MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Construction on the new Alabama State House in Montgomery is under budget and on track for its scheduled opening in late 2026, state lawmakers learned Thursday during a presentation from the Retirement Systems of Alabama.
Steve Timms, assistant director of real estate investments for the RSA, told lawmakers that as of Thursday roughly 90% of all construction contracts for the project had been awarded, that a majority of the contract recipients were Alabama-based companies and that costs have come under projections.
“We’ve been fortunate,” Timms said, speaking at the Alabama State House. “We bid about 90% of the work, and today, we’re about $5 million under budget. The remaining 10% is yet to bid, (and) we expect that in about five to six weeks.”
The Legislative Council, a body of lawmakers that oversees the State House, entered into an agreement with RSA to construct the building in late 2023. It will be seven-stories tall, 460,000 square feet and is expected to be completed in August 2026 and ready for lawmakers to occupy in November that same year. The total cost for construction on the project is estimated to be $292 million. That does not include demolishing the current State House or building a separate parking deck.
While lawmakers were pleased to learn of the project coming in under budget and on time, as well as the majority use of Alabama companies in its construction, Sen. Rodger Smitherman, D-Birmingham, pressed Timms on the involvement of Black-owned companies.
“Do we have any African Americans that have got some contracts?” Smitherman asked. “Because I know none of the folks you named ain’t, and we generally try to do that, we’re doing it with the prisons.”
The Alabama Legislature regularly includes provisions in laws it adopts that encourage the participation of minority-owned companies with state initiatives, often inserted as an amendment from Senate Minority Leader Bobby Singleton, D-Greensboro.
For example, for the state’s rollout of medical marijuana, a fourth of all licenses to grow and sell medical marijuana must be minority-majority owned. The construction on two new 4,000-bed prisons also included provisions that a specific share of construction contracts must be awarded to minority-owned companies.
However, as construction on the new State House is managed by RSA, no such requirements mandating a certain share of involvement from minority-owned companies was instituted, Timms explains.
“Honestly, the RSA as an entity, we try to support the minority community, but in fact what we support is getting the best product at the best price,” Timms said.
“So we try to create a system where anybody and everybody that’s qualified can bid, and we hope that the best person gets the job; if it’s an African American firm or a minority firm, then we fully support that, but we don’t chase that as a goal.”
“So we don’t try to make sure that we have inclusion of African Americans in this project?” Smitherman asked.
“We don’t have set asides, no sir,” Timms said.
As a plea, Smitherman asked Timms that the RSA strongly consider involving more Black-owned companies as it awards the remaining 10% of construction contracts for the project.
Those remaining contracts, Timms later told Alabama Daily News, were largely for things on the building’s exterior, including loading and receiving docks. The building’s concrete frame is expected to be complete in the third week of March, the building’s large steel dome is scheduled to be put in place in late April, and the building’s exterior is expected to be complete in October.
The building’s elevators, Timms continued, would be “high-speed elevators,” which he described to ADN as being more than twice as fast as the existing State House’s elevators. Around 160 construction workers are onsite each day, with numbers expected to increase to in excess of 300 within the coming weeks.
“… It is going to be a beautiful space and it’ll be accommodating to the people that have to do business with the Legislature, but it’ll also keep them secure and give them the space to do the work,” Timms said.