2026: Episode 4 - Economic Development Outlook

We sit down for a look at what is happening with economic development projects in Jefferson County with Jeff Traywick, the County's Economic Development Advisor. What type of projects are in the pipeline, timeline for the new industrial park in the northern part of the County and how our efforts have raised the average wage in Jefferson County -- which is great news for all of us! It's a longer podcast at 20 minutes, so start it on your way into work and finish it on the way home! 

Have an idea for a County podcast? Contact the Director of Public Information, Helen Hays at haysh@jccal.org

Transcript

Speaker 1:11

Since the beginning of January, we've had three companies that have already been here that we've assisted with um incentives for their expansion. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Speaker 1 1:24

Yeah, we've actually worked with several companies here recently that have done some major expansions. So far, just in 26, we've seen over a billion dollars in new activity announced in Jefferson County. The largest pool of that uh came from ACIPCO when they announced their nearly $800 million expansion to their facility, which is going to include uh new manufacturing operations, a new employee center, and is also gonna get rid of their old coal-fired blast furnace operations and switch their uh uh metals melting over to electric arc, uh, to an electric arc furnace. So modernizing their facility, putting a ton of investment in. But along with those, we've seen additional investment announces, uh announcements from uh uh Smucker, uh Alton McCollum, uh Averett Express, the Colton Companies, Adams Beverage, Kratos Defense over off Lakeshore. So a lot of activity right now with our existing industries, a lot of project activity from new companies looking at the area as well.

Speaker 2:37

Yeah, and I think we saw Coca-Cola's put their old facility on the market as they get ready to transition into the new facility that they've built that's kind of a a gateway coming in off the interstate. It's a it's a beautiful building facility. And that was what they call a brownfield site, right?

Speaker 1 2:56

That's correct. Yeah, that that site used to be an old metals foundry operation dating back to the early 1900s. The site had some contamination to it, but Coke kind of saw a vision of creating a new modern corporate headquarters facility for Coke United here locally, and they thought that location being right next to the interstate would be a prime location to kind of build a new sort of state-of-the-art headquarters and distribution center that would be a beautiful building right as you're entering into downtown, sort of a sort of a gateway area into the downtown area. They're wrapping up the construction on that now. Like you said, they just put their old building on the market, which is in great shape. So the advantage for us is not only did we get a $335 million investment from Coke United with the creation of 50 new jobs, it now allows us to take what is a really good older building that they had and market it for either an expansion opportunity for one of our existing industries or try to find a new company that is interested in investing in the area. So it'll end up leading to more investment and more job creation once we identify a new prospect for that building.

Speaker 4:14

So so let's talk about that. When you say new prospects, how do we go about the process of enticing people to come in and look at Jefferson County as a place to locate their business?

Speaker 1 4:27

You know, if you're talking about a new company that doesn't have a presence in the area, we've got a number of things that really sells Birmingham to them. One being our logistics, our interstate rail, and air capabilities. Secondly, our workforce population. Um, you know, Birmingham and the surrounding area has a really diverse economy. You know, we've got a history of manufacturing in the area, but we also have a very strong banking presence, healthcare presence, research and development, logistics, natural resources. So it's a very diverse economy. So if a company is looking at the Southeast, really doesn't matter what it is that they do, we've got a workforce that can can do what it is they need. So workforce is a huge selling point for us. Uh availability of property and product. And when we talk about product, we're talking about land to build uh a building on or an existing building uh that's available for for lease or sale. So we've got a lot of good uh capabilities and a lot of tools in our toolbox to help market the area. So what we do is we try to go out and find companies that are looking to invest in the southeast, or maybe it's a foreign company looking to move to the United States for the first time and try to provide them with the information they need to look at our area and to determine whether or not it's going to be a good fit for their operations. And then we work with them to try to try to make the move as uh seamless as possible and reduce any potential risk that they have and move into Birmingham, whether that is reducing the cost of business, putting them in touch with institutions of higher learning in order to identify student populations that are entering the workforce, whether it's helping them upskill people into new skills that are needed for their operations, whatever it may be, really, ,we'll usually get involved in in some way to to help them learn what they need to learn about Jefferson County and the area and uh provide a good, clean path forward for them to look at here and be successful.

Speaker 6:46

And we have a lot of partners that we work with when we're doing that. We have the Jefferson County Economic Industrial Development Authority, there's the Birmingham Business Alliance, and then there are all the municipalities within the county that we also have to work with, depending, I guess, on what location they're looking at. Let's talk a little bit about the industrial parts. The ones about where the muckers is located. Those are you know nearing capacity, right? And then we're looking at developing in the northern part of the county a new industrial park.

