Montgomery development news

[OldCloverdale]

October 5, 2008


Alleyway to test future of nightlife

Column by Cosby Woodruff

As the Alleyway Project comes closer to comple­ tion, it becomes clear this development will show whether downtown Montgom­ery has true after-five potential.

Other downtown develop­ments -- the baseball stadium and the new hotel and conven­tion center -- work, but they serve very specific purposes.

Baseball fans and large con­ventions have few other choices in Montgomery.

Local residents who might want a nice night out with din­ner and a few drinks have plenty of other places to go. Businesses in the Alleyway will have to con­vince these customers that the entertainment district is the place to be.

The district, bounded by Commerce, Bibb, Coosa and Tal­lapoosa streets will be officially unveiled early next year.

To be sure, people staying at the Renaissance will walk across the street for dinner or to hear a band. But the hotel rooms downtown won't be enough, even when they are filled to near capacity, to carry as many as five restaurants.

These are places that will need to seat customers on a dai­ly basis.

Even though it takes a bit of a creative eye to see through the sawdust and splattered mortar to recognize what will be where, it is obvious the developers are looking for quality places.

So the test here won't be of quality, it will be of location.

A group of people floated the idea that downtown Montgom­ery can be a 24/7 place, not one where government workers and bankers pack up and leave at 5 p.m. only to return the next morning.

The Alleyway Project will test that idea.

Project developers are cor­rect when they say the baseball stadium, new hotels and the con­vention center were the cata­lysts. Those projects proved it is possible to attract people by the thousands to downtown Mont­gomery after dark.

Yet those projects did little to fill Montgomery's sidewalks with people after the evening rush hour.

The Alleyway, if successful, will do that -- at least for its im­mediate area.

It will take a project the size of the Alleyway to make it work. Any one of the ideas put forth by the developers would be in trou­ble if opened in a vacuum. To­gether, they might have a chance.

In a way, that is counter-in­tuitive. Opening four or five new restaurants all at once on the same block would seem to be saturating the market.

In this case, however, it could create a destination in and of itself.

Of course, the restaurants will have to establish their own identities and client base. If one is not up to par, it won't survive.

Two substandard eateries in the same spot can give the whole project a black eye, though.

The whole concept sounds like a lot of fun. It will certainly take as many tourist dollars as it can get, but it won't make it un­less it can draw the local cash.

If it works, it almost certain­ly will lead to some sort of devel­opment along a couple of blocks of Dexter Avenue. If it flops, it will drag downtown redevelop­ment down with it for years.

The Alleyway should have a better-than-even chance of mak­ing it though. Downtown, with the stadium and convention center, is on something of a roll. The Alleyway's developers usually make things work.

Downtown Montgomery's nightlife future could depend on them being right this time.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------