Birmingham travel: the rebirth of a city of dying once

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama, it feels like Birmingham is finally coming out of the shadows by the ugly racial violence of 1963.

Time haunted by images in black-and-white newsreel of the fire hoses and police dogs leading of the city which became blacks demonstrating for civil rights, the city has a new environment that is generating buzz all his 50 years later.

Culinary scene of Birmingham is a gem, known nationally for chefs and restaurants and decades of white flight are giving step by people moving to apartments and condo with walls of brick in vacant downtown buildings naked once. The tables are filled with bars and restaurants located in old brick commercial buildings.

The city minor league baseball team moved this season from the suburbs and is attracting large crowds to a new stadium Center that overlooks the skyline of Birmingham. It is opposite a City Park, built at what was a fraught with ugly batch of weeds and gravel along the railroad lines.

All that combined with a thriving scene of the nightclub, new craft breweries and an entertainment district that has started to open, and suddenly Birmingham is becoming a hot spot for residents and visitors alike.

"Birmingham is trying to return that they have achieved," said the visitor Ron Lee, charging your car after your stay at the new Westin of the city during a holiday trip with his wife.

Lee, who lives in Washington, D.C., was impressed by the city parks and trees. The welcoming attitude of residents and pace are what really stood out, however.

"It is very southern."Everyone is very friendly, he said. "It's more progressive than I expected."

Birmingham was not very attractive to visitors - or many residents, otherwise - for decades.

Once labeled with the ugly nickname "Bombingham" for the attacks racist of the 1950s and 1960s, when racial segregation was the law, Birmingham was a city on the edge for years. The city put its ugliest face forward to the spring of 1963, when young protesters advocating for human rights met with dogs, fire hoses and jail. A Ku Klux Klan bombing that September killed four black girls in the Church.

Skies of the city were stained Misty red smoke of steel factories, and thousands of white residents fled to the suburbs for fear of the same things that plague other urban areas: crime, decline of industry, crumbling schools and diminishing opportunities.

Birmingham seemed as if out in a long march toward death. After reaching a peak of 340.887 in the Census of 1960, the population declined steadily at the current level, 212.237. Vacant homes are found across most every neighborhood.

While people did not stop to leave, the city began to change in the years 1970 and 1980 as finance and medicine replaced steel as the primary industries of Birmingham. The sky lit up--literally--as the mills closed, but few outside civic boosters seemed to care.

That has changed in recent months as the rebirth of the city began to gain steam and people started to notice.

National Geographic Traveler had recently mentioned rebirth of the city, and Forbes cited as an emerging city for young professionals. Today Show NBC offered Birmingham as an attractive destination due to its history and affordability, and Zagat has shown a scene of restaurant comprising chef Frank Stitt Highlands Bar and Grill logo.

USA Today had threaded sidewalk Film Festival in Birmingham as one of the top film of the nation, and the cultural website Flavorwire majestic appears Alabama theater, built in 1927, as one of the 10 most beautiful theaters in America.

Much of the recent attention was linked to the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the demonstrations of the civil rights of 63, but other things are happening to create buzz. People like Ron Lee has come to town and enjoy what they found, including the renovated Park of Vulcan that dominates the center of the city from the top of Red Mountain.

Even team of minor-league baseball in the city, dating back to 1885 - has returned to the city after doing nothing more than occasional visits from the end of the 1980s.

After 25 years in a park of concrete and steel in the southern suburbs of the city, the barons of Birmingham this spring moved new Center in a new stadium, for $65 million, which offers views of medical and financial centers of the city. Critics said people do not visit an urban park for fear of crime and blight, but they were wrong.

The barons have already had three sellouts in the field from the regions of 8,500 seats from the NBA star Michael Jordan played with the barons in suburban Hoover in 1994 and the average attendance so far is 5.528 fans a game against 3,004 throughout the last year.

New housing developments are planned near the stadium, as well as shopping. Nick Dobreff team spokesman said the club is happy to be part of the new Birmingham.

"Things are moving in the right direction, and we hope to be a catalyst for further growth," he said.

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If you go...

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama: http://birminghamal.org/

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