Renovations are already underway on downtown Birmingham's historic Federal Reserve building. Yet they made it official Wednesday evening.

Building architects, developers, contractors and other officials held a tile-breaking ceremony alongside Birmingham Mayor William Bell.

"I know you've worked on many projects in and around this area. This is probably one of the most important ones to come along in a long time," Bell said.

The ceremony took place shortly after Urban Cookhouse announced an upcoming location in the 1927 building at 1801 5th Ave. North.

The building renovations are being handled by Harbert Realty and Capstone Real Estate Investments, who purchased the 85,000 square-foot property in September 2014. Hoar Contraction is the contractor. The architects are from Williams Blackstock.

Ground was broken on the $20 million redevelopment in November 2015.

"We're just grateful that this building, which was vacated at the time and the Federal Reserve had moved out, and it languished here for some time now. And you see the love and care and business acquisition that has gone into developing the plan to restore this building and to make it something that can be a shining example of what we can do with historical tax credit," Bell said. "We've got so many projects that are going on right now in the downtown area that if it were not for the Alabama historical tax credit, they would not happen, and this is one of those projects."

The property is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Previous redevelopment projects have been proposed but fell through.