VESTAVIA HILLS - AL -
The city of Vestavia Hills has purchased the former Food World property located in the Vestavia Plaza Shopping Center at 1052 Montgomery Highway. The cost is slightly over $1 million.
This purchase is part of the city's commitment and support for the
recently completed Highway 31 Corridor Redevelopment Plan.
According to Fred Baughman, the Economic Development Director in Vestavia Hills, the development along the Highway 31 corridor has followed a
conventional 1970's suburban format.
Business is set-back from the highway with vast
parking lots in front, low-rise buildings housing a variety of businesses and
commercial uses, and for the most part isolated within its own parcel, lacking connections
to adjacent properties and the walkable urban fabric of surrounding
neighborhoods.
This purchase will change the idea.
The Regional Planning Commission of Greater Birmingham
(RPCGB) has completed and submitted the US-31 Corridor Redevelopment Plan to
the City of Vestavia Hills.
Baughman says, "This
long-term plan has the potential to totally transform U.S. Highway 31 through
Vestavia Hills into an area which will attract the type of higher intensity,
multiple-activity, and varied use development to match the upscale quality of
life expected in the community."
Three strategies have been identified in the plan:
- Transform Patton Creek into a greenway which;
- Provides
a recreational, educational, and civic amenity for the City and its residents,
- Introduce
a new landmark and identity for the City, and
- Re-establishes
the flood plain and ecosystem of the creek.
- Superimpose form-based codes in strategic
locations along the corridor to jump-start and guide redevelopment efforts; and
- Convert the US-31 corridor into a boulevard
which will separate fast-moving traffic from slow-moving traffic and thus turn
it into a more desirable and pleasant urban thoroughfare which will attract the
type of retail and commercial development requested by the community.
