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9-story tower set for Homewood
The Birmingham News - April 21, 2006 by Sherri C. Goodman, News Staff Writer
Birmingham law firm Johnston Barton Proctor & Powell, which has been based in downtown since it was founded 80 years ago, will move to Homewood next year as the lead tenant in a new office tower being built by Colonial Properties Trust.
The law firm, which employs about 50 attorneys and 50 staff members, will occupy about 40,000 square feet in the nine-story, 160,000-square-foot Colonial Center at Brookwood Village, said Johnston Barton managing partner David Proctor. The staff will begin moving into the building in June 2007, he said.
Construction of the $35.8 million building will begin immediately.
The law firm, which has had offices in several downtown properties over the years, has been based in AmSouth-Harbert Plaza since 1992 and wanted to stay there, Proctor said.
"We just couldn't come to terms," he said. The law firm looked for other sites downtown, but couldn't find anything that suited the its needs.
Johnston Barton's broker, Eason Graham & Sandner, heard Colonial Properties was planning a new office tower in Brookwood Village as part of Colonial Properties' push to make the shopping and restaurant center more of a mixed-use development.
Colonial and Johnston Barton began talks about a year ago, Proctor said.
The firm has signed a 15-year lease with options to add more space in the building, which will stand next to Parisian with its back to Shades Mountain.
"We're very excited about the move for a number of reasons," including covered free parking for the firm's staff and its clients, he said.
The building will have four floors of covered parking, wireless Internet capability and a covered walkway from the second parking level to Parisian, said David Fullington, Colonial Properties' vice president of leasing for the Birmingham office division.
It will also have two separate power feeds from separate substations to decrease the likelihood of power outages due to a storm or other uncontrollable event, Fullington said.
Colonial Center's plans also call 13,000 square feet of ground-floor specialty retail space, he said. Colonial would like to have a coffee shop and other service-industry tenants, such as a travel agency, bank or brokerage firm, he said.
Proctor said the location - at the hub of Mountain Brook, Homewood and Vestavia Hills, - is more convenient for staff, and the building design enables the firm to occupy less space with the same size staff. In AmSouth Harbert Plaza, Johnston Barton occupies about 46,000 square feet.
"We labored long and hard to design a highly efficient building and floor plate so the professional firms can occupy less square feet than they do in their current older, less-efficient buildings," Fullington said.
Colonial presence:
Once downtown boosters heard Johnston Barton was looking outside the city center, some tried to persuade the firm to stay, Proctor said, but it didn't work out.
"This particular building at this location met all of our needs," he said. "The fact that we're leaving downtown shouldn't be viewed as though we're thumbing our nose at downtown. We think there are a lot of good things going on in downtown."
Colonial Properties' plans for an office tower at Brookwood were first revealed during a Homewood Planning Commission meeting in February.
Colonial Senior Vice President Kyle Collins said at the time the company plans to make the building its corporate headquarters and will consolidate staff from other Birmingham-area operations.
Collins told the city Colonial will fill a third of the building with about 150 employees.
Fullington declined to comment on the headquarters move or other potential tenants for the building.
E-mail: sgoodman@bhamnews.com
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