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Daniel Corporation to build first 100 Ross Bridge 12/24/2004

Publication: Birmingham Business Journal
Author: Linda Parham

Shortly after the beginning of the new year, homes will start going up in Oxmoor Valley between Alabama Highway 150 and the Shannon-Wenonah Road.

The garden homes are to be constructed in the shadow of a $55 million resort that resembles a Scottish castle. Its developers say Ross Bridge Resort and Spa in Hoover is expected to rank as a world-class attraction.

Those houses, which will carry pricetags ranging from $190,000 to $600,000, are the first residences in a mixed-use project that will eventually stretch over 1,600 acres. Some 1,778 homes will be built. Another 600 multifamily apartment units are planned.

Birmingham-based developer Daniel Corp. plans to begin securing building permits and starting construction on the first 100 garden homes in early January.

Those homes should be ready for occupancy in April. Plans call for building another 100 houses through the end of 2005.

These first houses are expected to attract the retailers who eventually will serve both garden home residents and prospective buyers of planned luxury homes.

Daniel Corp. and USS Realty are funding the residential development, which is part of a project that includes retail, offices, apartments and homes at the foot of Shades Mountain. The core of the community will be a village center.

Also slated for spring is completion of the community centerpiece, a welcome center for prospective home buyers that eventually will be converted to retail space. The 9,000-square-foot center is designed to resemble an old-fashioned Southern train station.

Plans also call for a park within walking distance of the neighbrohood. Trails and sidewalks will link the entire community.

The main road stretching through five miles of the development, Ross Bridge Parkway, connects Alabama Highway 150 with the Shannon-Wenonah Road. The road is expected to be open by March.

Late this year came an announcement that the site for the project's first office building, which would total several thousand square feet, had been sold.

Daniel Corp.'s Jason Tickle hailed the sale as a sign of commercial real estate developers' recognition of the viablity of Ross Bridge as an office site.

Retail development will depend on completion of the first 200 homes, Tickle says.

Mixed-use retail and residential and loft apartment construction most likely will wait until 2006, he says.

Montgomery-based Retirement Sys-tems of Alabama and the City of Hoover are financing construction of the resort and golf course.

The castle-like Ross Bridge Resort and Spa on 20 acres will feature 258 rooms, 20,000 square feet of indoor/outdoor meeting space, a 12,000-square-foot, full-service European spa and an 18-hole, 8,100-yard Robert Trent Jones public golf course. Two tennis courts, five miles of hike-or-bike trails, indoor and outdoor pools, a water slide and a signature waterfall dropping 1,100 feet are featured amenities.

Work is expected to finish in April on the resort where site work was launched in August 2003.

Construction manager of the resort project is Birmingham-based Doster Construction Co. Inc. The architect is Montgomery-based Goodwyn Mills & Cawood Inc.

The design of the resort is similar to both the Fairmont Banff Springs in the Canadian Rockies and the Biltmore Inn in Asheville, N.C.

Two veterans of landmark resorts arrived in Birmingham this year to preside over the launch of the Ross Bridge Resort and Spa.

General manager Steve Miller came from the Hilton Sedona Resort and Spa in Arizona, and director of sales and marketing Joe Saling has experience with the Opryland Hotel in Nashville, Tenn., and the Biltmore Estate. Saling earlier worked at the Sheraton Birmingham Hotel.