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Redefining Birmingham's shopping center

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Photos by Shay Allen.

Staff photo.

Photo by Sarah Finnegan.

Photos by Shay Allen.

You probably don’t think of downtown Birmingham as a retail hotbed for holiday shopping.

That may be changing, however, as new retailers take a chance on the area, joining other hardy souls who’ve stuck it out there for years or have opened shops over the last decade as the City Center has begun to awaken.

In fact, we discovered that downtown — defined for this article as the old retail and commercial core north of Morris Avenue — already provides a surprising number of places to shop.

And given its other culinary and cultural offerings, downtown could provide a fun Christmas experience for shoppers who wish to spend at least one day away from the crowded malls.

One unlikely new downtown merchant is Brandon Hays, a young attorney. He recently opened Artefact Supply, a men’s boutique on Second Avenue North next to El Barrio restaurant.

This new venture makes perfect sense to Hays, who said the ongoing boom in downtown apartments and entertainment makes establishments like his a necessity to serve the increasing number of young professionals like him who love city living and have chosen to stay in Birmingham.

“You had the bars come, then you had the restaurants come,” Hays said. “Now you have grocery shopping with Publix. So the only thing — the only thing — that’s missing is retail.”

Many of the new downtown residents have no desire to drive to the suburbs to buy things they want, according to Hays, one of the founders of Second Row Law, near Urban Standard.

“I was living and working downtown, and you would have to drive over the mountain, either to the Summit or down to the Nordstrom Rack, to find stuff that you liked,” he said.

That desire to be at the center of the new downtown action was also a driver for Ace Graham, one of the founders of Alchemy 213, a boutique that opened on 20th Street North in 2015.

“I spent the last couple of years in Bologna, Italy, and any time you travel in the European Union, you start in the center of the city and go out from there, and we wanted that kind of energy,” Graham said. “We wanted to have a space that was geographically OK for everyone to reach from the interstate.”

Steve Gilmer, owner of What’s On Second — a collectibles shop on First Avenue North — is also bullish on downtown.

“As more people move downtown, you will find the businesses that are needed to support those people will move back,” said Gilmer, a retail pioneer who opened in 2007 in his original location on Second Avenue North. “Retail is going to come with more and more people down here. It just has to.”

Many other Southern cities already have thriving downtown retail, according to Hays, who said he was inspired to open Artefact after discovering Stag, “a really cool men’s store” in Austin, Texas.

Virtually any kind of retail can now succeed downtown, according to Graham.

“With all the residents who are going in right now, people need things, so you have a lot of opportunity to service these people to keep them from having to go other places,” he said.

”There’s room for everybody,” Hays said. “Particularly with the condo developments and hotels that are slated to come on line … you’re talking about a much more vibrant city, particularly after dark.”

In fact, Birmingham is no longer just a commuter city that rolls up the sidewalks downtown in the evening, Hays said.

“I experience quite a bit of my traffic after 5 o’clock,” he said. “Customers come in whether they are waiting for a table at El Barrio or Bamboo or just out and about walking around — bar-hopping and restaurant-hopping.”

Downtown merchants will get another boost with the opening of the mixed-use development in the old Pizitz department store, according to Graham.

“You’ve got retail spaces going into the bottom of the Pizitz building,” he said. “You’ve got retail space popping up everywhere. We felt like it’s only a short amount of time before it gets back to the way it used to be in downtown Birmingham.”

Like Hays, Gilmer said the opening of the new Publix grocery store will further enhance downtown livability, which helps increase the appetite for retail.

“Suddenly, city living downtown makes more sense now,” Gilmer said. “We will follow up probably with drug stores (and) sooner or later, we’ll have some of the national chains opening up.”

Gilmer and Graham are both optimistic about the future. “We have reached a momentum of development downtown that will be hard to stop,” Gilmer said.

“We feel like there’s going to be a tremendous difference in the environment for shopping and retail downtown in the next 18 months,” Graham added.

But you don’t have to wait 18 months to enjoy shopping downtown. There are numerous merchants who are gearing up for the holiday rush. Retail establishments — as well as other food and entertainment options — available this holiday season.

In fact, the following is only a partial list of the establishments open downtown:

Retail

(Clothing and more)

Gifts and Jewelry

Unique and different

And that's not all

Holiday shopping trips are not solely about shopping. Holiday entertainment available downtown includes:

Food & Beverage

Hey, what’s a shopping trip, to downtown or anyplace, without taking time to eat? Food options downtown include:

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