Armour & Co. building
The Armour & Co. building (also known as the Omni Building) is a 4-story, 40,000 square foot building located at 2309 1st Avenue North in downtown Birmingham.
It was constructed in the late 1890s and has served as a meat-processing facility for Armour & Company in the 1920s and 1930s, and housed Arnold Institutional Foods in the 1960s. It housed the offices of Boise Cascade office supplies in the 1990s. Beginning in 2004 the building was the home of Liesa Cole's Omni Studios.
In 2016 the building was purchased by Christopher Architecture, who partnered with Blue Tongue Development to plan for its conversion into 30 apartments above a ground-floor commercial space. Stidco Construction was brought on as general contractor.
Construction was delayed until 2020 as the developers, reorganized as Premium Property, worked to secure a $1.9 million Historic Preservation Tax Credit and Opportunity Zone financing. Revised plans, which expanded the floor area to 58,000 square feet, included 24 one-to-three bedroom apartments, plus co-working space and 20,000 square feet of retail/restaurant space. Narnia Construction succeeded Stidco as contractor.
References
- Godwin, Brent (December 1, 2016) "Mixed-use project planned for historic building downtown." Birmingham Business Journal
- Van der Bijl, Hanno (March 10, 2020) "Mixed-use development in works for historic downtown building." Birmingham Business Journal