Redevelopment of the Highway 31 South Area

The City of Vestavia Hills recently hosted a planning charrette to examine options and engage stakeholders in the future of Highway 31 South. The goals of the charrette were to: engage Vestavia Hills residents as to the most appropriate future use of the former Days Inn site, along with adjacent sites; consult with existing property owners, prospective developers and investors, and community leadership to generate strategic redevelopment ideas; and publish an illustrated guide to steer design and investment decisions in the near term. To view the opening and closing presentations, visit https://vhal.org/highway-31-south.

What we heard:

• Prioritize hospitality/retail/experiential uses;
• Utilize community gathering areas (greenspace);
• Create connections between mixed-use concepts: pedestrian and vehicular cross-access (internal site connectivity);
• Consider shared parking;
• Collaborate with willing property owners;
• Emphasize pedestrian experience;
• Consider shared amenities between multiple projects/uses – activate greenspaces;
• Enhance southern gateway design;
• Improve landscaped area at I-65 N exit ramp;
• Establish volunteer group to monitor and maintain southern Temple site;
• Establish landscape vision for entire Vestavia Hills Hwy 31 corridor;
• Consult with public and private parties to create and adopt traffic access management plan;
• Prioritize McGuire Road access changes;
• Recognize improvements to Highway 31/Columbiana intersection;
• Prioritize signal timing improvement (RTOP);
• Explore scalable stormwater overlay district to strengthen owner maintenance requirements;
• Evaluate existing private drainage facilities;
• Leverage new development to improve stormwater management;
• Examine multi-jurisdictional public stormwater structure improvements.

We engaged an artist to create vision-drawings of what we heard:

What are your thoughts? Love the vision? Prefer that the area stays the same? Or just have a comment?