Photo by Savannah Schmidt
Stephen Springfield plays with his dog Riley while eating lunch in the back of his car in Meadow Brook Coporate Park off of U.S. 280 on Oct. 9, 2024. Springfield commutes from Homewood, so he relies on the presence of green spaces to spend time with Riley on his break.
Imagine a U.S. 280 full of green, walkable communities, workers riding bikes to the office and old office parks revitalized into new multi-use communities.
The idea that stretches of U.S. 280 could be transformed from acres of asphalt to idyllic spaces for living and working is one the city of Hoover hopes to achieve.
Last year, the city announced they would be commissioning a study that would examine the feasibility of what the city called a “tech corridor” — looking at attracting tech-based jobs to the city. That study was completed this summer, with a set of recommendations the city hopes to implement. The study focused on Meadow Brook, but Jackson Pruett, economic development coordinator for Hoover, said the city looked at Alpharetta, Georgia, Brentwood, Tennessee, and Sandy Springs, Georgia, for inspiration.
Photo by Savannah Schmidt
The entrance of Corporate Park in Meadowbook, off of U.S. 280. The businesses established in this area include several successful tech companies.
At the heart of the proposed “tech corridor” transformation are the vacancies that sit within the city limits of Hoover: the Meadow Brook Corporate Park and Inverness Center.
In the late 1970s and 1980s, developers bought up large swaths of land up and down U.S. 280, coinciding with the expansion of the highway to four lanes. What had been a two-lane road that would be considered rural just a few years before was booming with new construction.
Developers were able to fill their office buildings. Rust International, a large engineering firm, called Meadow Brook home but was bought by Raytheon in 1996. Raytheon ultimately left the park. Inverness also saw one of its largest tenants, Southern Company Services, leave in 2018 for the Colonnade.
Combined with the downturn in occupancy of commercial real estate after the COVID-19 pandemic, the city has been looking for ways to attract businesses along U.S. 280.
“We have all of this empty office space, so we need to attract office tenants and specifically technology companies,” Pruett said.
Map of U.S. 280.
From Grandview Medical Center down to Mt Laurel, there is approximately 4 million square feet of office space in the city, and 20% of that is vacant, he said. Pruett said the city’s vacancy rate was 3 to 4 points higher than the national average.
City officials have been looking to transform the area for several years, but last year they commissioned a study for $150,000 from the Waymaker Group, which specializes in technology-based economic development, to look at revitalizing Meadow Brook.
The city received the recommendations from the group this past July.
The city tasked Waymaker with taking inventory of regional assets for attracting businesses, quantifying the existing strengths of the surrounding area for the tech industry and to “revitalize Meadow Brook for top regional prospect attraction.”
The group identified several sectors that are growing and would lend themselves to being targeted by economic development recruiters: telecommunications, nano technology and software publishing.
The city already attracted McLeod Software, with more than 600 employees, to Meadow Brook, which moved to the park in 2018 and then expanded last year.
When it came to real estate, Waymaker recommended working with property owners to create an improvement district, with new events and activities to take advantage of existing common areas, and integrate a trail system in the area.
Greg Knighton, the economic development manager for Hoover, said the city was concentrating on U.S. 280 not only because of the vacancies left at the office parks, but also because it’s where the workforce is.
“I think one is certainly the vacancy. That’s a given,” Knighton said. “The other is that from a talent [perspective,] that zip code — 35242 — has one of the strongest concentrations of technology talent in the metro area, so if you put that talent close to the workplace, it’s a winning combination.”
For those who moved into the area, Meadow Brook provided an attractive site with room to improve.
Hunter Strickler is the vice president for OHD, which tests respiratory safety masks for fit. The company moved into Meadow Brook at the end of September, buying a building at the park.
He said the company had mapped where current employees lived, which gave them a target area of where to move. They then began talking with the economic development team at the city of Hoover.
“They had sort of given us a little bit of a picture of what their vision for Meadow Brook is in the future. The building that we're in now ended up being really kind of a great match in terms of size. It's a standalone building. It was for sale. We ideally preferred to purchase instead of lease, and so it all kind of came together at the right time,” Strickler said.
Pruett said companies are looking for different types of workplaces, reflecting the change of work not only since the 1980s, when Meadow Brook was built, but also since the pandemic and the ascent of remote work.
“Especially for an environment where you’ve got flexible and distributed work, where people can work remote or work anywhere, if you’re going to have an office, it’s got to be highly amenitized,” Pruett said.
That could mean more parks and walking trails or repurposing office parks to a mix of business and residential.
“When we started talking to some of these companies that have moved over there or other companies that we’ve recruited who have considered moving over there, they want a lot of the amenities that you have in more urban settings,” Pruett said. “Frankly, they want walkability. They want the change to go get a cup of coffee from a neighborhood coffee shop or go get a beer after work. And so really what that looks like is a mixed-use environment coming into a traditional office environment.”
It's an appraisal Strickler shares.
Photo by Savannah Schmidt
Stephen Springfield's dog Riley plays in Meadow Brook Coporate Park off of Hwy 280 on Oct. 9, 2024. Springfield commutes from Homewood, so he relies on the presence of green spaces to spend time with Riley on his break.
“There are a lot of nice spaces popping up in various suburbs around the Southeast that are multi-use, and you can work, play, even live in the same general area. And I think there's a quality-of-life element to that that is really powerful,” Strickler said. “You don't waste a ton of time in traffic, and your commute is lower, and you can get everything right in your backyard, so to speak. And I think that's an attractive thing for young workers and young families.”
There is some room for improvement, Strickler said. For instance, he would like a trail system that would connect their building to other parts of the park. Pruett recognizes the challenges and says any transformation will take time.
“We're seeing people want to move there, but we have a long way to go in creating that environment because it hasn't really changed that much. It's still office buildings, and some of these owners have invested a lot of money in the interiors of the buildings. But you walk around and it's a nice lake, and it's a nice place, but it can be something a whole lot different,” Pruett said. “And that's kind of our long-term vision.”
Pruett said the city is also concentrating on other areas like Inverness, where there they will be adding more mixed-use space to the area vacated by Southern Company, including 350 new multi-family housing units.
“So even though we kind of first started out as Meadow Brook being the center of some of this new reinvestment, Inverness is actually the first to see it, which is great,” Pruett said. “We need that in all of these office parks.”
The vision will take time, Knighton said, but they see progress in achieving their vision.
“We know it’s going to take time, but you’re already seeing it happen from the companies’ standpoint,” he said.
