Ty West gives us the latest on what's happening in Birmingham

Episode Transcript

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Some good news in our area.Ty West joins us now from the Birmingham
Business Journal. Ty Good morning,Hey, how's it going? D D
good bet a while. I wasgood to catch up with you. So
banking giant coming into town. Whois it? What's going on? This
is Fifth Third Bank. It's abank based up in Ohio. They've been
talking a lot about I've been hearingrumors about Fifth Third kind of coming into

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the Birmingham market for quite a while, so it's good to see them kind
of take that step and move inhere. They hired some kind of veteran
local bankers that know the market toopen up to open up an office here
for the first time in Birmingham,And I think why this matters. It's
just a good sign when you seelarge kind of players in the financial sector
like this coming to Birmingham investing andsaying, you know, we want to

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be here, we think we cangrow here. That's just a good sign
for our broader economy and kind ofour outlook and really kind of speaks to
what's what's been going on in theground in the market. So this is
a good time to see. We'veseen a few of these kind of stories
recently where you've seen these kind oflarge banks kind of saying the sites on
Birmingham and saying, you know,we believe we can grow there and our
company can grow there. So that'swhat you want to see. You want
to see these types of players comingin. Obviously, more competition in the

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bank scene. We've lost a decentamount of competition just to the industry can
solidations and murders and acquisition deals overthe past two years, so it's always
good to have just more competition inthe marketplace. Well, fifth third,
this is the first time I'm hearingabout this bank. So when you compare
them to Wells Fargo, Regions,you know, Compass and big banks like
that, are they as bigger,bigger than that, or you know where

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do they have locations? Yeah,they're pretty large. They have a large
footprint in the kind of the Midwest, so they're based in Cincinnati. They're
kind of like if we were kindof comparing them to a bank, I
mean, they're probably on a regionalbank, large regional bank, kind of
comparable to like how Regions is inthe South, how Compass was kind of

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in the sun Belt. They butthey have a lot of kind of presence
up in the Midwest, so thisis kind of they've been expanding their territory
and kind of growing, so they'removing kind of down in this area.
All right, very good. Whilewe're talking about big big, right,
go ahead, I'm sorry, Iwould say so it's not like JP Morgan
or Bank of America big, butit's still large, large flare. Okay,

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I got you. And speaking ofbig, there's a big skyscaper here
in Birmingham now that is going tobe going under the I guess renovation process
here. How big of a renovation? What building are we talking about?
So we're talking about kind of oneof the largest buildings downtown. So this
is the night. It's called nineteenoh one sixth Avenue, formerly known as

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Regent's Harbor Plaza. So speaking ofkind of consolidation that that was a building
you and I probably talked with alot about a few years back. They
had some kind of just challenges whenRegents moved out of that building due to
consolidating some space. And that wasbefore COVID. So this is a big
deal though, to see a majorkind of tenant locally expanding in a downtown
skyscraper. So we're seeing Maynard nextin PC, which is a large law

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firm formerly Mayor, Cooper and Gale, so a low, big local law
firm. They are expanding kind oftheir space there. That's news because of
just after everything has happened with theremote work, with hybrid work. Obviously,
office space has been a challenge anda lot of markets around the country,
including Birmingham. To see somebody that'sthe local tenant saying you know,
we need more space, that's areally really good sign. That's good for

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that's going to be good for downtown. To see them kind of investing in
that space. Hopefully we see moreof those deals. There's clearly some challenges
in some other We have a lotof baking space downtown, as a lot
of cities do, and that predatesCOVID. Here in Birmingham, we've had
a lot of space because of justcompanies and combined they've been doing forces.
Some people have been acquired, sowe've had a lot of space to fill.
So news like this help move thatneedle. Well. Expanding is one

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thing, renovation is another. SoI guess this is not like renovating a
home when you're taking walls down andyour head you know, different structure to
the interior. You maybe change inthe lobby. They're not doing physical renovations,
just expansion for business. They're basicallybuilding out some additional floors is what
they're doing. So there was theyoccupied I think five five floors. They're

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building out an additional floor, sothat it is kind of both. They
are renovating the skyscraper, doing somerenovations on the inside, but they're also
like doing that because they're expanding.Okay, very good Tye West Birmingham Business
Journal, thank you. I appreciateyou. Thankslly Jag