Guisinger Building in downtown Fayetteville under contract, Odom Law Firm heading uptown

For the first time in 35 years, the historic Guisinger Building on the southeast corner of the square in downtown Fayetteville will have a new owner.

Conrad Odom, a partner in the Odom Law Firm, the building’s tenant, confirmed to Talk Business & Politics-Northwest Arkansas Business Journal the 6,700-square-foot building at 1 E. Mountain St. is under contract. He did not, however, identify who the buyer is.

The property is owned by Bobby Lee Odom, Conrad’s father, who bought the building in 1982 to house his law firm, known as Odom, Elliott, Lee and Martin. It evolved to its present name about a decade ago, Conrad Odom said.

Odom Law Firm will relocate its offices to Uptown Fayetteville. The company has purchased a former medical office building at 161 W. Van Asche Drive in the Twin Creeks Village development, and is in the process of retrofitting the interior. The deal for the 7,328-square-foot building closed May 1 for $1.37 million.

Odom said the sale of the Guisinger Building should go through in August. The law firm will make its move north that same month.

“We outgrew that building about 10 years ago, really,” Odom said. “We had been renting space in some other places downtown to accommodate our office needs. We had looked at doing some things to the building, but to be honest the money that would have to be put into it didn’t make it economically feasible. And we just didn’t have the heart to do anything to the structural integrity of the building.”

Odom says the law firm has 12 full-time employees and three law clerks. His son will be the third generation to join the firm in August. Thomas Odom graduated in May from the William H. Bowen School of Law at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

“This will be a tough move for us,” Odom said. “We’re both excited about being the new location, but torn about leaving the downtown area.”

Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Steve Clark said the building was on the market for less than six months. The property was listed by Clinton Bennett and Sterling Hamilton with Fayetteville-based CBRE Northwest Arkansas.

“It’s a beautiful property and I didn’t think it would be too difficult to sell,” Clark said. “I don’t know exactly what the details [on the buyer] are but I know it’s a good thing for Fayetteville and for the square and the Odom family. And that is very appropriate, because they have given so much to Fayetteville.”

HISTORIC BUILDING
Constructed in 1886, the two-story Guisinger Building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, two years after it was acquired by Odom.

In a recent social media post, Conrad Odom recalled the transformation that led to that honor.

“My family (mainly my mom) worked really hard to restore it to a level good enough to place it on the National Register of Historical Places,” he wrote. “As a young teen, I was very lucky and was given a car by my parents. My only responsibilities were running errands for my mom (taking my sisters to dance) and working at the office after school. At first, the building was being renovated so there were major dirt and dust piles to sweep up off the floor. Literally trash cans full of construction debris.”

“It has been a privilege to be a part of this building’s history. I only hope its next owners love it as much.”

According to the U.S. Department of the Interior, the first tenant of the building was a hardware business owned by William Nash Crenshaw. A tin shop on the third floor produced roofing and eave troughs.

When Crenshaw retired in 1900, the building briefly housed W. H. Whitmore’s dry goods business, and later the McIlroy Wholesale Grocery Co.

The building takes its name from Ivan Guisinger, who operated a music store in several Fayetteville locations before moving into the building in 1925.

When he died in 1947, his sons continued the business until 1981.