We report on the realization of a fast, scalable, and high-fidelity qubit architecture, based on 171 Yb atoms in an optical tweezer array. We demonstrate several attractive properties of this atom for its use as a building block of a quantum information processing platform. Its nuclear spin of 1/2 serves as a long-lived, coherent, two-level system, while its rich, alkaline-earth-like electronic structure allows for low entropy preparation, fast qubit control, and high fidelity readout. Using narrowline transitions, we present a near-deterministic loading protocol, which allows us to fill a 10×10 tweezer array with 92.73(8)% efficiency and a single tweezer with 96.0(1.4)% efficiency. Employing a robust optical approach, we perform sub-microsecond qubit rotations and characterize their fidelity through randomized benchmarking, yielding 5.2(5)×10 −3 error per Clifford gate. For quantum memory applications, we measure the coherence of our qubits with T * 2 =3.7(4) s and T2=8.1(7) s. Finally, we use 3D Raman sideband cooling to bring the atoms near their motional ground state, which will be central to future implementations of two-qubit gates that benefit from low motional entropy.