Birmingham is changing.

Not like they used to say changing. Not in that code that too often dripped with racial innuendo, that hinted that if you were still in this town you should bundle up your kids and get out now.

Birmingham is changing. From that.

If you can't see it now, if parks and museums and New York press clipping aren't enough to make you a believer, that's OK. Wait 'til next year.

Projects going on now, and those about to start, by then will take doubters by the lapels and shake them until the scales fall from their eyes.

Work on the Lyric Theatre will be finished - finished -- around the end of the year, adding another century-old jewel to a glittering Theater District.

Restoration of the historic Redmont Hotel will be completed this summer, with 115 refurbished rooms and a fresh lobby and bar.

Demolition will begin this month inside the Thomas Jefferson Hotel, that 20-story building that fell into disrepair under the Leer Tower name. I know we've heard it before, but builders now have permits and will begin ripping out the guts this month. They plan to build "edgy" apartments aimed at Millennials, with exposed concrete and steel and washer/driers you can dump clothes in before work, and have them washed and dried in the same contraption when you come home. I'd call that cool. Millennials, the target audience, might think it on fleek.

And there is the Publix, underway at Third Avenue South and 20th Street. By next year it will bring a long-awaited supermarket downtown, plus parking and shops and luxury apartments aimed at professionals.

Stewart Perry president Merrill Stewart Jr.

There's more. Alabama Power is converting its Powell Steam Plant for entertainment and cultural use. LIV Parkside is rising from the ground, and the Rotary Trail is in the works. Birmingham is changing. Before our eyes.

It's remarkable that one construction company, Birmingham's Stewart Perry, is overseeing four of those projects - the Redmont, Lyric, Thomas Jefferson and Publix. And it's personal.

"I believe in Birmingham," said Merrill Stewart Jr., the company's president. "I do not believe Birmingham has gotten its due over the last decade or two."

Listening to Stewart is almost comforting. When he talks of the Bear Bryant suite at the old Thomas Jefferson Hotel, you want to see it, to sit where Bear sat. When he says he wants tasteful LED lights - pink for Valentine's and red, white and blue for Independence Day - draping the dirigible dock on that tower, you can see them twinkle.

It's not the designs or the brick or steel that grabs you. It's the reality of change.

After all the doubt. After all the starts and stops and the false hopes, Birmingham is building a future that doesn't give two spits about holding on to past disappointments.

"My goal is to create a vibrant downtown Birmingham to attract brain trust millennials," Stewart said. "I think businesses will follow."

Birmingham is close, he said. Close to better.

"I feel like we are on the cusp of getting there, regardless of the political scene at times," Stewart said. "For the first time in a long time we've had a real mayor."

I hope it all happens. I believe it will. I believe next year those of us who love the city will look around and say "Wow, look at us." And then - and this is more important - we'll say "What are we going to do next?"

Because all those who told us we could not do better are dead. Or gone. Or dying.

It is not just about buildings. Or Stewart. Or some company. Change happens when we think as much about what we leave as what we make.

"We can all make money and do well financially," as Stewart put it. "But the legacy is what we do for others."

Our legacy in Birmingham - for Birmingham - is nothing less than a better Birmingham.