Huntsville Feasibility Studies

Redstone Arsenal reaches this page through a December 2024 post on the City of Huntsville's blog about the Arsenal's place in the city's future. It puts the Arsenal's 2025 economic impact on Alabama at $36.2 billion and gives three figures as the city states them: about 45,500 people at Army/Redstone Arsenal, climbing toward 50,000; 143,156 total jobs; and more than 92,000 Defense Department and contractor jobs ¹. The research records no relation among the three, so this page quotes each in the post's wording and adds none of them to another. The research dates the 45,500 to the post itself and the two job totals to 2025, a year that had not begun when the post was written. The metro's payroll is the BLS series in the growth section ⁸.

Two federal arrivals come with less. The same post, quoting an assistant director of the FBI, reported that the bureau expected its Redstone workforce to grow by 400 in 2025 ¹, a forecast for a year that has since closed. Kirkland's October 2025 report says U.S. Space Command headquarters is relocating to the Arsenal ³; the research records no date for the move.

Civilian employers carry headcounts of their own. Huntsville Hospital employs 12,160 people and operates 881 beds, on the employer list in Kirkland's October 2025 report, which the research records as a chamber list ³. The same list gives NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center 7,000 employees and Mazda Toyota Manufacturing USA 4,000 ³. Boeing's Huntsville operation counts 3,411 employees on Business Alabama's June 2025 list of the state's largest manufacturers ⁵. The University of Alabama in Huntsville enrolls 8,564 students and, by Kirkland's October 2025 count, accounts for 2,257 jobs ³.

Eli Lilly's pharmaceutical ingredient plant in Limestone County carries more than $6 billion of announced investment and 450 jobs, and the Governor's office schedules its construction to begin in 2026 and finish in 2032 ². That schedule appears in an April 2026 release from the Governor's office on Alabama's national CiCi Awards, which the research records as dating the project's announcement to 2025 ². The research gives no count of the workers the 2026 to 2032 construction will employ.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis reports per capita personal income, an average across the whole resident population, of $66,971 in the Huntsville, AL metro area in calendar 2024 ¹⁶, and the Census Bureau's median household income is $85,989 in the 2020 to 2024 five-year American Community Survey estimate ¹⁵.

Our Nashville page sets that metro's hospital, state, city and university headcounts from two employer lists side by side; for Oklahoma, see Oklahoma City.

Apartments in Kirkland's two reports

The Kirkland Company's October 2025 report counts about 304 communities holding 55,030 units, at an asking rent of $1,257 a month ³. Its Q4 2025 figures, drawn from CoStar, show 3,317 units delivered and 3,786 absorbed over the trailing twelve months, with 2,314 units under construction in 6 properties ⁴. The same report gives a historical average of 1,600 units a year without saying which series it averages or which years it covers ⁴, so this page sets it against neither the deliveries nor the absorption. On vacancy, the October 2025 report, drawing on CoStar data, says Huntsville's rate remains above the national rate of 8.2% ³. The vacancy statement is dated October 2025 and the absorption count covers the year to Q4 2025; neither is read here as explaining the other.

The Q4 2025 figures are cited to the October 2025 report page ⁴. The census gives the wider renter base: the Huntsville, AL metro area had 61,473 renter households in the 2020 to 2024 five-year American Community Survey estimate ¹⁵, at a median gross rent of $1,183 in the same 2020 to 2024 five-year American Community Survey estimate ¹⁵. That median covers renter-occupied units paying cash rent, new and old, over five survey years.

BNBCalc's relay of HUD's FY2026 tables gives the metro a two-bedroom Fair Market Rent of $1,130 ¹². For-sale housing sets the step up from renting: the median home value was $295,200 in the 2020 to 2024 five-year American Community Survey estimate ¹⁵. County Business Patterns counted 431 employees in 2023 (County Business Patterns) at lessors of residential buildings and dwellings ¹⁴, a class that takes in apartment owners and operators along with other residential landlords, so the figure only partly measures the apartment business. Absorption and capture, as a lender reads them, are covered on our multifamily feasibility page.

No Huntsville supply reading for hotels, industrial space, self-storage, retail centers, senior housing, RV parks or convenience stores reached the research, and for a hotel the local lodging tax is open too: the third-party Huntsville rates the research found disagree with one another and none came from a city source, so the page quotes none. The state lodgings tax rates, which differ between groups of counties, sit beneath any local rate and are in the costs section of our Alabama page.

Restaurants counted by establishment

County Business Patterns counted 920 establishments in 2023 (County Business Patterns), meaning locations with paid employees, among full-service and limited-service restaurants, snack and beverage bars, caterers and food service contractors across the Huntsville, AL metro area ¹⁴, a regional total for a restaurant or quick-service restaurant study rather than a trade-area count.

No published case names a site in Madison or Limestone County. The one Alabama case, the Opelika gas station acquisition, is set in Opelika, Lee County. Its subject, a fuel and convenience store, sits in one of the classes for which no Huntsville supply reading reached the research, as the supply section above records.