NEWS
6 • Thursday, January 14, 2021
Developers Envision a New Brookwood Village feels more like a downtown promenade. Stuermann said he hopes the finished development will feel like a three- or four-block stretch of Greenville, South Carolina, “a walkable, mixed-use place where people live, work and interact,” he said. Though most of the current mall will be demolished, the parking decks will remain intact underneath new residential structures. There’s a large, open-air event plaza planned for the center of the development, with other, smaller green spaces dotted throughout the property. “We picture it being like a living, breathing place … . That activity, that liveliness, will draw people in and make it really feel like the destination it needs to be. We picture having a brewpub, live music, farmer’s markets,” Stuermann said. “In the winter, I’d like to have a temporary ice skating rink. We’d love for it to be as active of a place as you could think of.” That plan largely lined up with
By Sam Prickett Homewood’s much-anticipated Valley Hotel will be opening in a few weeks, and it will bring with it a restaurant, a bar and a coffee shop. The Valley Hotel has been in development since 2016, when Capstone Companies founder Michael Mouron bought the property that formerly housed Hatfield Auto and Little Professor Bookstore. A year later, it was announced that the Valley Hotel would be part of Hilton’s Curio Collection, an upscale brand with more than 30 locations worldwide. After lengthy negotiations with the city of Homewood, construction got underway in 2019, and now the hotel is nearly prepared to open its doors — and the doors of its three new eateries. The ground-floor restaurant, Ironwood Kitchen + Cocktails, will connect the Valley Hotel with the rest of downtown Homewood, while the second-story Terrace Bar will overlook the 18th Street corridor. Valley Coffee Co., a smaller bistro, will be inside, near the hotel’s front desk. Danny Hiatt, the hotel’s regional director and general manager, said he hopes the new food and beverage venues will generate a large local following and “add a lot of charm and quaintness to the Homewood community.” The branding for Ironwood draws on the history of the area. “Really, Birmingham was forged by fire and the city was fueled by a robust coal and iron industry,” Hiatt said. “We wanted to speak to the origins and roots of Birmingham, and we really looked at developing a menu that honors those elements.” Ironwood will be led by Doug Zuk, a chef with years of experience in the food industry, particularly in Las Vegas, where he worked at Top Chef judge Tom Colicchio’s Craftsteak restaurant at the MGM Grand.
what the community wanted, Stuermann said. “People are really passionate about more open space and parks, and we have some of that contemplated in our plan.” Organizations representing Shades Creek and Jemison Park, both of which neighbor the mall, also reached out. “There are a lot of stakeholders in our community that have a vision for what Shades Creek can be,” Stuermann said. “If you think about Shades Creek, in front of Brookwood is the only place where it’s not a natural creek. If you go past Highway 280 to Jemison Park, it’s a meandering creek. And once you get past Target (on the other side of Brookwood Mall) it takes on that character too. I don’t know all that we can do, but I do know it can be improved, and I think there are a lot of people in the community (who) have a passion for it.” Stuermann said he hopes to have a
love for those businesses to stay open, but there will be a lot of construction and traffic.”
Connections to the Past
rezoning plan submitted to the city of Homewood by early next month. Once that’s approved and construction begins, the project will take between 18 months and two years to complete.
