Hoover council extends tax abatement timeline for IberiaBank regional HQ

The Hoover City Council on Monday voted to give IberiaBank a six-month extension on tax abatements for property taxes and non-educational sales taxes to help the company with the creation of a regional headquarters in the International Park office complex.

The $1.7 million tax abatement agreement approved by the council in November 2017 gave the Louisiana-based bank until November 2019 to complete renovations to a 130,000-square-foot office building in International Park.

However, as IberiaBank conducted an in-depth evaluation of the building, the bank determined the building needed more significant renovations than originally planned, said Kim Buchanan, the bank’s executive vice president and director of corporate real estate, in a letter to the city of Hoover.

The bank decided to gut the building entirely, Buchanan wrote. Instead of occupying the building in the fourth quarter of 2019, the current plan is to occupy the building by April 2020, if not sooner, he wrote.

The bank would like to begin relocating some of its associates from the 60,000 square feet of space the bank has leased in the Grand View II office building off U.S. 280 as early as the end of the first quarter of 2020, Buchanan wrote.

The tax abatement extension approved by the Hoover City Council Monday night requires IberiaBank to put the building in service by May 31, 2020.

So far, demolition work is complete, and the heating, ventilation and air conditioning equipment and plumbing for the restrooms has been installed, IberiaBank spokeswoman Monica Drake said. The company has received approval to begin the buildout, she said.

IberiaBank is investing $24.5 million in the project, according to the agreement.

Greg King, president of IberiaBank’s Alabama region, said in 2017 the bank plans to move all 225 of its employees from the Grand View II building and, over time, move at least 225 more jobs to the new office in International Park from other parts of the Southeast.

The International Park building will be a regional headquarters with operations supporting all eight states in which Iberia operates, from Texas to North Carolina, King said. It will include the bank’s chief accounting functions, legal functions, loan reviews, credit reviews, some data processing and a training center for all eight states, he said.

The $1.7 million tax abatement includes $1,214,000 in non-educational property taxes over 10 years and an estimated $465,440 in construction-related sales and use taxes, City Treasurer Robert Yeager said.

However, only about 26% of the property taxes to be abated ($321,090) and 37.5% of the sales taxes to be abated ($174,540) is money the city of Hoover would have received, Yeager said. That’s a total abatement of $495,630 of Hoover taxes, he said.

The rest is an abatement of $720,430 of Jefferson County taxes and $463,500 of state taxes, according to information provided by Yeager.

Yeager emphasized that schools will not lose any property tax revenues with this abatement agreement. “It won’t affect them at all,” he said.

The payroll for the 225 jobs moving from Grand View exceeds $10 million a year, King said. New jobs coming to the Birmingham-Hoover market will only add to that, he said.

The building into which IberiaBank is moving formerly was home to BE&K and has been vacant for a number of years, King said. The bank’s lease at Grand View expires in 2020, he said.

IberiaBank’s corporate headquarters is in Lafayette, Louisiana. The bank has a total of 324 offices, including 191 bank branches in Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama, Texas, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Mississippi, Missouri and New York, according to the bank’s website.

It also has 29 title insurance offices in Arkansas, Tennessee and Louisiana and mortgage representatives in 83 locations in 12 states. Iberia also has 17 locations of Iberia Wealth Advisors in five states and an office for Iberia Capital Partners in New Orleans.