Speaker 1 7:27

That's correct, yeah. So back in the late 90s, Jefferson County realized that we needed some dedicated space for future industrial growth. So they developed the Jeff Met Industrial Park in McCalla, and it's been a very successful park. It's it's where companies like Smuckers, Home Depot, Publix,, and others all have locations. And that park was developed and marketed by the Jefferson County Economic and Industrial Development Authority, one of our partners. right now we are working with them on a new park that's going to be in the northern end of Jefferson County, north of Gardendale. And we've identified 1,100 acres that we now have under control, and we're about to let the contract for the master planning on that park here soon. But that'll provide us a new large tool in our toolbox when it comes to marketing the area for good developable sites. But it also provides the opportunity to create new jobs in the northern end of the county. right now, if you look at where most of the job announcements are going, they're either in downtown Birmingham or the McCalla-Bessemer area, depending on whether it's office or manufacturing. what we haven't seen is a lot of job growth in the northern end of the county. Now, what we are seeing is a lot of residential growth and a lot of interest by various parties in the north part of the county. So we realize that there's going to be a need for jobs in that area. So just like we did in the late 90s, Jefferson County is trying to be proactive and developing new product in that area that we can market for uh or future growth and job creation.

Speaker 9:09

And that will also be assisted by the development um of the Hallmark Farms property up there into the Farmers Federation developing that property as well. Do you think those two timelines you mesh with each other?

Speaker 1 9:27

Well, they yeah, they they complement each other very well. I was very excited about the farm center project. That that's been one that even going back to my Birmingham Business Alliance days several years ago, I worked on it when it was initially looking down in the Chilton County area. And then end up when we had the opportunity to resubmit the county a couple of years ago. I actually put together the RFI for that project when I was still at the BBA. So having now come over to the county, it's been really fun to watch that project continue on. And they're at the point now to where we think they'll be breaking ground here soon. And it's already spurred some additional interest in the area in terms of new retail development. We're working on a grocery store project up in the Kimberley area right now. You know, the timeline on that kind of flowing along at the same time as the Northern Industrial Park project. So you know, we're gonna end up with two really great projects in the northern end of the county that eventually is once they get built and fitted out, it's gonna create a lot of new jobs in that area.

Speaker 10:37

Well, it's all very exciting. I happen to live in the northern part of the county and you know that. And so I'm just I'm watching that area as it as it starts to grow, and it it really is. the Bill Noble Park up there is fabulous and it is packed out every weekend and sometimes during the week. So it's that season of Yeah, we're real excited about it.

Speaker 1 10:59

I mean, you know, I had already mentioned that we're about to let the contract for the master planning of that new industrial park out here soon, and we've already got companies interested in locating in the park. So just the announcement that we've got the land under control and are moving forward with the project has generated interest in that part of the county with companies that are looking to grow in the area. So it's very excited about it. It's already getting traction and uh look forward to seeing what the next couple of years bring for that area.

Speaker 11:32

Now let's talk about what are these businesses that are looking at us? We can hear a lot about data centers and the data center in Bessemer and then Birmingham has a has a data center project, and there's been a lot of media coverage over those. But what other types of businesses are looking at our area?

Speaker 1 11:57

Yeah, there's a lot of active projects looking at the area. I mean, right now, looking just at the active projects, looking at Jefferson County, which includes data center projects,, corporate headquarters relocation projects,, various office projects, manufacturing, logistics. I mean, we're kind of all over the board in terms of the types of companies that are looking. But right now, just our active project pipeline, it's more than uh $29 billion in potential investment and over 1,600 jobs. So the project activity right now is extremely high. and it's not really tied to any one potential sector., you know, data centers are very hot right now. it's a sector that's under tremendous growth due to a number of factors. One, the the introduction and acceptance of AI as a tool in the workforce, but also because, well, everything we do touches the internet, right? I mean, every time you post to Facebook, you end up touching four different data centers. You know, it's you know, when you do online banking, you know, modern cars, when they update the software in their systems, it all goes through the internet, which is all housed in data centers. So it's about as much of a utility nowadays as water, power, gas, or, or fiber. So a lot of activity there right now. We're seeing a lot of interest in the area from headquarters operations and back office operations that are interested in either moving from the West Coast or the Northeast part of the United States due to high cost of business and other factors. a lot of expansion right now in manufacturing. You know, we recently announced a major project with U.S. Steel at their Fairfield Works plant, and we expect another project from them here soon. We already talked about a CIFCO, so metals manufacturing is pretty pretty strong. we've got an active project right now as well with U.S. Pipe and Besper. several logistics projects uh that are active in the area, a lot of those being driven by e-commerce. yeah, we saw a lot of e-commerce activity in the early 2010s, and that's continued on. we've got several projects in the pipeline and recently announced projects there. automotive is always active for us just because of the automotive manufacturers that are located in the state of Alabama and their constant introduction of new models and switching things up, you know, from electric vehicles and everything else. So, right now, I mean, the the the types of activities we are seeing are just all over the place. And and I think that is uh a reflection of Birmingham's diverse economy and how strong we are in terms of being able to provide good solutions no matter what kind of industry sector or business might be located in.

Speaker 15:08

And so when we're looking at these companies and they want to come in here, we're really doing our due diligence on is it a good company, is it a responsible company, or is it an infrastructure that they need, or is it there, is it? We certainly don't want to do something that adversely you know impacts our communities and our and our citizens. But we're really looking at all that with the company and the organization. We're just not giving blanket incentives.

