Brian Krogsgard shows rendering of planned development. Photo by Solomon Crenshaw Jr.
The Weygand Surveyor building on Oxmoor Road was given a new lease on life as the Homewood City Council approved a final development plan for the property.
In a specially called meeting on July 10, the council heard Under Vulcan LLC owner Brian Krogsgard’s plan to redevelop the existing two-story office building into a mixed-use development. The development will feature a combination of retail and restaurant uses on the ground floor and office space on the second floor.
The proposal also included appropriate parking, landscaping and other site improvements, including a resurveying of 169 Oxmoor Road and adjacent 173 Oxmoor Road.
“169 is going to take roughly point-one acre of land from 173, both properties I own,” Krogsgard said. “That allows for the parking and flow of traffic to work appropriately to wrap around the current Weygand Surveying building. We have a redevelopment proposal for turning it into a mixed-use facility with four primary tenants, three on the bottom and one upstairs.”
Architect Chris Faulkner said calculations revealed the need for more parking than what was available on the existing site. As a result, parking will be pulled out to the front of the street to the standards that the West Homewood Entertainment District requires.
“(We will) add the sidewalks and street lamps and create a more multi-use, greened area that we hope will be very impactful to the rest of the neighborhood,” Faulkner said. “It's planned for a restaurant, salon and retail space and then upstairs … there'll be an office space with individual offices that can be for rent. We're working primarily with Homewood residents and Homewood businesses doing their second locations, experienced operators that we're hoping to bring into this space.”
Responding to a council question, Krogsgard said the fencing around the building “is absolutely going away.” The pair added that they have informally received “extremely positive” feedback from other business owners in the area and people who live in the area.
The specially called council meeting was sandwiched between two rounds of council committee meetings. The finance committee recommended that the city enter a contract with the Cahaba Solid Waste Authority to handle its garbage and trash service.
Public Services Director Berkley Squires told the committee that Homewood is the last community in the immediate area that is handling garbage in-house. He added that his department has been “band-aiding” garbage service the past two years as a shortage of applicants to do that job has pushed him to use public works staffers.
“We've been battling this since COVID,” Squires said. “Right now, we're down to 11 full-time employees and I've got two more that are leaving around July 21. Today, with the call-ins, guys that didn't make it to work today, we were down 25 guys. We had Street Department guys running trash and garbage today.
“Pretty much every day, we can't do our normal street jobs because we're waiting to see how many people we've got to use to pick up garbage and trash,” the public works director said. “Most days we have maybe three or four guys left. Probably in the last nine months I've gotten more calls on missed garbage (pickup) than the previous 10 years I've been doing this.”
Homewood currently spends about $3.1 million on garbage, trash and recycle pickup, with Republic Services handling recyclables. As the seventh city in the solid waste authority, Homewood would roughly spend $1.577 million a year.
With the solid waste authority, residents will continue to get twice-a-week pickup – either Monday and Thursday or Tuesday and Friday – with commingled garbage and recyclables one day. If the matter is approved by the full council, AmWaste, the company used by the solid waste authority, would take over Homewood pickup on August 1.
“We’re going to struggle to get to the end of the month,” Squires said.
Also during the meetings:
- The finance committee accepted the low bid of $246,941 from CB&A to work on the Salter Road Pocket Park. The matter was sent to the full council for consideration.
- Also sent to the full council was a police department adjustment to the 2022-2023 budget and the designation of some equipment as surplus items.
- The finance committee carried over its discussion of a possible change to a city manager form of government. Council President Alex Wyatt suggested that the finance committee take the next six weeks to determine its recommendation on the matter.
- The committee recently heard a presentation that cited city managers or administrators in Mountain Brook, Vestavia Hills and Hoover. Options include picking one of those options, or continuing with the city’s current government.
- The public safety committee discussed a request to reduce speed on the one-way traffic on Seminole Drive at Trinity United Methodist Church. The committee carried that matter over for future consideration.
- The public works committee recommended dropping a request for work to be done in the right-of-way at 2812 18th Street South. The committee recommended granting permission for work to be done in the right-of-way at 2844 18th Street South, suggesting that termite bond stations be installed in the asphalt parking area instead of on the sidewalk, as had been done.