‘A walkable, mixed-use place where people live, work and interact.’ MARK STUERMANN, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT OF ARLINGTON PROPERTIES
Construction will displace some of the current tenants, though Stuermann said he hopes they’ll be able to return once the redevelopment is finished. “There’s certainly a period of time where it will be under construction and there’s not really going to be any space to occupy,” he said. “The retail parcels along Brookwood Village Lane, those will remain, and we’d
New Valley Hotel Includes Three Eateries “He was kind of a pioIronwood Kitchen + neer in the Vegas industry Cocktails, Terrace Bar, for a while,” Hiatt said, “but Valley Coffee Co., are he’s got ties to Birmingham located inside the new and family here. He’s origiValley Hotel. nally a Southern boy at heart, and he’s just so excited to really bring these offerings and these flavors to Birmingham.” The menu will feature “honest food,” Hiatt said, which he described as “reimagined Southern comfort staples (and) an elevated cuisine.” One specialty, for example, will be grouper and grits, which Hiatt called “kind of a play on shrimp and grits with cheddar grit cakes and Conecuh sausage.” Inside, Ironwood will have a “cozy” atmosphere, with dining nooks and castiron finishes. The restaurant also will feature a large outdoor patio abutting 18th Street, which Hiatt closed off separately for separate events, but it’s anticipates “will be very popular.” all beautiful floor-to-ceiling windows. It has a lot Above Ironwood is the Terrace, a second-stoof incoming light right there at the corner, so we ry bar overlooking the corner of 18th Street and think that will be a very high-energy location for 28th Avenue. That bar also will feature indoor us.” and outdoor seating areas with a patio that Hiatt The Terrace Bar will serve cocktails and small anticipates “will be the place to be.” plates; it also will be adjacent to the Red “We’re excited about the indoor/outdoor com- Mountain Ballroom, a second-story venue inside ponent of the Terrace Bar,” he said. “It can be the hotel that will offer 7,000 square feet of
Journal photo by Jordan Wald
By Sam Prickett Late last year, Colliers International and Arlington Properties conducted a series of listening sessions around Homewood about the future of the Brookwood Village Mall. The two companies had just signed a contract to redevelop the flagging mall but wanted to get feedback from the community before moving forward. Colliers and Arlington already had some idea of what they wanted to do with the property, of course, reimagining Brookwood Village as a multi-use development including retail, restaurants, high-end apartments, office spaces, a luxury hotel and a conference center. Shopping malls have been on the decline for years – Brookwood Village is almost half-empty – and a nationwide pandemic didn’t help things. “I think COVID has accelerated what’s happening nationwide to malls, and I think it’s maybe pushed the timeline for this project maybe sooner than it otherwise would have been,” said Mark Stuermann, executive vice president of Arlington Properties’ development division. “But our vision for it hasn’t really changed.” That vision is to do away with most of the traditional mall structure and replace it with something that
OVER THE MOUNTAIN JOURNAL
Stuermann said the community listening sessions highlighted to him how important the Brookwood mall is to people in Homewood and the surrounding areas. “I would say that people are passionate about Brookwood,” he said. “I heard so many great stories from people about their experiences growing up there, going there. “We got one email from a lady who said she truly grew up at Brookwood. Her father was the first manager of the property, and so she spent a bunch of time in his office at the mall, which is really neat. … I’ve even gotten funny stories about how there was an Applebee’s inside the mall, and if you could get seating in the atrium outside the restaurant, that was the thing to do.” Though plans are now moving forward, developers still welcome community feedback at brookwoodvillagevision.com. “We want this to be a place that the community supports and wants to be there,” Stuermann said. “We’re open for feedback.”
meeting space. “It’s a beautiful, gorgeous ballroom, and we think it will be the ideal setting for weddings and social events as well as corporate meetings,” Hiatt said, noting that the venue already has received a slew of wedding inquiries. Also inside the hotel is the Valley Coffee Co., a lobby-level bistro that will feature upscale coffee offerings. In the morning, the bistro will offer pastries and savory items; in the afternoon, its menu will expand to include a variety of gourmet salads and sandwiches. Hiatt also highlighted a small courtyard area outside the bistro, which he said “has a really beautiful feel with a lot of foliage” and will feature customer seating. “It’s kind of an escape into its own little setting,” he said. The prospect of launching three new eateries – along with a new hotel – during a pandemic can be “a little daunting,” Hiatt admitted, but he pointed to the safety protocols mandated by Hilton as a reassurance. “We take COVID very seriously, and we’ll be following all the CDC guidelines with social distancing and masks required,” Hiatt said. “Hilton is a world-class leader in sanitation, and they’ve taken the lead in the hotel world with a couple of programs, like CleanStay for the guest rooms and EventReady for the event spaces. We just want everyone to feel very comfortable and safe, and there’s a lot of protocols we follow with very detailed cleaning and sanitation. “We don’t want to scare anyone away. We want them to feel comfortable and relaxed and (as though they are) coming into an environment that’s really going to be razor-sharp as it relates to sanitation.” The opening date for the development has not been set. To keep up with progress and find more information on the Valley Hotel, Ironwood, Terrace Bar and Valley Coffee Co., visit valleyhotelbirmingham.com.
