Parkside master plan takes another step with construction of Urban Supply

It’s been one year since Birmingham property development firm Orchestra Partners and acclaimed landscape architect Tom Leader announced they were collaborating on a master plan for the city’s burgeoning Parkside District.

Orchestra Partners and Leader announced the plan at the Powell Steam Plant on Nov. 7, 2019, accompanied by project partners Alabama Power, Freshwater Land Trust (FWLT), REV Birmingham, Urban Impact and the city of Birmingham.

A mixed-use redevelopment of the steam plant, owned by Alabama Power, will anchor Parkside East.

Orchestra Partners also shared their plan to renovate several vintage warehouses west of Railroad Park, in Parkside West.

The developers announced this fall they are moving forward with renovating those warehouses.

The project is called Urban Supply, harkening back to the district’s commercial importance to the booming Birmingham of the early 20th century.

Orchestra Partners purchased buildings between 14th Street South and 12th Street South and between First Avenue South and Second Avenue South, alongside or west of Good People Brewing Co.

The buildings will be turned into roughly 100,000 square feet of commercial space housing retailers, restaurants and fitness providers designed to serve the needs of UAB students and the growing number of people living in Parkside.

There will also be open areas and study spots in an eco-minded space defined by distinctive architecture and native plantings.

“Urban Supply is a gamechanger for the Parkside District,” said Hunter Renfroe, a principal and co-founder of Orchestra Partners.

“After being abandoned and underutilized for so many years, it’s exciting to reimagine what these warehouses will become,” Renfroe said.

Construction is set to begin in early 2021, according to the developers.

Developers say that Urban Supply will revive disused historic structures, further activate an already booming area, provide more amenities and pedestrian-friendly green space and — perhaps most important— help fulfill another piece of the Parkside master plan and restore vital connections between the downtown and surrounding neighborhoods that have been cut off in recent decades from the growing vibrancy of the City Center.

“Parkside is an incredibly important connector piece,” said Phil Amthor, development associate at Orchestra Partners. “It connects north, south, east and west of downtown.”

This includes the Titusville neighborhood just west of Interstate 65, Amthor said.

PAST BECOMES FUTURE

Orchestra Partner’s vision for the warehouses is to restore their functionality so that the area may once again service Birmingham as it did nearly 100 years ago.

The name of the district on the historic register is the Birmingham Wholesale Warehouse Loop District.

The district was once a place where trains and trucks brought in all sorts of processed or finished goods — everything from coffee, cornmeal and flour to dry goods and lumber — to supply the booming industrial town of Birmingham, Amthor said.

Developers see Urban Supply as a place that will again supply the needs of a growing population — this time the growing number of city dwellers in Parkside.

According to a 2020 study by UAB and REV Birmingham, there are 529 residential units in Parkside with 2,034 additional units planned or under construction.

“These two blocks are already sandwiched between our oldest and newest breweries as well as thousands of new apartments that will be teeming with people looking for a place to get outside and enjoy themselves,” Renfroe said.

“There is a residential critical mass with the multifamily development going up in Parkside West that creates somewhat of a captive audience,” said Kyle Dagostino, an architect with Poole and Co. who is working on the project.

“We are the living room for this blossoming new neighborhood,” Amthor said.

“The vision is that the things that are there are things that people feel are necessary and they’re compelled to go to that place because those things are necessaryfor a full experience of living in the city,” Dagostino said.

THE MASTER PLAN

Leader — founder and principal of Berkeley, California-based TLS Landscape Architecture — was the lead planner and designer of Railroad Park.

His plan for Parkside features pedestrian pathways and public spaces enhanced with retail and entertainment amenities.

The goal is to connect the Parkside District to surrounding neighborhoods.

“Connectivity and walkability are core principles of our mission to build a better Birmingham,” Renfroe said in a news release in 2019.

The developers hope to “rebuild connections between Birmingham’s Central Business District and its surrounding neighborhoods by leveraging Railroad Park and the Red Rock Trail System as pathways of connection,” Renfroe said.

Urban Supply is seen as having a key role in this promise to build connectivity.

“The project includes several acres of outdoor spaces that will all be connected to a continuous trail running from Avondale to Titusville and will have on-site recreation and entertainment events that keep the space active all day,” Renfroe said. “By piecing together Avondale, Lakeview, Midtown, Parkside and North Titusville with an extension of the Rotary Trail, we take a major step toward connecting the city and bringing Birminghamians within walking distance of the City Center.”

Rotary Trail is part of the Red Rock Trail System managed by FWLT and currently stops at 20th Street South.

That proposed extension of the Rotary Trail began in May as a pop-up trail along First Avenue South in Parkside spossored by Orchestra Partners and REV Birmingham.

The developers are working with REV Birmingham and the city to make the trail extension permanent, Amthor said.

Renfroe said that he and his firm are passionate about restoring the connections between downtown and other nearby neighborhoods.

