The N.C. State Bar is poised to build a four-story, $14 million headquarters in downtown Raleigh.

The state agency, which regulates the legal profession, has secured a site at the corner of Blount and Edenton streets for a new 60,000-square-foot building that it expects to begin constructing next year. Target date for occupying the building is the first half of 2012, said Tom Lunsford, executive director.

The bar has outgrown its current downtown headquarters on Fayetteville Street, a 28,000 square-foot building it moved into in 1979 when it had 13 employees, said Lunsford. Today it has a staff of about 75.