By NEAL WAGNER / City Editor

After spending more than seven years conducting business in a relatively small store tucked away near the back of the Alabaster Shopping Center, Frank Carr said it’s time to move on.

But when Carr, owner of Frank’s Furniture Warehouse, moves his business in mid-July, it will only be a few hundred feet away from its current location.

Crews have been working for the past few weeks to renovate a formerly vacant building off First Street Southwest between the Alabaster Shopping Center and the Food World Shopping Center.

Before Carr leased the 50-year-old building, it served as a haunted house and was under consideration by the Alabaster City Council to house a temporary City Hall.

Over the past several months, business has been somewhat slow for Carr at his current location in front of the America’s Thrift Store. By moving to a more visible location on First Street Southwest, Carr said he hopes to see a business boost.

“For this time of year, things have been slow, to be honest,” Carr said as he stood in his store filled with everything from oak dressers to camouflage recliners. “It’s just the economy. It’s hitting everyone.

“We can’t wait to get more visibility,” Carr said. “Every week, someone comes in here and says ‘I’ve lived in Alabaster all my life, and I never knew you were here.’”

The CSX railroad company recently agreed to allow Carr to remove several trees between the new building and U.S. 31 to give drivers a clear view of the business. On June 28, crews were preparing to install a billboard-like sign in front of the new building.

In addition to higher visibility, the new location will also bring more than double the showroom space of the current building.

“We have about 2,000 square feet in our showroom here. The new building will have 7,000 square feet of showroom,” Carr said. “We will be able to have much more stuff on the floor.”

Currently Carr uses a 4,000-square-foot warehouse behind the America’s Thrift Store to house the furniture he is not able to fit in the showroom. The new building’s basement level is about 1,000 square feet larger than the current warehouse.

Carr said he is working to sell off much of his current inventory before he makes the move to the new building.

“We are trying to sell everything off here. The more we sell, the less we have to move,” Carr said. “And we are planning to open the new location with a bang. We are going to have a lot of good deals and sell things just above cost.”

To learn more about Frank’s Furniture Warehouse, visit Franksfurniturewarehouse.com.