Metro Roundup: Capstone Building Corp. finds new home in Meadow Brook

After 23 years in Homewood, Capstone Building Corp. moved to their new location in the Meadow Brook Office Park in Hoover in early May.

President and CEO Jay Chapman said he greatly enjoyed his time based in Homewood, but he didn’t like the daily drive on U.S. 280 from his home in Highland Lakes.

“The 280 highway is just awful,” Chapman said.

He had looked around a good bit for a spot in Hoover, “but I just never did pull the trigger and try to move,” he said.

Then he received an unsolicited offer to buy his building on Independence Drive in Homewood, so he got more serious about looking, he said.

Meadow Brook Corporate Park is more convenient for the majority of people in his corporate office, and “I can almost see my home from my new office,” he said.

Moving to this location provided an opportunity to incorporate new technology into the design of their workspace, he said. Installing new technology in a new space is a lot easier than trying to retrofit existing space, he said.

With the move, Capstone Building is expanding from about 7,300 square feet to about 9,000 square feet, Chapman said. Their new space takes up about half of a floor in the 1200 building at Meadow Brook Corporate Park.

Colliers International, the management company for the building, completely renovated the space for Capstone Building to include a canteen, exercise room, locker rooms, a classroom for about 50 people and a lot of windows to bring in natural light.

The new headquarters will house all of Capstone Building’s Birmingham-based employees — about 15 people — and includes new private areas for senior project managers and estimators.

Years ago, the company had quite a few secretaries, but there are none now, Chapman said. With all the technological advances, “you do your own work,” he said.

Capstone Building has about 100 more employees on job sites throughout the country, Chapman said.

The company, which builds multifamily housing developments, has completed more than 111 projects in 22 states valued at more than $1.7 billion since 1997. Its portfolio includes private apartment developments, senior living facilities and public housing complexes. The company’s annual revenues are about $140 million per year, Chapman said.

Most of its current work is concentrated in the Southeast, but the company has done a lot of work in Connecticut and has had jobs in California. It will start a job in El Paso in about a month, Chapman said.

In Alabama, Capstone recently began construction on a 250-unit apartment complex in the Wildwood area off Lakeshore Parkway and is starting a 225-unit apartment complex in Gardendale. It has another 300-unit complex in Huntsville and other jobs in Atlanta, Memphis and Tampa.

For more information about the company, go to capstonebuilding.com.