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A company that has its roots in metro Birmingham is set to move into the city center, with an assist from the Jefferson County Commission.
Daxko, which develops and manages membership systems for entities such as the YMCA, was founded in 1998 in Shelby County and currently has a presence in Homewood. New CEO Jeff VanDixhorn wants to make that presence more visible.
Economic Development Adviser Jeff Traywick told the commission during today’s committee meeting that the new CEO had a vision for the company.
“When he came in as CEO, he said, ‘Look, we need a place to put our flag,’” Traywick recounted. “‘We were founded in Birmingham. Let’s put that corporate headquarters flag in Birmingham.’
“Their current location in Homewood is not big enough for them to be able to do that,” he continued. “That location is pretty full, and they’ve got a number of work-from-home people in the area. What they’re looking at doing is taking space in the Gray Construction building in downtown. They will consolidate their Homewood offices and work-from-home individuals into that location.”
Daxko has plans to create 88 jobs with an average wage of $34.96 an hour. Toward that end, it is making a capital investment of $1.7 million and is asking for county assistance on the project.
“We are proposing our typical jobs grant package with a cap of $256,000,” Traywick said, “which will be again based on performance in the creation of new jobs and the creation of the high wages associated with those jobs.”
Commission President Jimmie Stephens expressed concern the company’s move from Homewood to Birmingham could go against the metro area’s 2019 no poaching pledge.
“Mayor (Jennifer) Andress and I talked about it at length,” said Blake Goodsell, general counsel for Daxko. “She was an excellent real estate agent, trying to find some space in Homewood. We were unable to find space sufficiently large for what we were looking.”
“Legacy Daxko served the YMCAs and JCCs primarily,” Goodsell said. “About 70% of them nationwide run on our software. We also provide ancillary services like mobile apps. We run about $10 billion in payment processing every year on behalf of our customers. Over the years, our attention to Birmingham, frankly, has drifted a little bit as we acquired companies to move into new markets.”
Goodsell said the company acquired major companies in Denver and Chicago, the latter being where VanDixhorn was that company’s founder.
“He has made the very intentional decision to recommit to the Birmingham area as we hire new people,” the general counsel said. “Our strategy will be to fill positions here in Birmingham as we can. We believe we can attack great tech talent. He’s doubling down on that. It would have been easy for him to choose Chicago as his headquarters since that was his home, but he thought this was the place we could make a global headquarters.”
The commission is set to approve the resolution during its meeting Thursday at the Bessemer Justice Center.
