A little bit of everything

The typical small retail centers and strip malls have a depressing sameness.

With fast food restaurants, nail parlors, cellphone stores and loan offices, these developments usually aren’t thought of as vibrant neighborhood centers. But Birmingham has at least one big exception to that rule: The Shoppes of Crestwood, a locally focused retail center on Crestwood Boulevard near 56th Street South. 

The Shoppes boasts about a dozen small businesses, including a coffee house, antique mall, record store, tavern and restaurant.

The center has taken advantage of its long history and prime location to become a point of pride and a community gathering spot for Crestwood, a once-declining area that has been revitalized in recent years by a parade of new faces, not unlike the mall itself, residents said.

The Shoppes are frequented by everyone from bearded hipsters to moms with strollers, and the mall’s tenants seem to revel in its specialness.

“We beat to our own little drum over here,” said Susan Hartley, a neighborhood resident and manager of Crestwood Coffee Company, which has served as a place to meet and chat for a decade. “For a strip mall, we have a very unique, unusual vibe.”

Originally called Crestwood Center, the mall is about 35,000 square feet. It was completed in 1957 and expanded in 1958, according to bhamwiki.com. 

Birmingham attorney Payne Baker and two partners — one of whom, Blake Millican, opened Crestwood Tavern in 2005 — bought the development in 2014 and renamed it.

Mary Romeo Young, owner of 33-year tenant Romeo’s Sporting Goods, calls it “very friendly, very family-oriented.”

“It’s a neighborhood-friendly vibe,” said Newman Evans, a barber who runs Newman’s Classic Cuts inside Seasick Records at the center.

The mall’s Crestwood location is a key to its success, said Seasick Records owner Daniel Drinkard, who moved to the center in June 2015. “There are a lot of families, and people in Crestwood really support local businesses, so it’s nice to be here,” he said.

“I think Crestwood is the best neighborhood in Birmingham,” Baker said. “About 90 percent of the people are wonderful. It’s an eclectic bunch. Everyone seems to get along with each other. This is a neighborhood center, and I think it’s very reflective of the neighborhood.”

Baker said he and the mall’s new owners wanted local businesses for the Shoppes. That said, a few establishments in the mall at the time of the ownership change are no longer there, like the Urban Cottage gift shop, an alterations shop, upholstery shop and State Farm insurance office.

“Urban Cottage just decided to leave,” Baker said. “The upholstery shop and the alterations and State Farm we asked to leave [because] we didn’t feel it was the tenant mix we wanted.”

Pete Williams, owner and stylist at Hi-Tech Hair, had nothing but praise for the owners’ efforts.

“It’s a lot better than it was before, now that the guys who have it are trying to add a lot of spice to it,” said Williams, a former Crestwood resident who moved his shop to the mall in 2008 from Mountain Brook.

“We’ve been very protective about the tenant mix,” Baker said. “We’ve turned down more people than we’ve signed up, just because we didn’t feel they brought anything to the center or to the neighborhood. Luckily, we’re in a position that we could be selective.” There are presently two vacancies at The Shoppes.

Several tenants said the city’s $2.5 million renovation of Crestwood Park next to the mall was good for business. The renovation, completed in 2012, was “a big enhancement for the neighborhood,” Williams said. “That park draws a lot of people from all over town.”

The individual businesses make their own contributions to the center’s vitality. Crestwood Coffee Company, owned for five years by Danny Winter, is a “common meeting place” and has “probably brought a lot of the community together more,” Hartley said.

Seasick Records draws college students from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and other campuses, Evans and Drinkard said. Urban Suburban Antiques — the largest retail space at the center — is “not just an old-school antique mall,” employee Marty Robbins said. “We have attracted … a lot of younger decorators who are looking for different kinds of things.”

In 2015, Bobby Lorino and Pat Sanford, owners of Rogue Tavern and Pale Eddie’s on Second Avenue North in downtown, converted an old gas station at the corner of Crestwood Boulevard and 56th Street into The Filling Station bar and restaurant.

And the restaurant has boosted customer traffic at the center, according to several tenants. “We feed off them, and they feed off us,” Crestwood resident Lorino said. “That’s why I really like it.”

Many customers, especially area residents, see The Shoppes as a nice place to spend time, Drinkard said.

“It’s not a place where you do your thing and leave,” he said. “(People) will go to the antique store. They will get their coffee or get their hair cut or go to The Filling Station and hang around the area. The park is good, too. It’s just a cool, fun, light atmosphere.”

This atmosphere is reflective of positive changes in Crestwood, said Young, who grew up there. “I’ve seen it flourish, decline and now it’s in a revitalization period, so I see a lot of young families moving in and renovate the homes, and I think it’s coming back to life,” she said.

The Shoppes owners said they plan to start an upgrade of the center’s façade. There will also be a local compounding pharmacy with “an old-timey soda fountain” opening this summer, Baker said. 

The mall has a florist, Grant May of Park Lane Flowers; Boxcar Vape, a vaping lounge; and the Vineyard Food Market, with a large beer and wine selection.

“You’ve got everything here,” Lorino said. “It’s becoming like a little suburb of Chicago where you can walk to get everything you need.”

Because The Shoppes has been so successful, Baker and his partners also purchased the Family Dollar strip mall on Fourth Avenue South in Avondale near Continental Gin in mid-May for $700,000 from Avonwood Properties LLC. They plan to follow a similar model of bringing in local businesses, according to Baker. 

So far, there are two confirmed tenants: Sheppard’s Pet Supply and City Vision Magazine. A micro-distillery is planning to lease at the mall, and the partners would like to bring an organic grocery as well.

“We want to do the same thing all over again,” Baker said.