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Photo by Ingrid Schnader.
Buffalo Rock Company CEO Jimmy Lee speaks at a Nov. 9 press conference about the company's decision to develop 1 million square feet of office space off Lakeshore Drive in Birmingham.
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Photo courtesy of Collier Craft.
The Buffalo Rock development includes a 895,000-square-feet warehouse and a 120,000-square-feet office.
Buffalo Rock Company purchased more than 1 million square feet of office and warehouse space in the city of Birmingham off Lakeshore Drive.
Buffalo Rock is a fourth-generation family-owned business offering beverages and food products. It started in Birmingham in 1901 and now has warehouses across Birmingham and Homewood.
The warehouse at 400 Industrial Drive and the office building at 800 Lakeshore Drive span almost 700 acres, the company said in a press release. The warehouse will serve as the company’s central distribution center, and the office building will house the central distribution office.
With a total investment cost of $75 million, this is the largest infrastructure investment the company has ever made, said Jimmy Lee, the CEO of Buffalo Rock. This investment includes modern technology, such as a four-lane high-speed automated pick system that can handle up to 2,000 different beverage SKUs. The campus will be renovated over the next 12 month, and between 25-50 jobs will be created in the initial phase of the project, the release said.
The distribution center will serve about a 90-mile radius of customers, Lee said. Some operations from the Oxmoor Road facility will be moved to the new distribution center, but no production of products will take place at the new facility.
This addition means a lot to the Birmingham area, said Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin.
“Not only from an economic development standpoint, from a workforce standpoint, but mainly from a community standpoint,” he said. “This is a homegrown organization accomplishing business.”
Birmingham City Councilor John Hilliard celebrated the development in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s a great feeling to sit here and say that we are moving forward,” he said. “In spite of all the things that have happened, it shows that our country is resilient.”
