Redevelopment of Trinity Heights site under consideration

When Trinity Medical Center left Montclair Road for U.S. 280 in 2015, the future of the old hospital “weighed on residents’ minds” in Crestwood, Birmingham City Councilor Darrell O’Quinn said. 

“They’ve looked across town to Carraway and imagined a similar fate,” said O’Quinn, referring to the long-vacant Carraway Hospital.

But the Trinity campus may become an upscale mixed-use community called Trinity Heights. Maryland-based developer Ben Berman announced in May he wants to bring in apartments, condominiums, a hotel, offices, retail, eateries and entertainment.

Berman, who signed contracts on the land and buildings in January, is currently determining whether the project is feasible. He told Iron City Ink in July he hoped to decide by the end of September.

O’Quinn said he hopes Trinity Heights will move forward. Area “residents seem to be pretty much uniformly pleased that the property’s value and potential appears to have once again been recognized,” he said. 

His only concern is “the project’s potential to drive interest” in an adjacent forested hillside that O’Quinn would like to preserve.

Berman received a warm reception at an April meeting of the Crestwood South Neighborhood, neighborhood president Elizabeth Murray said. “90 percent of [those attending the] meeting were in favor,” she said.