Executive Fellowship | Delivering Missing-Middle -Scale Development

The City of Rogers is working to turn recent missing-middle housing policy and design into tangible housing outcomes that expand access to attainable housing and strengthen neighborhood stability. The FUSE Executive Fellow will help the City launch and scale its Pattern Zones program by aligning local builders, financing partners, local utilities, and internal City workflows to support housing development on a scale that allows anyone to be a housing developer.

The fellowship will ensure Pattern Zones integrate with regional growth priorities, creating complete, sustainable neighborhoods. This is a two-year fellowship, with Year One focused on discovery, strategy development, and early implementation, and Year Two focused on scaling impact and embedding sustainable practices within City operations.

Fellowship Dates:
October 26, 2026 – October 20, 2028

Salary: Executive Fellows are FUSE employees and receive an annual salary of $95,000. Fellows can also access various health, dental, and vision insurance benefits. This amount is not representative of market‑rate salaries for the experienced professionals in our program but is intended as compensation for a year of public service.

FUSE is a national nonprofit dedicated to increasing the capacity of local governments to work more effectively for communities. We embed private sector executives in city and county agencies to lead projects that improve public services and accelerate systems change. Since 2012, FUSE has led over 400 projects in 58 governments across 26 states, impacting a total population equivalent to 1 in 10 Americans.

Expanding access to attainable housing is critical to ensuring that growing cities remain livable, inclusive, and economically resilient. When communities lower barriers to small‑scale housing development, they can increase housing choice, support neighborhood stability, and create opportunities for residents to build wealth and age in the community. Missing‑middle housing, such as duplexes, accessory dwelling units, and small‑footprint homes, plays a key role in this ecosystem by providing flexible options that fit within existing neighborhoods and infrastructure.

Without clear implementation strategies, even well‑designed housing policies may not result in built projects, limiting their impact and reinforcing disparities in who can participate in housing development and who benefits from it.

Rogers, Arkansas has taken meaningful steps to enable missing‑middle housing as part of its broader growth and planning efforts. The City adopted a form‑based code that allows a wider range of housing types and recently launched a Pattern Zones program that provides free, publicly funded, pre‑approved residential designs tailored to local parcels and neighborhood contexts. This initiative significantly reduces design costs, permitting timelines, and regulatory uncertainty, particularly for small builders and individual property owners.

These policy and design tools are now in place, and the City is now positioned to activate the Pattern Zones program at scale.

Beginning in Fall 2026, the FUSE Executive Fellow will work with the City of Rogers’ Community Development Department and Mayor’s Office to launch and implement the City’s Pattern Zones program and expand missing‑middle housing production. Through this two‑year fellowship, the fellow will help Rogers translate recent policy and design investments into tangible housing outcomes by reducing barriers to small‑scale development, supporting local builders and property owners, and strengthening internal systems that enable predictable, efficient housing production.

The fellow will begin with 90 days of in‑depth discovery and assessment. During this phase, the fellow will conduct a comprehensive listening tour with key stakeholders, including Community Development leadership, planning, engineering, building safety, utilities, communications staff, the Mayor’s Office, local builders, lenders, property owners, and other relevant partners. This process will surface insights into how the Pattern Zones program is…