Not Just Another Plan

Is this just an ambitious Birmingham pipe dream, another plan waiting to collect dust bunnies on a forgotten shelf?

Not if Renee Kemp-Rotan and the park’s civic boosters have their way.

“Nobody has looked at this plan and said, ‘This is just ridiculous. We can’t do this in a million years,’” Kemp-Rotan, a City official guiding the planning process. “This plan has been done in such a magnificent way that everybody can actually see the possibilities, that we can actually do this thing. Grand ideas, yes, but they are doable ideas.”

In January, FoRRd and the City of Birmingham officially joined forces, splitting a $160,000 tab to hire nationally-recognized consultants. The outcome is a grand park that they believe will be a cultural attraction as well as an economic development catalyst for Birmingham and the entire region.

Tom Martin and Tom Leader listen as Bill Gilchrist (far rights), head of City Planning Engineering and Permits Department, explains how the proposed park can be linked to upgrades at the nearby train and bus terminals.

Tom Leader, an award-winning landscape architect from Berkeley, CA, is creating what Kemp-Rotan calls a palette, the basic land map for the park.

Tom Martin, a cultural economist with ConsultEcon, Inc. of Cambridge, Massachusetts, is laying the foundation for fund raising efforts and guiding development in such a way that the park generates self-supporting revenues.

The linear park encompasses a total of 70 acres. Leader’s plan focuses especially on the 14-acre strip of vacant city-owned land between the active rail lines and First Avenue South, from 14th Street to 18th Street. The park also includes what is commonly called “The Cut,” a thin strip of abandoned railroad tracks along First Avenue South that runs below-grade from 24th Street to 20th Street South.

The Railroad Reservation Park may one day extend beyond the borders of its proposed boundaries.

During a meeting with Martin, Jefferson County Commissioner Shelia Smoot and county consultants talked about the possibility of linking their growing system of greenways to the new park at some point in the future.
A composite aerial picture of the proposed area where the park will be built.

Everyone’s Included

Kemp-Rotan, in charge of capital projects in the Mayor’s Office, invited the County to be part of the park’s planning process. In fact, she has taken unusual steps to ensure that process is as inclusive as possible.

The Mayor’s Office and FoRRd organized a series of meetings in May with the consultants, who showed their initial concepts for the park to people representing just about every sector of Birmingham.

The “Two Toms” have heard from children and college students, to elected officials and company heads; from architects, geologists and railroad engineers, to history buffs and artists; from civic and neighborhood leaders to just plain ol’ interested citizens. They’ve talked to people in small groups, large groups, in private and public hearings, over dinner and on the phone, on the ground and in tall buildings.
An early model shows the proposed layout for Railroad Reservation Park along railroad tracks in the heat of Downtown Birmingham.

For example, Martin met with chiefs of the Greater Birmingham Convention and Visitors Bureau in May to explain the park. Most of them hadn’t heard of it then.

President Jim Smither and Vice President of Tourism Sara Fuller Hamlin ask what amenities would attract tourists to the park. They said it would need trolleys, spaces for family reunions, places to eat, spots to learn city history and be entertained – anything the bureau could market.

“We want to see some activity that we can sell. Do that, and we’ll be your biggest supporters,” Smither says.

Martin tells them the Railroad Reservation Park could be marketed on many levels – a recreational park for residents and Downtown workers, a regional park featuring events such as the Schaeffer Eye Center Crawfish Boil (already staged at the site), and a destination for conventioneers and tourists.

“The bottom line is that this becomes what Tom Leader calls ‘the regional living room’ for the community, where everybody comes and feels comfortable,” Martin says. “This could be a state park in one of the biggest cities in the state and, arguably, one of the most important national parks in the country.”

After the presentation, Hamlin says, “This is a wonderful project that we would love to see come to fruition.”


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