Looking back at 2021
Story by Linda Long
Photos by staff
For St. Clair County, 2021 has been quite a good year – a boom year, in fact. It has experienced an economic upswing across the board, from housing to manufacturing; retail sales to tourism; new business to expansion of existing business. All that comes despite recovering from the unprecedented pandemic that struck in 2020, leaving many economic projects on the drawing board and spiked the unemployment rate to over 13%.
Nobody’s looking back, though. Optimism is high as county leaders look toward the future and interpret the numbers.
Don Smith, executive director St. Clair County Economic Development Council, cites a study ranking the top 10 counties in Alabama with the most incoming investments. St. Clair county ranks No. 7 on that list.
“The study measures growth in gross domestic product, number of businesses opened and number of new building permits per every 1,000 homes in each county,” said Smith. “St. Clair County saw 3.8% business growth, $118 million in GDP growth, and 10.7 new building permits per every 1,000 homes over the last three years.”
The study was conducted by technology financial technology firm Smart Asset.
Those numbers, on paper, are backed up by real brick-and-mortar projects springing up all over the county. The latest gem in St. Clair’s financial crown, Kelly Creek Commerce Park, is a $125-million industrial park to be situated on 172 acres in Moody.
Smith said about two years of preliminary engineering and planning have already gone into the project, and work was expected to begin in November. “We’ll be trying to get manufacturing and distribution-type companies in there with a focus on headquarters,” said Smith, adding that with this new facility, the county will be adding several hundred new jobs within the next five years.
According to Moody Mayor Joe Lee, the business park is following a master plan for construction. “They’ve got a set of covenants outlining what they can build, how it’s to be constructed, and just exactly how they can do things out there, even to the color of the buildings,” which the mayor said will be “earth-tone colored.”
There’s going to be 1.4 million square feet of space in those two earth-toned buildings,” he said. “Currently, site preparation is under way. “They’re clearing the land, putting in curbs and gutters. This is going to be a long project, probably about two years.”
The mayor says there’s no commitment yet from potential tenants, “but a lot of folks are interested in it. A possible fit could be a distribution business like Amazon. What is being created out there has many users.”
The property is located next to Red Diamond’s corporate headquarters off Kelly Creek Road. Lee says road improvements are planned to better access the nearby Interstate 20 and that turn lanes will be added to Kelly Creek Road.
Several new retail businesses are also set to open in Moody, including Dunlap and Kyle Tire Company, Walmart Warehousing and Landing Warehousing. And according to Lee, “the old Burger King building has been sold, and Dunkin’ Donuts has turned in a set of plans. “Plus,” he said, the old Krystal building “is close to having a contract signed on it.”
In somewhat of an understatement, Lee acknowledged, “Yeah, this past year has been pretty busy.”
As rosy as Moody’s business climate appears right now, the mayor says the housing market in Moody, now the county’s largest municipality, is “unbelievable. I’d say in the next year or two, we’ll see 300 new homes built here.”
The story in Moody is indicative of what’s happening all over St. Clair, according to Smith.
“Retail sales are up everywhere. New retail projects were put on hold because of the pandemic but not anymore. We did expect to announce about $35 million of retail projects by the end of 2021, and that’s throughout the county, not just one city or the other.
“So, everyone’s doing well,” Smith continued. “The things that are going to be announced are going to be names that are missing in our county, and everyone leaves our county to shop at. It’s great to see small businesses really coming back strong. That’s one of the things we really focused on, making sure that folks we live next door to and spend time with are successful in their business.”
Tourism, a new industry in St. Clair County kicked off in 2020 at the very height of the COVID-19 pandemic. And, while most industrial efforts struggled during this time, tourism did not. According to Smith, it was actually “great timing” to kick off the tourism campaign.
“We don’t have a lot of indoor tourism things,” he said. “Everything is outdoors, and that was the only place you could go. So, everybody was wanting to get out, either hiking, camping, boating, rafting. People wanted to get outdoors where it was safe and fun. So, 2020 was an incredible year for people to discover St. Clair County’s outdoor activities.”
And the trend fit perfectly with St. Clair Tourism’s theme – “It’s in Our Nature.”
In 2021, tourists continue to flock to the county’s lakes, streams and rivers as well as outdoor festivals. Proof that the tourism initiative, headed by St. Clair Tourism Coordinator Blair Goodgame, continues to be viable can be seen in some examples of documented growth provided by event organizers.
At the Logan Martin LakeFest and Boat Show, 15,000 people attended in 2018 and 20,000 in 2019. The number jumped to 35,000 in 2021.
Bulls on the Lake Rodeo was canceled in 2020 because of the pandemic, but in 2019, 1,700 attended the event. That number jumped to 3,000 in 2021.
The Rustik Bucket Vintage Market at the St. Clair Arena saw 1,300 attendees in 2020 and 1,800 in 2021.
Looking ahead, Smith is optimistic about the upward trend continuing. Because of St. Clair County’s central location between two major interstates, its abundance of natural resources and general livability “we don’t see any slowing down. I think we can expect growth all over the county for years to come.”