“We believe that we can make the world a better place by building well-connected urban spaces that bring people together,” Renfroe said. “Birmingham, like many cities across America, has a history of racial inequality, segregation and divisiveness that continues to plague us, in part because we still maintain the physical barriers that were built to divide us.”

Sadly, the automobiles that Americans love help them transport themselves around cities without ever stepping out of their “comfort zones,” Renfroe said.

“Each neighborhood has its own unique history, and connecting these neighborhoods is key to seeing Birmingham realize its potential as a diverse collection of communities, all connected via a vibrant urban core,” Renfroe said.

“Isolated islands of development don’t work as well as pearls that are strung together in a necklace with a comprehensive idea of how to move you from one side of the city to the other,” Dagostino said.

GETTING OUTSIDE

Developers want Urban Supply to “be a place where you can go and spend an entire day,” Amthor said. “You don’t have to have a destination in mind. You can arrive, and there is something for everybody.”

“It should feel good to be there,” Dagostino said. “You should feel comfortable.”

It will be a place where you will expect to run into someone you know or even meet someone new, he said.

“It should be a place to meet and gather and make personal connections with other human beings” Dagostino said.

Urban Supply will offer a large amount of outdoor public space, said Paige Ishmael, landscape architect and the manager of the project for Dix.Hite+Partners.

Dix.Hite is responsible for the exterior design of the district, including the hardscape and landscape of the site from the exterior walls of the buildings out, Ishmael said.

Urban Supply “connects the outdoor play experience of Railroad Park with the entertainment of Regions Field to offer an exterior experience filled with retail, dining, socializing and wellness opportunities, focused on the pedestrian,” Ishmael said.

“The exterior design of Urban Supply activates the historic alleyway that once connected two blocks of buildings by rail line, and reimagines it for the use of the pedestrian,” Ishmael said. “Patrons of Urban Supply will be able to eat, drink, walk or bike amongst historic buildings that represent the heart of Birmingham’s past, now connected by an open plaza-like experience.”

The pedestrian alley, which will extend from Good People Brewing Co. west all the way to 13th Street South and feature numerous restaurants, will be “a unique destination” and will be the center of the entire development, Amthor said.

“It will feel intimate,” he said. “It's going to feel like a pedestrian space that we don’t have in too many other places in the city.”

The alley will draw tourists and attendees from Birmingham Barons games at Regions Field, and add more vibrancy to the city, Amthor said.

“The buildings and the exterior environment will work together and be equally important,” Dagostino said. The pedestrian alley and the streetscape improvements are “absolutely necessary,” he said. “The project doesn’t work without it.”

“There’s a synergy between the landscape and the hardscape and the architecture,” Dagostino said.

Currently the site is “largely concrete and asphalt,” Ishmael said.

But the plan is to break up that concrete with bioswales and plantings, including native species.

“Being located adjacent to Railroad Park, we incorporated as many moments of lush landscape as we could in order to define the space and bring shade and a feeling of comfort to patrons, extending the feel of a park through this site,” Ishmael said.

PANDEMIC NOT A HINDRANCE

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has not slowed the planning for Supply District, Renfroe said.

“Like any Orchestra project, Urban Supply incorporates a lot of outdoor space which will make it a popular destination both during and after the pandemic,” Renfroe said. “We hope that by the time Urban Supply is ready to welcome the public, COVID-19 will be a thing of the past.”

“Residential construction is not closed down, and folks are going to be moving in,” Amthor added. “They will want services: retail, restaurants, bars, entertainment. Urban Supply will provide all that in a setting they can walk to.”

LEASING IN PROGRESS

Developers are currently in discussion with “a lot of potentially exciting tenants” for Urban Supply, Renfroe said.

“The project is moving forward, and we have gone pretty far with design and branding and have made really good progress with leasing,” Amthor said.

“We hope to make our first tenant announcements later this year or early 2021,” Renfroe said.

The project will have a total of 16 tenant spaces, which will house about five to seven food and beverage tenants, four to six fitness and retail tenants, and three to five office tenants, not including some pop-up spaces in the alley, Renfroe said.

UPDATE ON STEAM PLANT

The renovated Steam Plant — measuring about 85,000 square feet — will anchor Parkside East and become an entertainment venue with movies, music, events, retail and restaurants, the developers said in November 2019.

Planning continues for the project, Amthor said.

“We are looking forward to making some announcements soon,” Amthor said.

In October, the National Park Service approved the developer’s plans to renovate the Steam Plant as part of the process for applying to the federal agency for historic tax credits.

PARTNERS

Other project partners on Urban Supply include Retail Specialists, Shelby General Contractors and planning and engineering firm Kimley-Horn.

Project partners on the Parkside master plan include the city of Birmingham, Alabama Power, Freshwater Land Trust, REV Birmingham and Urban Impact.