Speaker 1 15:43

No, that's correct. I mean, any project that we're gonna be working on, one, we want to make sure it's gonna be a good fit for Jefferson County. You know, if a company is gonna come in and they're saying, okay, we're gonna build a plant and we're gonna hire 200 people, well, that sounds good on the surface and the job number's good, but you know, if they're gonna come in and pay $12 an hour, and well, that's not gonna fit in Jefferson County., you're talking about a county with an average wage much higher than that. So, you know, we got to make sure that what it is that they're looking to do is gonna be a good fit. And then secondly, we want to make sure that, yeah, there's not gonna be any adverse impacts on the locals. So anytime we get a project in, we always vet the project out, make sure that you know it's not gonna be a a polluter or create any undue burden in terms of traffic and things like that. And if there's issues that might arise, we try to address those issues, right? So, like, you know, if traffic's a concern, okay, well, you know, what do we need to do to address that in terms of new road infrastructure improvements or something like that? So every project's vetted, and we tend to focus on projects that are just gonna generate wages that are gonna be at or above the prevailing wage for an industry sector. So if a company's coming in and they're gonna be paying a higher than average wage in a you know for a particular sector, we're very interested in that, right? So those are the ones we're gonna be focusing in on, and not only on our recruitment efforts, but whenever we're putting together an incentives package. And I think the results of that uh show pretty well. I mean, if you look at just uh a couple of our sectors over the past couple of years, we've seen some major increases. manufacturing has increased uh from $65,000 to $85,000 in average wage just over the past five years. Past three years, professional services have increased an average of nearly $16,000 a year. Financial and insurance sector, the average wage there over the past three years has increased by more than $14,000 a year. So by focusing on those companies that are paying really good wages, uh, it creates competition in the marketplace for labor. And what that ends up doing is dropping the wages up. So we always focus on companies that are gonna be a good fit, but are also gonna move the needle in terms of the job quality for the area.

Speaker 18:20

And I've noticed that we are our tying our incentives to those wages, like the company has to create uh the number of jobs or you know that they said they would create at that certain wage, and they get the incentives, you know, based on actually doing that.

Speaker 1 18:39

Yeah, that that's typically what we'll do. So if a company's coming in and you know, they're paying at least $50,000 a year, then depending on the industry sector, then those are the types of jobs that we'll want to incentivize. So typically what we'll do is uh look at a jobs grant that pays out depending on the level of wages that are being paid, whether it's $50,000 a year, $75,000, or over $100,000 a year. And we have flexibility in that too, right? So, like on the Coke United project, we ended up doing a uh a brownfield cleanup grant. So we knew on that particular project that the cost of the cleanup of their site was gonna be detrimental to the project. So to try to find a solution, we upfronted the incentive, but on the back end, we still track it based on the job creation and wages being paid, right? So any company that comes in and says we're gonna hire X number of people, then they've got to certify that they've actually hired those people and have paid them the wages that they said they were gonna pay. And if not, there's clawbacks in that, right? So we can recapture incentives if the companies don't do what they say they're gonna do. But, but so far we've done a good job adding all those projects that we've worked on the past few years, and that's never been an issue. So we have that flexibility to do what we need to do to meet the needs of the project, but we're always going to make sure that at the end of the day it's about creating good jobs for the area.

Speaker 20:08

Well, Jeff, I really appreciate your time today. Is there anything we didn't touch on that you want to mention that you think citizens should be aware of as we look forward into the future of economic development for the county?

Speaker 1 20:20

Yeah, so you know, we talked a little bit about the the project pipeline, and, you know, right now what we're seeing is really strong activity. So in 2025, we saw nearly 500 million in announced investment within the county, and that represents a little over 1,100 job announcements for for Jefferson County. But already in 2026, we're we've blown past that investment. I mean, right now we are already over a billion dollars announced in Jefferson County and 832 jobs announced. And the average wage on those jobs is $29.34 an hour, right? So in Jefferson County, the average wage is about $27 an hour. So the projects, again, that we work on just move that needle just a little bit more, a little bit higher. So the activity for 26 is really high and I expect that activity to continue through the year. We've got a number of active projects in the pipeline that are close to announcement, or we expect will announce in the next few months, u, constantly getting new projects in. So the new stuff kind of flowing into the pipeline is not let up any at all. So we are staying very, very busy right now. Expect that that's going to continue through the rest of the year.

Speaker 21:41

Well, really appreciate your time today and walking through some of this, and people can watch the live streams and the video archive of the commission meetings where you present some of these projects and a number of these people come to the meetings and they can hear about them as they happen or all of that information. Is out there as we go through it. So, Jeff, maybe we'll have you back on in another six months and we'll have another update of some really great news.

Speaker 22:11

Okay. All right. Until next time on the Jefferson County Podcast for the people. If anybody has any ideas or topics you'd like for us to cover, you can email me. My email address is H A Y S H at JCCAL.org and we will take a look at it and see if we can't get a podcast together for you. Thanks everybody for joining us. We'll see you soon.