Cathy Sloss-Crenshaw is standing with her back to what just might be the most breathtaking view of Birmingham in the City.

Fingers splayed, her hands move rapidly over blocks of an enlarged map of the City Center, as a group of Anniston city leaders look on. Anniston's mayor, city councilmen and business owners have gathered at Sloss Real Estate Group, located atop a steep ridge near Red Mountain. They sit in a conference room where the far wall is made of floor-to-ceiling glass, offering a panoramic view of the Magic City that stretches for miles. In a single glance, one takes in tree-lined neighborhoods, skyscrapers and beetle-sized cars buzzing along the interstates that encircle the city.

But the men and women gathered in Sloss-Crenshaw's conference room are ignoring the view, concentrating instead on their hostess. They have come to discuss the concepts of urban revitalization, to help create a new vision for their own city and to learn how to carry out that vision with precision and skill.

It's a subject Sloss-Crenshaw knows a thing or two about.

Revival With Roots
Though she says many things to the Anniston group, the phrase Sloss-Crenshaw repeats most often is "pieces of a puzzle." It's clear in the way that she gazes at the map before her that "a puzzle" is exactly what she sees in the computer-generated blocks that represent buildings and land and people.

It's equally clear - from the enthusiastic way she speaks of rebuilding Birmingham from the inside out - that finding a solution to this puzzle is what most fascinates the developer.

Sloss-Crenshaw speaks of the importance, in a larger sense, of building pathways between Anniston and Birmingham and the mutual rewards for growing together as a single region. That process begins, she explains, by building each city from within in such a way as to create rich, diverse communities.

"You need a clearly-defined downtown," Sloss-Crenshaw tells the group. "You have to hold onto your history, as we have."
Revival with roots is the monogram of Sloss-Crenshaw's resume, and even her personal history. Her great-great grandfather, Col. James W. Sloss, was one of the original barons who ignited the steel boom that put Birmingham on the map. The former railroad man and founder of Sloss Furnace Co. in the early 1880s, recognized Birmingham's potential in the steel industry, then helped grow it into the "Pittsburgh of the South."

It is ironic that Birmingham's well-documented decline of the 1970s came in no small part as the result of a loss of jobs in the steel industry, which had in the century before it, given birth to the "Magic City". More ironic still, Sloss-Crenshaw has come along a century later to help generate the wave of rebirth that now reverberates throughout Birmingham.

It's All About People

Sloss-Crenshaw got her start as a developer in the 1980s. An unlikely candidate for the field, she went to work for her father, Pete, armed with a college degree in English and what Michael Calvert calls the instincts of a visionary.

"A lot of people have visionary ideas, but she understands the financing, the actual development steps that are needed to make it happen," Calvert says. "She brings together vision for the community and the City with hard-nosed real estate development expertise."

Calvert serves as the executive director of Operation New Birmingham (ONB), a non-profit agency devoted to the revitalization of Downtown. In 2003, Sloss-Crenshaw ended her term as chair of the ONB board. During her long tenure on the board, Calvert says, she pushed non-stop to generate growth in the City Center.
"I think she is one of those people who recognizes the importance of the city core," he says. "The City Center is the heart of the metropolitan area and it's important to keep that thriving."

Calvert says Sloss-Crenshaw's vision is obvious in her very first development project in the Lakeview District, an area that sits on the edge of the City Center. Sloss-Crenshaw took on Lakeview more than 20 years ago, when it was a mostly abandoned, one-time light-manufacturing district.

At the time, he adds, others took one look at the empty lots, the sub-standard housing and the overgrowth choking Lakeview and looked no further. Sloss-Crenshaw took one look and saw an historic relic of the past with the potential to become a testament to the City's future.

"She has the boldness to try things that others might shy away from. She really sees the highest and best potential for an area and goes after it," Calvert says. First, developers like Sloss Real Estate and Bayer Properties gave businesses - particularly those on 29th Street South and 7th Avenue South - attractive storefronts in which to operate. Historically relevant details like sidewalks, green space and teardrop-shaped lamp posts were added and preserved. They deliberately planned events, such as the seasonal Pepper Place Farmer's Market, street fairs and the Shamrock Festival in honor of St. Patrick's Day - all in an effort to herd people into the area.

Today, Lakeview is a designated design district, the daytime home to Pepper Place and a thriving vein of related merchants, such as architects and interior design firms. When the sun sets, the area is transformed into a hotbed of entertainment options - brightly littered with clubs, restaurants and most importantly, Sloss-Crenshaw insists, people.

"It's all about people," she says. "It's all about bringing them together." It's also all about preservation for Sloss-Crenshaw, who chatters excitedly and at length about the bounty of historic buildings, neighborhoods and homes in Birmingham. Though she can't save them all, she has saved several.

One such rescue is the old Federal Reserve building on 19th Street North. Now an 11-story office tower known as One Federal Place, the building was falling into disrepair and blight when Sloss-Crenshaw got her hands on it. In partnership with an Atlanta development firm, Sloss-Crenshaw funneled more than $50 million into One Federal Place and in doing so, managed to create a downtown centerpiece.

Today, the building is home to such heavyweight tenants as the law firm Bradley, Arant, Rose & White, which occupies six floors of the building. Two restaurants also occupy space in One Federal Place - the upscale Restaurant G and the Greek-flavored eatery Zoë's. Both serve to not only feed the hungry downtown masses, but also to drive people to a part of town that not so long ago was all but empty after hours.

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