Longtime Chattanooga outdoor advertising business owner Ken Hall has sold his area billboard inventory to Fairway Outdoor Advertising, officials said Monday.
Hall, who has spent more than 40 years in the business, said he's turning 73 next month and plans to retire.
Fairway acquired the billboard assets of Hall Outdoor Advertising in Chattanooga, North Georgia and Middle Tennessee. The inventory includes 11 digital displays.
Hall said he previously had billboards in the Birmingham area and on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and Louisiana. The purchase price of the sale to Fairway wasn't disclosed.
This isn't the first time Hall has retired. He earlier built many billboards in and around the Chattanooga area and later sold them.
"I wanted to build it back up," Hall said about having earlier gotten back into the business.
Hall said his business had included just himself and one other person on a part-time basis. He said the frequent changes on the digital billboards had been a lot to track.
Atlanta-based Fairway's acquisition is the second in the Chattanooga area in the last three months.
In September, Fairway bought LaFoy Outdoor Advertising, purchasing its billboard assets in the Chattanooga area as well as in other areas of Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama and Kentucky. LaFoy had about 55 billboards in the Chattanooga region.
Scott LaFoy, who became Fairway's general manager after the sale of his company in September, said the addition of Hall's digital billboards will help the company "tactically."
"This gives us more and different locations so we can offer better variety to our customers," he said.
Fairway is the nation's largest privately held outdoor advertising company with 20,000 bulletins, posters and digital billboards across the Southeast, Southwest and Midwest.
Contact Mike Pare at mpare@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6318.