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mingham

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tion district that will embody the link between downtown and UAB. The district would potentially require a 12- to 20- year buildout. “Development has been slow, but it’s in the works,” Herrington says. Bruce Katz, a leading urbanization and innovation expert with the Brookings Institution, was recently in town to tout Birmingham’s assets, and to galvanize public and private sentiment for the ongoing buildout of a tech and innova- tion infrastructure. Joel Blackstock, principal and president of Williams Black- stock Engineers , says the upturn has put pressure on his firm, both internally and externally. “It is still very competitive and we now see much larger national firms coming into Birmingham to do projects local firms used to do.” “We have grown our staff 5 to 10 percent over the last three years,” he says. “It is still very competitive and we now see much larger national firms coming into Birmingham to do projects local firms used to do. Birmingham is a relatively underdeveloped secondary market that has now been dis- covered and developers and architects from across the coun- try are designing and developing projects here.” Blackstock’s firm is heavily involved in the downtown revi- talization. The overall aim of Blackstock’s design, and the design of other firms, is to make the city center a good place to work and play. Thus far, they have succeeded, Blackstock says, as downtown is pulsing with a vitality “not seen in 30 years.” Meanwhile, the five-year run that Birmingham just com- pleted is one for the history books. According to the Bir- mingham Business Alliance, from 2011 to 2015, the city an- nounced 13,638 new jobs and $2.9 billion in capital invest- ment. By comparison, according to the alliance, in the pre- vious 10-year period, announced jobs were approximately 18,747, and capital investment was $2.5 billion. Economic development activity also showed a significant increase. Between 2001 and 2010, Birmingham averaged 55 announcements per year with 1,875 new jobs and $255.7 million in capital investment. Between 2011 and 2015, Bir- mingham averaged 67 announcements per year, with 2,727 jobs, and $581.7 million in capital investment, according to the alliance. A big part of the development effort is the Alabama His- toric Tax Credit, a three-year program enacted by the Alabama Legislature in 2013. Of the 52 redevelopment projects statewide, 20 are in Birmingham. As the tax credit

A Birmingham official on a hard hat tour of the Thomas Jefferson Hotel, which is undergoing a $22-million restoration. / REV Birmingham

Architecture firms with projects in Birmingham: z KPS Group, Birmingham z Herrington Architects, Birmingham

z Nimrod Long & Associates, Birmingham z Cohen Carnaggio Reynolds, Birmingham z Giattina Aycock Architecture Studio, Birmingham z Williams Blackstock Architects, Birmingham z Smallwood, Reynolds, Stewart, Stewart & Associates, Atlanta z Lord Aeck Sargeant, Atlanta z KPS Group, Atlanta z Page Southerland Page, Austin z BOKA Powell, Dallas z Wisznia Architecture, New Orleans z Charlan Brock & Associates, Maitland, FL z Hastings & Chivetta, St. Louis

See BIRMINGHAM, page 8

ER April 4, 2016, ISSUE 1146

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