Two lots comprising what is likely the last vacant spot at a major intersection in New Hanover County are on the market for $835,000.

Owned by Augusta-based Naegele Outdoor Advertising Inc., the parent company of locally operated Fairway Outdoor, the lots at 4603 and 4605 Oleander Drive are exposed to more than 100,000 cars per day, according to Spruill Thompson, broker with Cape Fear Commercial which is representing Naegele in marketing the property.

The corner has stayed vacant for years. It is covered in concrete, although neither Thompson nor local Fairway Market Manager Mike Russell are sure why. Why it has remained vacant rests with a city ordinance that restricted lot usage to a single purpose. Fairway has a large two-sided billboard on the site which will remain. “There was an ordinance that said you could only have one principal use on a piece of property, and for some reason they considered the billboard to be the primary use,” Russell explained. Requests for information from the city were unanswered. “At the end of the deal, it got changed so billboards are considered a secondary use,” Russell said.

Other restrictions on the site include NC Department of Transportation’s desire for a turning lane into the property, and the “billboard company wants to maintain a line of sight easement [for the existing billboards] which means the parking lot needs to be in the front and the building in the back,” Thompson said. “That restricts the size of what you can put there.”