Southern Sign Company, a Wilmington-based design company, recently opened in its new location at 5649 Carolina Beach Road.

After months of renovations, Southern Sign Company’s owners plan to hold a ribbon cutting and open house June 18. The location, which is about 5,000 square feet, is almost twice the size of the company’s old space farther south on Carolina Beach Road.

“With our mortgage, it is only $100 more a month than what we were paying in rent for half the space,” Andrea Wilson, co-owner of Southern Sign Company, said Monday.

The company bought the new space in December for $315,000, according to county tax records.

Wilson said Southern Sign Company had outgrown its previous location.
“We moved locations because the location we had been in for 10 years became too small for our needs,” Wilson said.

Securing and moving into the new space proved to be more difficult than the Wilsons originally expected. After searching for the perfect spot, they said they were disappointed to find out the building was under a short sale arrangement.

BB&T had to then approve the offer, but once that step was completed the owner decided to not cooperate with the conditions of the short sale, Wilson said.

At that point the deal was dead, but months later - in October - the Wilsons’ broker received a call from a company in California that had purchased the loan from BB&T. The company asked if the Wilsons were still interested in the building, which they were.

After 18 months of real estate turmoil and a last-minute scare in December about a potential tax lien on the building, the Wilsons were able to call the warehouse theirs and quickly began renovations on the space.

Three months later, Southern Sign Company transitioned operations to the new space, which had not only been gutted and redone but which also sported a new yellow exterior.

The Wilsons are pleased with their new location, with Wilson declaring it the right “financial and physical fit.”