Renovation of Fayetteville commercial building complete

by Paul Gatling ([email protected]) 2,713 views 

Kevin Dickinson, left, and Alan Dickinson, owners of Preferred Office Technologies.

Renovation of a 6,032-square-foot commercial building in Fayetteville is complete and fully occupied by two tenants.

4000 Frontage LLC, led by brothers Alan Dickinson and Kevin Dickinson, paid $810,000 last fall for the building at 4000 N. Frontage Road. The First National Bank of Fort Smith backed the deal with a 10-year loan of $1.07 million.

The Dickinson brothers own Preferred Office Technologies, a network and IT services provider based in Fort Smith.

The company relocated its previous Fayetteville office to the Frontage Road building and occupies roughly half of the single-story building. The remainder of the building is leased to My HR Professionals, a human resources firm based in Van Buren and formerly known as SPMI (Southern Personnel Management Inc.). The Fayetteville location is the company’s second office.

Both businesses are family owned. Preferred was established in 1968 and employs 42 people. It opened its first Fayetteville office in 1989 and also has a third office in Tulsa, Okla.

“For 40 years we were primarily an office equipment dealer, selling and servicing copy machines and printers,” Kevin Dickinson said. “As our clients starting shifting to digital work and going paperless, we evolved our services to offer those products and services to help them reach those business goals.

“Once that transition happened, our client’s dependency really shifted to the network and the protection of their digital data. We shifted again, to provide full service IT management to help clients protect that information.”

John Lyon and Clifford Lyon, who are brothers, started My HR Professional in 1995. The firm is now in its second generation of family leadership, led by CEO Joseph Lyon.