Neighborhood hosting city revitalization conference
Five Points South will host the third annual aLABama Downtown Laboratory conference Aug. 22-24. The conference, hosted by nonprofit group Main Street Alabama, will bring downtown revitalization experts, historic preservationists and economic development professionals to discuss downtown redevelopment through better design with the theme “Good Design. Good Business.”
This year’s conference focuses on design, one of Main Street’s four major initiatives for community development.
Main Street works with 20 designated communities, larger communities that have undergone a five-month application and competitive selection, and 30 network communities, typically smaller communities that have just begun to explore a redevelopment program.
Past aLABama Downtown conferences were in Montgomery, but Main Street Alabama Marketing and Communication Coordinator Marylon Barkan said it has always been a goal to host a conference in a designated community. Birmingham, she said, was a fairly clear choice.
“We wanted to do it here because it gives conference goers the chance to experience what we’re talking about in a real-life setting,” she said. “They can walk the footprint of the community and understand how these programs are working.”
She said the Five Points neighborhood, in particular, fit the bill because of its social atmosphere and culinary district. This year’s conference will be at Hotel Highland, which is a two-minute walk from Highlands United Methodist Church, where most conference sessions will be.
The three-day conference kicks off Aug. 22 with attendees attending sessions on pop-ups in underutilized spaces, branding communities, design solutions for downtowns and neighborhood commercial districts, rural trends in technology and adaptive uses of historic buildings.
Featured speakers for the event include Ed McMahon, senior staff adviser for Urban Land Institute’s Building Healthy Places Initiative, and Donovan Rypkema, principal of PlaceEconomics, a Washington, D.C.-based real estate and economic development consulting firm.
Designated Main Street Alabama communities will have the opportunity to participate in Shark Tank, during which design-oriented projects are pitched to a panel of potential funders and a live audience. The design panel, consisting of a landscape architect, traffic engineer, branding expert and architect, will work on the winning community’s project pro bono. Barkan said it is one of her favorite aspects of the conference.
Tickets to the conference are $150. Tickets for the post and pre-LAB luncheons, as well as Awards for Excellence Main Street Dinner, can be purchased for an additional cost. For more information on the aLABama Downtown Laboratory conference go to mainstreetalabama.org.