Last month, a subsidiary of Adams Beverages purchased 24.3 acres in the Leland Innovation Park. 

Adams Wilmington Properties LLC picked up the undeveloped land from WCM Enterprises LLC on March 7, according to Brunswick County Register of Deeds records. The deal closed for $1,247,000, according to records.

Fronting Mercantile Drive, the property will be used for “beverage-related warehousing and industrial sales and other related activities,” according to the deed. 

Adams plans to construct a 129,400-square-foot building on the property, leaving room for a potential future expansion that would nearly double the proposed footprint, according to a site layout exhibited on the deed. Through a representative, Adams Beverages declined to comment on the acquisition. 

The town’s economic development director told the economic development committee in November 2021 that the company (then undisclosed) was seeking relocation from New Hanover County to Leland because of relatively greater growth, preferable road networks with easy highway access and limited land availability in New Hanover.

Adams purchased a recently subdivided portion carved out from a larger tract that was voluntarily annexed into town limits in 2020. The nearly 220-acre annexation was the town’s largest introduction of industrial space, as it had limited acreage devoted to that land use before. 

In 2018, the town initiated and fostered efforts that developed the nonprofit Leland Innovation Park, which intended to rebrand the cluster of industrial developments located in unincorporated Brunswick County. The nonprofit eventually shuttered but those involved in the initial efforts still hold the same goals for the park, sources told the Greater Wilmington Business Journal in January. 

Adams Beverages distributes beer, wine, energy drinks, water and other non-alcoholic beverages in North Carolina and Alabama, according to the company’s website. 

Headquartered in Charlotte, the company first entered the Wilmington market with the 2019 purchase of the former R.A. Jeffreys building on North 23rd Street. Adams also acquired R.A. Jeffreys’ assets in Lumberton and Goldsboro that year, and launched an expansion of its Charlotte warehouse last year.