Coca-Cola UNITED is preparing to open its new $330 million Birmingham headquarters, bringing hundreds of employees together at an enormous campus in the city where the company got its start more than 120 years ago.
The new corporate headquarters and sales center in Birmingham’s Kingston community is expected to retain more than 750 jobs and create up to 50 new positions, according to Coca-Cola Bottling Company United. The company has described the project as an approximately $330 million investment.
Coca-Cola UNITED’s ties to Birmingham date to 1902, when Crawford Johnson Sr. started Birmingham Coca-Cola Bottling Company with one associate and a mule named Bird.
“Birmingham has been our home for 122 years, and Birmingham will remain our home well into the future,” Coca-Cola UNITED President and CEO Mike Suco said when the company broke ground on the project in 2024.
The new campus sits on the former Stockham Valves and Fittings property off 40th Street North, about two miles from Coca-Cola UNITED’s longtime East Lake Boulevard campus.
The facility will bring several parts of the company’s operations together, including its corporate, Central Region and North Alabama Division headquarters; Birmingham Coca-Cola sales center and warehouse; Classic Food and Vending; customer solutions center; and services department.
The North Alabama Division supports Coca-Cola UNITED operations in Carbon Hill, Cullman, Florence, Oxford and Tuscaloosa, while the new facility will serve as a distribution hub for Jefferson County and 11 surrounding counties.
Associates and retirees have already had a chance to see the new headquarters.
The company recently hosted what it called an “Associate House Party,” inviting associates and retirees to tour the new facility.
“We’re thrilled to have hosted our Associate House Party, allowing our associates and retirees to tour our new headquarters,” the company said in a Facebook post. “We can’t wait to open our doors to the community soon.”
The completed facility spans 576,000 square feet, according to AL.com. Operations are scheduled to transfer from the East Lake campus to the new location Sept. 14.
And while the campus was built for business, Coca-Cola made sure it looks the part.
The headquarters was designed to be highly visible from Interstate 20/59. When Coca-Cola UNITED broke ground, the company called the project a new “gateway to Birmingham.”
The finished campus carries Coca-Cola touches inside and out.
A large outline of the familiar Coca-Cola contour bottle was designed to be visible to passengers flying into Birmingham. Inside, displays pay tribute to the company’s history in the city, while a three-story “Fizz Wall” made with more than 9,600 bottle caps is among the features documented by Bham Now.
The move also means saying goodbye to a longtime home.
Coca-Cola UNITED has operated from its campus at 4600 East Lake Blvd. since 1979. The company put the 39-acre property on the market earlier this year as construction on the new headquarters continued. The East Lake property includes approximately 350,000 square feet of office and industrial space.
Coca-Cola UNITED purchased the former Stockham site in 2013 with plans to eventually develop a new facility there.
The company now has more than 10,000 associates at more than 50 facilities across six Southeastern states, but Birmingham remains home to its headquarters — just as it has since Coca-Cola UNITED’s story began more than a century ago.
Sherri Blevins is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You may contact her at [email protected].
