Fayetteville sets contractor for visitors center work

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FAYETTEVILLE — The tourism commission on Monday selected the contractor to renovate the visitors center on the downtown square.

Southern Building Services in West Fork was awarded an $89,300 contract for work that includes demolishing a wall, redoing carpentry, replacing doors and windows, finishing touches and electrical wiring. The contract has a 90-day window. Experience Fayetteville released its 2019 visitor’s guide last week. Go to experiencefayetteville.com/ guide to view it as an interactive flipbook.

The Advertising and Promotion Commission’s budget includes $100,000 for the project, so the bid came in under the budgeted amount, Executive Director Molly Rawn said. Work should begin early next month.

Rawn said she saw the project as a continuation of Experience Fayetteville’s rebranding. The bureau adopted a new logo and website in 2017, but the space visitors see largely stayed the same, she said.

“It’s just another step in the evolution of that process,” Rawn said.

Modus Studio in Fayetteville is serving as architect on the project. Daniel Aros, project manager with Modus, said he doesn’t anticipate any major issues after speaking with the contractor.

“They pitched themselves as company that keeps things in a little more of a boutique market,” he said. “They saw the intimacy of what this was.”

Work will include knocking out the wall between the offices and lobby and making the doorway facing Mountain Street accessible to the lobby. Interior lighting also will be replaced with LEDs, with new painting and graphics on the walls and an interior porch-like area, Aros said.

“In general, it’s more about creating an atmosphere for when somebody walks in they can start to get a grasp of what’s going on in Fayetteville,” he said.

Rawn said the project team will work on ways to keep aspects of the visitors center open during the work, including possible satellite locations or kiosks. About 13,000 visitors walked in the

door last year, she said. The center will be open all next week.

Construction should wrap by the end of May or early June, Aros said.

In other business, Katherine Kinney, regional director of sales for Collegiate Hotel Group, was picked to fill a vacancy on the commission. Matt Behrend, who has served on the commission for eight years, will have his term expire at the end of March. He did not reapply.

Kinney moved to Fayetteville two years ago to join the sales team at downtown’s Chancellor Hotel. The Chancellor

Hotel will soon become Graduate Fayetteville, part of a hotel chain focusing on university-anchored cities. Collegiate Hotel Group is the hospitality management company behind Graduate Hotels.

Kinney also served in the hospitality industry in Austin, Texas, and Key West, Fla. She said she will bring a strong sales and marketing standpoint to the commission and knows the hotel industry is about more than putting heads in beds.

“When you’re selling a hotel, you truly are selling the city that you’re in,” Kinney said.