Coca-Cola plans $338m Birmingham headquarters you can see ‘from the sky’

Coca-Cola United continues to move closer to building a new $338 million campus that will be a gateway to Birmingham, city and company officials said today.

“It’s going to be phenomenal,” Coca-Cola United CEO Mike Suco said Tuesday after the City Council approved incentives for the project. “Welcome to Birmingham everyone. You’ll love it.”

The city of Birmingham on Tuesday approved a development agreement with Coca-Cola Bottling Company United-Central LLC that will provide incentives for Coca-Cola to keep its new headquarters in Birmingham on the site of the former Stockham Valve property.

“You’ll be able to see Coke from the interstate and you’ll be able to see it from the sky,” said Cornell Wesley, director of innovation and economic opportunity for the city of Birmingham.

He said the new Coca-Cola headquarters will be highly visible from Interstate 20/59 east of downtown and also visible to air traffic flying into Birmingham.

Wesley said Coca-Cola’s planned $338 million investment in a future headquarters is one of the largest corporate investments in the city’s history. The new corporate headquarters will include a sales, distribution and warehousing, regional, division and office center, as well as a customer call center.

“We’re excited that they’re staying in our community, and what we’re most excited about is the new jobs it’s going to create,” Wesley said. “We hope they’ll be here for another 100 years.”

City incentives include spending up to $400,000 to improve water infrastructure and build an access road to the site.

Coca-Cola United has owned the former Stockham Valve property for more than a decade.

“We have a 10-year vision to do this on this site,” Suco said.

“It’s a three-year project,” Suco said. “From the time we break ground, it will take us about three years.”

In March, bulldozers cleared 105 acres south of the Tallapoosa Street exit, moving dirt and felling trees in a highly visible spot east of WC Patton Park along Interstate 20/59.

Travelers heading east from Birmingham city center can’t miss all the action.

That land is owned by the Coca Cola Bottling Co. United-Central LLC of Birmingham, which currently operates out of a distribution center at 4600 East Lake Boulevard, overlooking Birmingham-Shuttlesworth Airport.

An official announcement will be made after the Jefferson County Commission addresses planned incentives for the project next week, said Linda Sewell, spokeswoman for Coca-Cola Bottling Co. United-Central.

The property between 40th and 42nd Sts. North at 4000 Richard Arrington Boulevard (formerly 10th Ave. North) was from 1914-1997 the campus of Stockham Valves and Fittings.

That company, founded in Birmingham in 1903, became one of the nation’s largest manufacturers of valves and pipe fittings for heavy industry.

Coca Cola Bottling United continued to upgrade its facilities on East Lake Boulevard, but ran out of space there, Sewell said.