Birmingham Business Journal's Stephanie Rebman joins JT in the studio

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Alabama's morning News. I'm JT And from the Birmingham Business Journal.
Stephanie Redman is back with us. Good morning, Hey, how's
it going Pretty good? Pretty good? You're looking good? Everything
good in your world?

Speaker 2 (00:09):
I just busy. I know, lots of events at the
BBJA right now.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
I'm telling you, let's talk about a couple of big
things happening here. Vulcan Materials, which is an Alabama company, obviously, right,
I saw this and I thought, wait a minute, do
they own a bunch of things outside the state as well?
Apparently they sold some Texas entities to an Alabama company.
So there's three parties involved here.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Yees, so it's actually a big deal with some Alabama companies.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
What happened? What's going on?

Speaker 2 (00:32):
So you, Vulcan's a publicly traded company and it is
one of those on the Fortune five hundred here for
us in Alabama, and they have properties all over the nation,
and they decided to sell a couple properties. They sold
some hot mix asphalt plants out in Houston to another
Alabama publicly traded company. They sold it to Doltin based

(00:52):
Construction Partners. And it's actually pretty cool because Construction Partners
is on the raw as last year they had a
nine hundred fifty million acquisition. They're doing pretty good. It's
probably got some Alabama companies involved in aggregates and construction
that are faring quite well.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
And at the same time, they've also named a new CEO.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
Yes, Vulcan Materials named CEO this week is Ronnie Pruitt
and he will take over at the start of the year.
And the good news is he's been with the company
for a bit. He was COO and he's spent multiple
years with the company. And Tom Hill, who is the
current CEO and is also on our list of CEO
awards that was unveiled this week, so everybody can check

(01:35):
that out. In December, he's going to move over to
be the executive chairman of the board. Okay, yeah, so
that's big news out of Vulcan.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
That's pretty good. I mean, he's done a good job
and the company's done well under his leadership, and he's
going to stick around. He's just time to hand the
baton off.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
I guess there you go.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
All right, Well, good news for those guys there too.
Interesting too here country club wealth is rising in our area.
Is this indicative just to Alabama. Are you seeing this
across the country? Did you not look at that or
see that? Or country clubs seem to be doing okay
these days. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
The Birmingham Business Journal its parent company as American City
Business Journals, and we do a lot of data cronches
and one of the things we looked at was country
club wealth, and wealth nationwide is rising, and it's also
rising here in Birmingham. And it's traced back to the
pandemic when people were like, Okay, let's go to our

(02:28):
country club, let's support it, let's utilize this asset. And
what country clubs have done is they have decided to
boost amenities and they are spending money on renovations, getting
more things in, trying to attract the younger demographic and
do what they can to make themselves a really positive asset.
And there's three clubs that are pretty much stand out

(02:51):
in Alabama actually, and they're all here.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
Birmingham, Mountain Brooke, Investavia. Correct did I hit them? Okay?
All right? All have very nice golf courses. Yeah, and
I'm open to play anytime anybody wants to bring me out.
Just let that be no no color at him.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
I'll pass.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
But you mentioned young people, and there's a point where
it kind of died off as far as new folks,
younger ones coming in because you look at the job
market and coming out of college and the debt with
student loans and trying to buy a house, and it's
expensive for young people these days, and country clubs probably
at the back of the line, so instead of having
to pay twenty five thousand, they're dropping it down to

(03:27):
twenty five hundred. That's an extreme case for the initiation.
You know, come through the door, join our club fees,
and you got to do that if you're going to
get new members So memberships starting to grow as well.
You mentioned with the young people.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
We didn't crunch all those specific numbers, but yes, overall,
as a trend, they are targeting the younger folks much more.
And I've seen even you know, the Club or the
John hann Club, a lot of entities around town that
do specialize on that membership. They're running specials or they're
figuring things out to get more younger people in.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
Very good well, Stephanie, thanks for stopping by. Good to
see you this morning. You mean and business journal Stephanie
Redman