Birmingham’s Southtown development moves forward with planned hotel, offices, retail

Southtown

Children play kickball in the Southtown housing community, with St. Vincent's Hospital in the background. (Birmingham News File Photo/Linda Stelter)bn

Southtown, the public housing community sitting on 26 acres of high-demand property behind a painted wall on University Boulevard between St. Vincent’s Hospital and the UAB campus, is finally ready for its makeover.

The Birmingham City Council voted on Tuesday to re-zone the Southtown Court public housing campus from multiple dwelling to mixed-use. That will make way for a mix of residential development, hotel and office space, parking garages and retail space on the opposite side of Red Mountain Expressway from St. Vincent’s Hospital.

The move clears the way for the beginning of demolition of abandoned apartments and the construction of a hotel and medical office complex along University Boulevard west of the Expressway. The development will include 850,000 square feet of office and commercial space, with room for retail and restaurants.

Southtown Court is a 445-unit public housing community where 1,000 people formerly lived. Only about 88 of the 445 units are still occupied. Those who still live there will remain in their apartments until the new housing is completed. The currently occupied apartments will be the last section demolished.

“Residents were given the right to return,” said Christie Hilliard, real estate development analyst for the Birmingham Housing Authority. All residents met with case workers who explained their options, she said.

The remainder of the residents have been re-located as the Birmingham Housing Authority offered a variety of options for vouchers for home ownership, rent assistance vouchers and a choice of moving to other apartments owned by the Birmingham Housing Authority.

City Council member Steven Hoyt pressed officials of the Birmingham Housing Authority for details on where Southtown residents could move and have moved.

“We just don’t want to concentrate poverty,” Hoyt said. “We want to de-concentrate poverty.”

About 224 families chose rental vouchers that they could use with private landlords, choosing their own housing location, said Cindi Herrera, an official with the Housing Authority of Birmingham Division.

Many of those who stayed in Birmingham Housing Authority properties chose to move to Park Place, the downtown HOPE VI development that was built as a mix of subsidized federal housing and market-rate rentals in the footprint of where the former Metropolitan Gardens public housing was located in central Birmingham.

A new trend has been to tear down old, crowded public housing where the poorest people are concentrated and replace those apartments with mixed-income developments meant to attract non-subsidized renters. Park Place, the HOPE VI plan that replaced the old Metropolitan Gardens community downtown, was Birmingham’s first example of that model.

The new development on the site of Southtown Court will include up to 560 housing units, equally divided between federally subsidized housing and market-rate rentals. Initial plans call for 220 subsidized units.

The re-development plan calls for green space including “pocket parks” and a buffer along the west side of Red Mountain Expressway.

New buildings, including hotels and office space, cannot exceed 225 feet in height.

Southside Development Corporation, a consortium that includes Corporate Realty Development and other partners, will oversee the development.

Built in 1941, the densely populated, impoverished Southtown Court public housing community was beset with problems over the decades. Drugs, crime and violence made Southtown a grim, depressing home at times, said many of its residents who favored an update to the area.

Demolition is expected to begin in June. Construction of replacement housing will begin in the fall.

Southtown proposal

This architectural rendering shows the proposed redevelopment of Southtown, with St. Vincent's Hospital visible on the right, east of the Red Mountain Expressway.

Southtown

The Southtown land use plans show section A, where the remaining residents live, which will be the last area to be demolished. The buildings that are in Area B, which is planned for a medical office building and a hotel, and areas C and D will be demolished.

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