Brian Obie has been a part of Eugene’s business and civic life for half a century. As he approached age 70, Obie launched into making a long-held dream a reality, and began work on his first hotel, the luxury Inn at the 5th.
Brian Obie has been a part of Eugene’s business and civic life for half a century, ever since he and his wife packed a U-Haul trailer in 1962 and drove west from Denver so that Obie could join his father’s billboard business at the age of 20.
Obie was a serial entrepreneur, before the term became popular, buying, building and sometimes selling — at a profit — companies in industries as wide ranging as outdoor advertising to RV manufacturing, while he and his wife Karen raised a family of two sons and a daughter.
He moved into retail, completing his purchase of the Fifth Street Public Market in 1985, and then later expanding it and developing it into a destination shopping center.
Read more in today’s Register-Guard.
