included in the definition of Midtown.

The conversation got us thinking about boundaries in general, and where each part of town begins and ends. It’s tough.

We put together our own unofficial rough draft of a map for the Uptown, Downtown, Midtown, East, West, and South Fayetteville boundaries.

Midtown / Campus Corridor

We used the Chamber’s Midtown northern boundary of Millsap Road and western boundary of Gregg Avenue as a starting point. How far north to go east of College Avenue is debatable, so we used Mud Creek for now. We used Old Wire Road as an eastern boundary. Good idea?

We included a Campus Corridor that is much bigger than we first anticipated, but we kept finding UA property that we didn’t want to exclude since there is UA agri research that takes place pretty far north. We went as far south as Baum Stadium, but that might be too far.

East Fayetteville

For East Fayetteville, we used Mud Creek to the north just to get started, and Huntsville Road to the south. Is that a good southern boundary? And is East Rock Street a good southeast corner?

West Fayetteville

As far as West Fayetteville goes, we just used I-49 as an eastern boundary and MLK as a southern boundary. Should it go further south or east?

Downtown

Downtown was tough. Where exactly does Downtown stop and South Fayetteville begin?

Are the Mill and Historic districts included or are they just sub-categories of Downtown?

Also, how far east does Downtown reach? We used Mission Boulevard and Fletcher Avenue as stopping points, but should Mount Sequoyah be included?

South Fayetteville

Until now, we’d always considered the Mill District to be in South Fayetteville, but it’s so close to the square that it seems more like Downtown when looking at a map. 15th Street is certainly a part of South Fayetteville, but it seems too far south to be a boundary line.

What do you think about these unofficial districts? And is “district” even the right word?

Leave us some suggestions and we’ll continue to modify this thing until it makes sense.

We’ve included the city’s official Wards map for reference if that helps.

Our rough draft map

Fayetteville Wards map

Note: Special thanks to the city’s GIS office for the base maps. See all their interactive maps here.