Southwire Company has purchased the two-story Boykin Building on Carrollton’s downtown square for use as its Industrial Division sales office.

“We’ll have about 20 employees working in the building, which will include a conference room and a state-of-the-art product showroom,” said Southwire spokesman Gary Leftwich. “This division serves the power generation, transmission cable, mining cable and petroleum cable industries. It’s experiencing significant growth, and that’s one of the reasons for needing new facilities.”

Southwire’s Electrical Division is housed in the old fire and police station on Rome Street, just a block away from the company’s newest purchase.

The 9,000-square-foot Boykin Building is on the corner of Adamson Square and Newnan Street. It was refurbished in 2006 and has two storefronts which have previously housed several different retail businesses.

“This is just a natural expansion of our sales and marketing offices in downtown Carrollton,” Leftwich said.

He said the new sales office building is scheduled to open next January.

“We have a thriving, healthy downtown, with a variety of restaurants and services,” he said. “The amphitheater is a great addition. Other towns don’t have the charm and sense of history and diversity of businesses that our downtown has.”

Carrollton City Manager Casey Coleman said the city is “very excited” to see Southwire moving more employees downtown.

“It helps keep our square vibrant and we’re pleased to have them downtown,” Coleman said. “It gives a new clientele of technical people, in addition to retail sales, to the square.”

Carrollton Mayor Wayne Garner said Southwire has been a “flagship industry” in the city and the history of Southwire and the history of Carrollton go together.

“To have them expand and come downtown further sustains the viability of our downtown area,” Garner said. “There’s not another downtown in the state of comparable size that has had $42 million plowed into it, bringing 27 new businesses and creating 543 new jobs. Our downtown has a lot of character and continues to grow.”

The new Southwire facility becomes the second major office building on the downtown square, joining the West Georgia Technical College building which opened last year. The WGTC building was constructed in 1907 and once housed the Peoples Bank. The building is owned by the city of Carrollton and the Carrollton Payroll Development Authority and has been leased to the school on a long-term, $1 lease.

Southwire was founded in 1950 by Roy Richards Sr., with 12 employees, to manufacture electrical wire for rural electrification projects. It is now North America’s leading manufacturer of wire and cable used in the distribution and transmission of electricity. The company employs 4,500 workers, with 2,100 employed in Carroll County.