A Birmingham manufacturer has relocated some of its office functions from one part of the metro to another.
Coca-Cola Bottling Co. United moved office space from 600 Beacon Parkway in Birmingham to 200 Wildwood Parkway in Homewood.
The relocation reduced its square footage, which the company’s vice president of public affairs and communications, Linda Sewell, said was due to work-from-home trends. The move to Patriot Park was completed in November 2021, and Graham & Co. was the broker for the deal.
“Our lease was up mid-year last year at Beacon Parkway, so we decided to relocate some of our accounts payable, accounts receivable,” she said. “We have some human resources functions as well as our customer call center in Patriot Park. Many of our departments worked remotely and continue to work remotely, so we made a business decision that some functions could stay remote on a longer-term basis. Because of that, we didn’t need all the square footage. We took the opportunity to find new space with less square footage.”
The old square footage was 37,000 square feet, and the company is now leasing 18,000. The former location housed 200 employees, and the new space accommodates 120.
“It didn’t make sense just holding empty space,” Sewell said. “What we found in Patriot Park was the right configuration — the right space at the right time.”
The original move to Beacon Parkway from the company headquarters in East Birmingham was due to rapid growth of the company.
“Over the last eight to 10 years, we started to outgrow our current campus headquarters,” she said. “We added an expansive call center at that time so we needed additional space that we didn’t have on our our primary campus. We found the property of Beacon Park Parkway that served us well for a lot of years. We needed that space as we grew. Now because of the changing work conditions due to Covid and some of our teams who are working remotely, our needs changed. It’s part of an evolution of what we need in the current work environment.”
The manufacturer is still eyeing expansion in the region, particularly with the long-term goal of redeveloping the 88 acres across the interstate from its headquarters. It used to be the home of Stockham Valve, but that now belongs to Coca-Cola United. The manufacturer is still in talks with the city, county and state on redevelopment goals and needs.
“We still hope to build on that site in the future, but no final decision has been made. But a lot of things have to fall into place before we make that final decision and move ahead,” she said.