It's the year to see results of large investments made in the Uptown entertainment district of Birmingham.
Back in 2020 more than $330 million was poured into renovations of the Birmingham Jefferson Convention Center (BJCC) and its entertainment facilities. $175 million dollars for a new open air stadium and renovation to legacy arena.
The $125 million worth of renovations completed, along with the $175 million addition of Protective Stadium brought an an upwards of $247 million of economic impact to the area.
According to BJCC executive director Tad Snider that's around $50 million more than what the BJCC was bringing in pre-pandemic.
"Those investments are paying off in a big way,” said Snider.
The organization planned for 20 event days to happen in the first year of renovations being complete. These investments allowed them to more than triple that goal. The organization instead holding 80 events.
“When you look at what the concert and the sporting line up that has been this year. Whether it’s Alabama basketball, just last week with Chris Rock and Dave Chapelle, Kevin Hart back in November, the concert line up, and the Squadron season. You know, the arena’s going to have the biggest year it’s ever had,” said Snider.
With that growth comes a growth in demand for employees.
Currently the BJCC has been having to recruit workers from outside the area to make sure they have enough staff to handle these large events.
“Sometimes we can have parking staff, food and beverage staff, ticket takers and ushers to scan your ticket coming in," said Snider, "Where as before those were people we hired locally, sometimes we’re having to bring those people in from out of town to meet the call because that segment of our workforce now there’s just much more demand then supply.”
Local businesses have also begin to see the impact.
Mugshot Grill and Bar says they have had to increase shift hours to keep up with the high demand.
“Since the BJCC'S been scheduling more events we’ve had more and more people coming especially all in like the same month.," said Alex Rowan, Manager at Mugshot, "We had UAB games, then we had concerts all in the same week so like sometimes like we are hit different and we have to schedule different.”
The restaurant has also began to order double the amount of food just to make it through heavy event weeks.
“Usually like our Monday truck lasts us through Thursday so it will be a little bit bigger and our Fridays are just for the weekend so it’s a little bit smaller but lately it’s been kind of the same number for both trucks just cause like even during the week we’re pretty busy now,” said Rowan.
Snider saying this was the goal for all businesses in the area.