WORDS Brent Rosen
The Market District is an opportunity to do something transformative. Foshee, the Development Department, the Mayor’s Office, everybody else, let’s make Dexter Avenue the best street in Alabama.
Let’s recruit the sort of restaurants that can build a loyal lunch following, but can also pull people back downtown for dinner at night. Aim for Midtown Atlanta, don’t settle for Mama Goldberg’s. A successful model for a downtown restaurant/bar can be seen only 90 miles away in Birmingham. See what’s happening at El Barrio and Collins Bar, visit Carrington’s Public House -- there is nothing like those places in Montgomery. That model will work. If you bring nothing but generic to the Market District, it will fail. Let’s take advantage of Montgomery’s existing offerings. See if the Montgomery Museum of Fine Art will open a satellite gallery on Dexter Ave that can feature young, up-and-coming regional artists. It will help the museum develop a younger following and will bring young people with money to shop the Market District. See if the Shakespeare Festival wants to hold the entire residential section of a building for its visiting performers. Many of the visiting performers don’t have cars, but if they all lived in the same place, easy shuttle service to and from work. And where do you think they’ll spend their downtime? That’s right, the Market District.
Let’s go a bit crazy. Build an upscale bowling alley. Create rooftop terraces with rooftop bars so the lobbyists and legislators can gaze at the Capitol while they booze and schmooze. Talk to the gents who run the Overall Company in Auburn, maybe they want to bring their unique business to town. An ice cream shop seems like a no-brainer: it’s hot 9 months out of the year, and government employees need somewhere to go on their breaks.
Let’s find someone to operate a men’s clothing store with a bar in it. What about a real music venue? A place with a good bar up front and a mid-sized room in back. Big enough for touring bands, but small enough to feel intimate. A band on the road going from Atlanta to New Orleans has to drive through Montgomery. Same goes for a band traveling South from Nashville. We could capture so much, if only we had the proper venue.
Let’s build something kind of creepy, preferably underground, something like Sous-La-Terre, but that opens earlier. A place that feels out of its place in time. Maybe Elvis impersonators perform, maybe there is an occasional burlesque show. Maybe it has ripped, red-leather banquettes along the walls, and tables whose legs are so out of balance any movement threatens to topple your drink. You can’t smoke in there -- actually, no one’s ever smoked in there -- but somehow, it still feels nicotine stained. I want to go there during happy hour and drink 30 oz Miller High Life’s from a giant frosty mug, and some nights, I want happy hour to turn into karaoke hour, and karaoke hour to turn into “loud conversations with anyone in the room who will listen hour,” and I want all of that to happen before 9:00 p.m. On Tuesday. I want a combination of all of my favorite bars ever and I want it in downtown Montgomery.
That’s what I’d like to see in the Market District.
Let’s have a conversation about what you want in the Market District. Once we post this online, use the comment section to make your own suggestions. Ladies, want a blow dry bar? Comment. Gents, want a classic barbershop, the kind where they’ll give you a hot shave and keep girlie magazines in a binder marked “New England Journal of Medicine?” Comment. Exotic pet shop? Comment. Record store that sells Pet Shop Boys? Comment.
This conversation is important because if people in Montgomery don’t clue the folks in charge of the Market District into what would make them come, see, shop, and do, then who knows what we’ll get down there. Someone may own Dexter Avenue, but it belongs to us all. I’ll make sure your suggestions make it to the right place. So please, comment.