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Developers plan a quaint community along Cahaba River
Kaija Wilkinson
Staff

June 27 will mark what Hearthstone Properties LLC hopes will be a new era for Trussville, one that will transform a 160-acre stretch of property along the Cahaba River into a quaint paradise resembling neighborhoods of the past.

Developer Barry Stalnaker has tapped the prestigious Miami firm of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. to oversee the design of the project. The firm has designed more than 100 such communities throughout the country, such as the one made famous by "The Truman Show," Seaside, Fla.

Members of the firm, including co-founder Andrés Duany, have been in Trussville all week to brainstorm with elected officials, residents, business people and developers about the plan.

A Monday session will mark the last of a seven-day series of meetings known as a charrette, which a public notice about the meetings describes as "an intensive planning session where a variety of participants ... gather to collaborate on a vision for development."

The proposed development is in the heart of Trussville, just across the river from the City Hall complex.

Trussville Mayor Gene Melton calls the approach to the plan, known as "Mainstreet Trussville," a refreshing change.

"Usually a developer doesn't want to know what the city might think or the people might think," the mayor says. "The bottom line is usually money. These guys are a little different. They've got a vision for this property and bought it with that in mind."

Founded in Trussville in 1996 by partners Stalnaker and J. William Lewis, Hearthstone has focused until now on developing recreational properties such as hunting preserves in Shelby and Talladega counties. From this point forward, however, the firm will concentrate on turning its Trussville property into a vision of New Urbanism.

The anti-urban sprawl
Those unfamiliar with New Urbanism need only look to similar planned communities around the state and country.

In essence, it's an approach to planning and development that is the opposite of urban sprawl, says Edgardo Bennett, who is managing the Mainstreet Trussville project for Duany Plater-Zyberk.

DPZ projects include many in Florida and three in Alabama, including Providence and Bon Secour Village. DPZ says it is "exploring other opportunities" in Alabama as well.

"New Urbanism, as opposed to conventional suburban development, proposes more compact, walkable communities similar to those traditionally built in the United States until the second World War," says Bennett. "Up until that time, neighborhoods were compact and were designed for the pedestrian, since automobile use was not widespread and public transit systems frequently linked neighborhoods to the rest of the city."

Hearthstone and DPZ point to Trussville's Cahaba Village as a model. The community was developed in the 1930s by local landscape architect W.H. Kestler, and includes many hallmarks of the New Urbanism ideal, with houses, stores, schools and recreation areas forming a cohesive whole.

Conventional zoning regulations often forbid the kind of layouts New Urbanism looks to for inspiration, such as Savannah and the New Orleans French Quarter. These areas have features like narrow streets and living spaces over stores.

Stalnaker says zoning is the first big hurdle the Mainstreet plan will have to clear. He hopes to get zoning approved by spring of next year.

The developer says he has spent the past three years assembling the Trussvillle acreage. He declines to say what he spent on the land.

"When I bought the original tract," Stalnaker says, "I knew I wanted to create a village concept, but I didn't know I would be able to get all the property that we got."

Part of the property is a former industrial complex with about 100,000 square feet of dilapidated warehouses, so redevelopment will represent a distinct improvement over the present lay of the land, he says. This, too, is similar to Cahaba Village, which was built on 615 acres surrounding a former iron furnace.

In search of balance
People involved in the Trussville project say it will enhance the natural beauty of the Cahaba. Charrette team member Walter Schoel III of Walter Schoel Engineering Co. Inc. says the presence of the Cahaba will prove both an asset and a challenge.

"It's a sensitive body of water, and we hope to both protect it and enhance it through efforts such as stormwater management," Schoel says.

The portion of the river flowing through Trussville was channelized in the 1960s, according to Schoel, and that public improvement actually harmed the river quite a bit. Developers will seek to restore its natural beauty, he says.

During one of this week's meetings, the possibility of turning a portion of the Cahaba into a swimming area was discussed. Hearthstone is consulting a group of environmentalists about the river preservation plans.

DPZ and Hearthstone's plans for Trussville are unquestionably ambitious, and Bennett points out that a project like this takes about 10 years to develop.

After plans are formed based on input gathered during this month's charrette, the next step will be to seek approval from city officials, says Stalnaker.

Bennett says building a neighborhood within an existing city presents its own challenges. Planners will strive, he says, "to find the correct balance between the necessary respect for local tradition and style with the innovation necessary to create a unique and distinctive new place."

Doing so, Bennett says, "requires the observation and analysis of the existing built environment and local tradition, along with an exploration of the new requirements of a contemporary urban space."

The two sides must "inform one another," he says.

kwilkinson@bizjournals.com - (205) 443-5637



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That's not surprising. Trussville is growing every day.

I hope Ms. Wilkinson got all of her facts right this time.

I can't believe Trusville is getting a DPZ project. DPZ is the best in the business.

I grew up in Trussville. I lived there from birth until I was 18, and then again for three years before moving to Missouri. My parents have lived there their entire lives -- more than 70 years each.

That city's growth blows me out of the water, and most of it has taken place in the past 10 years, though its been growing for decades. When I entered first grade, Trussville had three schools: An elementary, a junior high and a high school. It had one first grade class -- I was one of 23 students in the class. Twelve years later, I was one of 450 to graduate in my senior class, and the school was then four schools, with the plans on the board for what became Clay-Chalkville High School to alleviate the overcrowding. They built a new high school that opened my freshman year, and turned the old high school into a middle school to alleviate overcrowding at that point.

When I moved to Missouri, the Grayson Valley exit off I-59 North was two gas stations. Now, it's two huge shopping malls, a movie theater, a Wal-Mart the size of Moody and god knows how many restaurants (I do know there are more restaurants at that exit than in all of Kirksville (we have 17 total restaurants here). There's also the relatively new Deerfoot Parkway exit that, when it was built, had nothing there but a very old church that's since become some kind of megachurch along with tons of development along a road that didn't even exist 10 years ago.

When my parents bought their house back in the 1960s, they paid a whopping $17,000 for it and the acre and a half it sits on (which, btw, overlooks the Cahaba River). It was last assessed at $850,000, and will likely sell for more than a million when it finally sells (translation: when I inherit it). And it's not that impressive of a house, but the land can be divided for one or even two more houses, and it's convenient to the Interstate without being in an overdeveloped neighborhood, and it's within walking distance of the high school.

The growth there is unbelievable. And it just gets bigger every day.

Yeah. Shelby County is exploding as usual, but places like Trussville and Gardendale are really beginning to boom as well. I'm from up around Gardendale, and the area has grown quite a great deal in the past decade or so. So much so that recently a moratorium had to be put in place to stop the construction of new homes in Gardendale. North and Eastern sections of Jefferson County will really take off more and more, particularly as I-22 and the northern beltline get closer to completion.