Five years ago, the Birmingham Housing Authority embarked on an experiment that would raze the Metropolitan Gardens public housing project to the ground and seed a new kind of neighborhood using a $35 million federal grant.

After years of protest, speculation, disappointments, disagreements and delays, the new community is finally sprouting out of the ground where the old one used to be, taking shape in the heart of Downtown Birmingham.

In December, new residents slowly began trickling into the first-of-its-kind neighborhood in the City. It's one specifically engineered for people of all income levels - from public housing residents to college presidents, from corporate leaders to table waiters - to live side-by-side in the same housing development.

It's part of a federal program called Hope VI.

And it's no longer Metropolitan Gardens ; from now on, it's Park Place .

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