New owners have purchased the former Hops Supply Co. building on Oleander Drive, with plans to bring another restaurant to the space.

The new owners purchased the former restaurant at 5400 Oleander Drive and office space at 209 Englewood Drive for a combined $3.4 million, according to deeds recorded Wednesday. Hops Supply Co. closed its doors in May 2023 after its owners announced the property was being redeveloped. 

The new owners are still formulating the concept and design of the new restaurant, said Grant Steadman, one of the new owners. Steadman is a co-founder of Flying Machine Brewing Co., but said the new restaurant won’t be affiliated with Flying Machine.

“We'll be able to release more later,” he said on Thursday, “but we worked hard to get the space, so now we're still working on all the concepts of what it's going to be.”

Steadman said the group began looking at the property last fall and, after touring the building, saw the potential to bring another restaurant to the space. After sitting vacant for a few years, the building will need renovations, which Steadman said are already in the works.

“There'll be a new upfit and a total new look and feel to the building, so we're excited about that,” he said. “We’re basically getting to work on that right now and getting our drawings together as we speak.”

Several gas stations initially looked at the site for potential redevelopment, said Patrick Riley, a senior vice president with Wilmington-based commercial real estate firm Cape Fear Commercial and the property’s listing agent. 

Plans for a gas station could have taken years to get needed rezonings and permits in place, Riley said. Seller LM Restaurants, which also owns The Oceanic and Bluewater Waterfront Grill, didn’t want to wait for that process to play out, Riley said, so last summer they shifted marketing of the property away from gas station users.

“When Grant and his group came, they wanted to preserve the existing restaurant and reopen under a new brand, and that was attractive to (the sellers) to keep the property in continuous use,” Riley said.

It took some time for the parties to agree on the terms of the sale, Riley said, but the sellers recognized the investment Steadman and his partners would have to put into upfitting the restaurant. The properties sold for below their listing price of $4.375 million.

The purchase included the nearly 8,500-square-foot restaurant building and the surrounding roughly 1.4 acres, which sold for $2.74 million, according to deed records. The 2,800-square-foot office building and another 0.75 acres at the back of the property sold for $660,000, records show. Steadman said they plan to lease out the office space.

Owning both properties was a key condition of the sale because it gave the restaurant more room for employees and overflow parking. The restaurant parcel has around 95 parking spaces, with an additional 40 spaces at the back of the property, Riley said.

Steadman said they’re looking to open the restaurant “as soon as possible,” hopefully by fall.

“I think it's one of the prime locations in town,” Steadman said. “It's very reachable from all parts of town. It's got a lot of neighborhoods around there that are, from what I've heard, eager for a new concept there. … at this point, we're just really excited and we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us and ready to get started on it.”