Academy Sports & Outdoors will not renew its lease at Birmingham's Wildwood Centre in Homewood but said in a statement that  it plans to open a minimum of four new stores in Alabama in the next 12 months. Wildwood, opened in 1998, represented its first Birmingham store.


 


Excluding Wildwood, Academy has three stores in the Birmingham area and seven in Alabama. It has more than 100 stores in the Southeast.


 


“We want residents of Alabama to be able to benefit from Academy's everyday low prices no matter where in the state they live,” said Carl Main, Academy's vice president for marketing and advertising, in a press release. “That's why we plan to open more Academy stores in Alabama and throughout the entire Southeastern United States in the coming years.”