Here's a rendering of their new HQ from the Montgomery Advertiser. It's so 80's of them to build a sprawling corporate "campus" when so much emphasis is being put on smart growth within the city's core.
Forgive the quality of the pic but it's the best I could get...
Colonial abandons downtown plans
By David Irvin
Montgomery Advertiser
The decision to relocate the Colonial BancGroup corporate headquarters from downtown to the east side of Montgomery was officially announced by bank officials this week.
About 550 employees of the bank are expected to move out of downtown when the new facility is finished late in the fourth quarter of next year, said spokeswoman Merrie Betbeze Tolbert. More than 180 Colonial employees from the technology group, call center and print shop will remain downtown at the 1 Court Square location.
The announcement comes 11 months after Mayor Bobby Bright said the bank was considering building a new corporate headquarters downtown.
"Anytime you have a structure of that magnitude that they were going to build, it would have had a significant impact" on downtown revitalization, Bright said Friday.
At the time, the mayor entered negotiations with bank management to locate a proposed 15-story headquarters building downtown, offering to improve infrastructure in the district so they would build there.
"We did talk about some incentives for keeping them here, but it's obvious the incentives we could afford to offer were not significant enough," Bright said.
According to officials with the bank, the downtown building project was considered seriously as an option, but the decision to move east was made in consideration of possible future growth.
The new 25-acre corporate campus will have a six-story operations building and a three-story executive building joined by a rotunda lobby, according to a news release from the company.
The construction represents a $50 million investment in the community, and officials describe the new building as a combination of traditional and modern design, with an exterior blend of pre-cast granite and metal.
"After weighing the options available to us in locations throughout the Southeast, we elected to keep our home in Montgomery," said Eric Hamilton, president and CEO of corporate lending for Alabama and Georgia, in a news release. "Keeping our headquarters here is a positive reflection on the quality of the community."
Until this week the bank had not officially announced its plans to relocate, but ground was broken at the site earlier in the summer. At a July planning commission meeting, the bank -- represented by the design firm Goodwyn, Mills and Cawood -- requested new zoning on the land purchased at Atlanta Highway and Technacenter Drive.
Efforts are already underway to find another tenant for the building Colonial will vacate at 1 Commerce St., Tolbert said.
Colonial BancGroup is a $20.9 billion bank holding company that operates 309 banking offices in five states, the press release said.
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