Quote:
Originally Posted by jslaughter
Is birmingham ever going to build another highrise office building????
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I've been wondering the same thing for a while. I think the main thing keeping a new highrise from being constructed is that that the city already has a few vacant highrises in downtown. Occupancy rates are actually very high, but downtown hasn't seen a jolt strong enough since the 90s to provide enough office demand to spur any large scale office construction.
The two notable vacant towers in downtown are the Thomas Jefferson Tower (19 floors, built in 1929; just purchased a couple weeks ago) and the Brown Marx Building (16 floors, built in 1906).
I think we could potentially see some new construction in the next few years , but I think the market will absorb these vacant ones before that occurs. I don't mind that so much, I really want to see these older towers put to good use. They add a certain character that's hard to replicate with new construction. There are few cities that can say the earliest members of their skyline still play an important role in their downtown economy (and cityscape).