The Atmore Industrial Development Board voted unanimously Thursday to remove the Rivercane sign, in order to make that specific parcel of land more marketable.

Board Chairman Richard Maxwell told the board it would cost about $13,000 to remove the sign — approximately $9,000 to demolish the sign and about another $4,000 to reroute utilities in the area. The board discussed removing the sign at their July meeting, but no action was taken at that time, so that the price of removal could be researched further.

“I don’t think these numbers are bigger than we expected,” Maxwell said.

Rivercane is a 740-acre mixed-use development project, located on State Route 21, about 4.5 miles north of Atmore and near Exit 57 of Interstate 65.

Maxwell explained that removing the sign will make that parcel of land much more marketable. There are at least two potential buyers who would purchase the land if the sign is removed, said Mark Dauber, a sales associate with John Stanley & Associates Commercial Real Estate of Montgomery.

“It would be sellable, and it currently is not,” Dauber said.

Dauber noted that the land’s purchaser might be willing to bear the cost of removing the sign, in exchange for a slightly lower land price. Maxwell said the current asking price for the parcel is about $10 per square foot.

“I’m not suggesting that we’d have to get $10 per foot to make this a deal,” Maxwell said. “If we were only to get $9 a foot, it’s better than the zero that we were going to get with the sign there.”

Maxwell said that it is likely there would be replacement signs installed in the medians on the west and east sides of State Route 21. He said they would probably be about eight to 10 feet long, and three feet high, with “East Rivercane” and “West Rivercane” on each sign. No cost figures for such signage were discussed Thursday.

Dauber also noted that the board would probably have had to put up new signs anyway, once light-industrial customers started moving into the development.

“We were going to have to add some signage anyway,” he said. “People are going to have to know where (these industrial companies) are.”