Sharp Eye Changes Face of Fayetteville

Rob Sharp usually does his best to make sure his buildings blend in.

After successful but more traditional projects like the Three Sisters and the renovation of the old Shipley Bakery Building, both on Dickson Street in Fayetteville, Sharp sought a new challenge in a mid-life moment after turning 40.

The lifelong Fayetteville resident and architect turned his attention to College Avenue, the city’s “biggest black eye,” he calls it, with the determination to make a mark.

“I was looking at my life and what I really wanted to do,” Sharp said. “I wanted to reinvent College Avenue.”

Armed with sketches and ideas, Sharp sought out his clients and pitched them on the idea of renovating the old Doc Murdock’s nightclub in one of Fayetteville’s more dilapidated areas between Maple and North streets.

Sharp sold the concept to college buddy and developer Tom Bordeaux, who now lives in Maine but still has an apartment in Fayetteville.

“We were excited by the possibilities,” Bordeaux said. “Most of [our ideas] seem to come out over a beer, and in a lot of cases it’s wishful thinking. For us, we were sort of intrigued by taking that stab. Rob wants to make the city a better place. He has a vision about the city that we share.”

In a departure from Sharp’s normal style of structures that echo times past, the sleek and modern Lacuna furniture store was ahead of its time, preceding by years the beautification projects along College only now finally set to begin between Rock and North streets.

Restoring the 58-year-old former auto showroom’s front façade from its boarded-up blue to gleaming glass is one of Sharp’s many “adaptive reuse” projects that have transformed Fayetteville in ways both subtle and unmistakable.

In the last decade, few have had a greater effect on the face of Fayetteville than Sharp, who has served as the architect on around $50 million worth of projects between the University of Arkansas campus and College Avenue.

Take a stroll down Dickson and some Sharp projects like the $10 million, 60,000-SF Three Sisters certainly stand out, not the least of which is the nine-story, $22.5 million Lofts at Underwood Plaza set for completion this August.

His hand, though, has also guided the restoration of the Bakery Building, the UARK Bowl and the old Reindl Warehouse a block off Dickson now known as the Metro District, which is home to 30 condos, executive office suites and tenants like Flying Burrito and Pink Papaya.

Just south of downtown, Sharp’s five-person office is in the restored Mill District building, a mixed-use project he also teamed with Bordeaux on and won an Honor Award from the American Institution of Architects for in 2003.

Sharp’s firm has no signature style – put Lacuna and Three Sisters side-by-side for evidence of that – but he does have a consistent vision and philosophy of creating vitality and energy through a building’s or a neighborhood’s environment.

The narrow lot footprint and two-story floor plans with concealed garages Sharp and developer Greg House came up with at Charleston Place stands in contrast to the typical one-story tract houses surrounding it.

Tucked between Old Missouri and Mission boulevards on Amber Drive in east Fayetteville, the development was a tremendous success and has since spawned similarly-styled “coastal Southern” neighborhoods such as Rupple Row and Lakewood off Zion Road.

Sharp is now working on “walkable,” new urbanist neighborhood projects at Ruskin Heights and the Cottages at Markham Hill.

“We design buildings in a way that increases community interaction, that puts people in touch with the natural environment and that has a respect for the culture and history of a place,” Sharp said.

Total Immersion

Sharp earned a degree in history in 1986 from the University of the South in Tennessee, better known as Sewanee, where he first met Bordeaux.

He returned to Fayetteville and enrolled in law school at the University of Arkansas before he had “a revelation” that he wanted to pursue a career in architecture.

He realized that one reason he enjoyed history was the architecture revealed in photos. Sharp took advantage of the summer school offerings in architecture, taking all the core design classes and cramming a year of study into 12 weeks.

“It was total immersion,” Sharp said. “I really loved it.”

He graduated in 1990 and worked for Perry Butcher for three years of apprenticeship. He built some apartments with Bordeaux, who had gone on to Seattle after college and learned carpentry.

Sharp worked with House on renovating old homes along East Avenue in downtown Fayetteville, and it was House that hired Sharp to restore the Bakery Building and later to realize his vision for the Three Sisters project.

Completed in 2000, just two years after Sharp formed his solo practice, the Three Sisters project was a “grueling” process, he said. Any major building project in Fayetteville usually draws heavy scrutiny from activist citizens, and one of this size and scope was no exception.

Not only did Sharp have to win over skeptics, the development required a seemingly endless series of variance requests for parking, for setback, to the master street plan, and so on.

But the city was generally supportive and interested in revitalizing its downtown area, Sharp said, and it was rewarded with a finished product at Three Sisters that spurred a wave of improvements and restorations all along Dickson Street.

“We really worked hard to make it fit naturally on Dickson Street,” Sharp said. “The amount of square footage we were adding was significant and we tried to put it there in a way that didn’t destroy the character of Dickson Street.

“It was fairly controversial when it was being built. There hadn’t been much new built on Dickson other than the Walton Arts Center.”

But architecture, like art, rarely finds total approval.

“It turned out a lot better than people expected,” Sharp said. “But I still have people tell me they hate it. Usually they don’t know I was involved in it.”

 The soft-spoken Sharp, though, has a thick skin.

“A lot of architecture school is your pouring your heart into a building and then the teacher tears it apart,” he said. “It’s hard to get your feelings hurt.”

Right Place, Right Time

When the words “Fayetteville” and “architecture” are put together, enthusiasts for the subject most often think of E. Fay Jones, the world-renowned architect and pupil of Frank Lloyd Wright who made the city his home until passing away in 2004.

In fact, next door to Sharp’s biggest project ever is a Jones building that is home to Underwood’s Fine Jewelry.

“You know in Fayetteville you are, of course, going to be compared to Fay Jones,” Sharp said. “And you know it’s not going to match up. Part of my natural humility comes from growing up with Fay Jones. He has an international reputation and we were so lucky to have had him choose to live here.

“I would never try to emulate it. There’s nothing worse than a bad copy of a master.”

The nine-story, mixed-use Lofts represent a change of pace for Sharp, who has usually designed buildings with the goal of affordable, high-quality environments in mind.

“It’s rare you get to work on a project this lavish,” he said.

He’s still pursuing high quality – it is the Underwoods’ obsession, he said – but now he is working with a “high-end” palette that includes finishing touches of slate and copper.

In fitting into the streetscape, The Lofts attempts to blend with the Jones architecture to the west and the brick-encased parking garage behind the building will have a warehouse look that transitions to the nearby railroad tracks, power station and high-tension wires along its south and east borders.

Bordeaux is not surprised Sharp’s efforts to recapture “what was great about American cities” in Fayetteville have been become reality so quickly.

“It says a lot for Rob and the vision of the people who have hired him,” Bordeaux said. “He was well-positioned and able to articulate a vision to attract these folks to him in a time when people had a drive to build things in town.

“He was the right guy in the right place at the right time.”