New owners will decide what’s in store for a historic retail landmark in downtown Wilmington.

A group of local investors – Joshua Benson, Nicholas Cole and Knox Harris – bought the Old Wilmington City Market at 124 S. Front St. and 119 S. Water St. for more than $2.5 million this week, brokers said.

“The goal is to continue to improve the structure…we have no plans to tear it down,” Harris said on Wednesday.

Previous owner ER Quiver Family Limited Partnership, which Erik Hemingway and others managed, purchased the property for $1.5 million in 2020.

The 14,700-square-foot market, which has entrances on South Front and South Water streets, was built in the 1880s and holds a variety of retail tenants.

The Hemingways had explored redeveloping the property, obtaining permission from the city’s historic preservation panel to remove the market’s contributing historic structure status.

The approval would have allowed it to be demolished and replaced with something new, but the potential redevelopment didn’t come to fruition for the Hemingways. They decided to move on and sell the property, said Eian Lundy, executive vice president of Wilmington-based BlueCoast Commercial, who represented the Hemingways in the transaction. 

Will Daube and Ross Tomaselli of Wrightsville Beach-based Cadence Realty represented the buyers in the sale.