Nicole Gardner wanted an office for her Charlotte, North Carolina, law firm that didn’t look or feel like an office. After a two-year search, the firm Gardner Skelton now occupies a former industrial building that resembles a child-care facility or a dog kennel park as much as an office.
The office is in a building at 3746 N. Davidson St. that’s already had myriad uses. After opening in 1963, it’s been home to a chocolate factory, a nightclub and a church. Gardner Skelton told its designers at Little Diversified Architectural Consulting that it wanted a place that didn’t look or feel like an office.
“They wanted a space that challenged the expectation of a legal workplace,” Jennilyn Schuster, workplace studio principal at Little, told CoStar News. “They wanted a healthy environment that focused on well-being and a place that sparked creativity.”
As employers at various companies, recently including SAP Concur, order staff to return to the office at least a few days a week, more employees want a workplace designed to encourage social interactions between colleagues, according to Gensler’s 2025 Global Workplace Survey released this week. Workers for a variety of employers told Gensler they thrive in offices where employees accomplish shared goals together.
Gardner Skelton’s office in Charlotte features plenty of vivid colors with its furniture, light fixtures and cabinetry but also in the carpet and wall decorations. The carpet weaves throughout the office in a curved shape and leads to a dog-friendly, off-leash outdoor area.
“This is a dog-friendly law firm,” Schuster said. “The idea is that this office is an unleashed space where you can be creative.”
Creativity focus
Gardner said she views her attorneys as problem solvers who rely on creativity to find fix clients' issues. While Gardner herself specializes in corporate and employment law, the 17-lawyer firm also handles matters in the areas of construction litigation, healthcare and tax and has a second office in New York. The more spaces in the office that can spark creativity, the better, said Gardner, a partner at the law firm.
The creative office space has helped with staff recruiting, too, she said.
“I really wanted to have a great space for our staff,” Gardner said. “We’re looking for the best and brightest. Where do they want to work?”
A children's book written by the design team at Little, titled "If Buildings Could Talk," also influenced the look and feel of the Gardner Skelton office, Schuster said.
"The book is where we really kicked off the design process and it became very clear they wanted the vibe to be noticeable," Schuster said. "They didn't want something that blended in."
Gardner also wanted the new office to feature murals. Her personal residence is decorated on the exterior with flowers, painted by a local artist. The new office has a mural of famous lawyers on the exterior and a mural with colorful, abstract shapes on the interior.
Preserving historic details
The outside mural doesn’t extend across the entire building because Gardner and Schuster wanted to preserve the building’s historic details and industrial character.
The design retained metal trusses that support the weight of the roof, included some unpainted interior red brick and resealed a previously damaged concrete floor to preserve its visual appearance.
“The concrete floor was pretty beat up, but we wanted to retain that characteristic,” Schuster said.
Before making an offer to acquire the Davidson Street building, Gardner surveyed employees on their location preference for the new office and staff surprised her with their response, because one option was a building in the Lower South End neighborhood, an area full of bars and trendy restaurants popular with young workers.
“I thought all my young people would want to go to the Lower South, because it’s a hip neighborhood and it’s all young people there,” Gardner said. “We don’t have a lot of highly social partiers, though, in our office and they said they would rather be in NoDa.”
NoDa, the name of the neighborhood, stands for North Davidson, according to the city of Charlotte. NoDa has a rough-around-the-edges feel with an abundance of vacant properties and a lack of sidewalks, Schuster said. Gardner Skelton is probably one of the first professional services firms to open an office there, she said.
Gardner Skelton acquired the building in December 2023 for $5.3 million. It sold its prior office building at 505 East Blvd., six miles away, for $3.3 million. Little provided architecture, interior design and engineering services, including the installation of bathrooms (the building had none) and mechanical and electrical systems.
Gardner Skelton moved into the 20,000-square-foot office in September with about 30 employees. The law firm may hire Little to come back and design about 3,000 square feet that was not renovated for a potential expansion, Gardner said.
“We didn’t think we were going to need it for a while, but we may need it sooner than we thought,” Gardner said.
For the record
Michael Doney at 5 Points Realty and Scott Fuller at Northmarq represented Gardner Skelton on its search for an office building. DPR Design was landscape architect. Harker was general contractor.