Downtown Fairhope revealed a project that capitalizes on the coastal city’s artistic charm Friday morning.
“Arts Alley,” a development designed to encourage visitors to park in the free public parking deck in Downtown Fairhope, has been in the works for many years — even as far back as 2012 when the city worked with a “national expert on walkability and parking improvements,” Mayor Sherry Sullivan said.
“They all gave the same feedback, that we needed to do something to enhance that parking area to encourage people to park there,” Sullivan said. “We knew that we need to do something aesthetically pleasing, something where people felt safe day and night, and something just to draw people’s attention.”
The $1.8 million project was mostly funded by the Eastern Shore Metropolitan Planning Organization from the Federal Highway Administration, which provided $1.2 million. The Fairhope Single Tax Corporation and the city provided remaining funds.
Arts Alley has two entrances: one on Church Street and one on Section Street.
The exit on Church Street features official city signage and two curved statues that make an arch that lights up at night, built by Bruce Larsen and designed by Brock Larsen. The arch is made out of recycled metals, including “gears from one of the first elevators in Mobile, wrenches from a WW2 shipyard, (and) a hatchet that helped build Fairhope,” Bruce posted on Facebook. One side of the arch, he said, weighs over 4,000 pounds.
“I think it’s going to become one of those Instagramable spots in Downtown, especially Bruce Larsen’s sculpture. I think that’s going to become an iconic spot in town,” Sullivan said. “I think it’s going to create exactly what we wanted.”
Murals in the alley were designed and painted by Hannah Legg, including one with flowers at the Section Street entrance on the Master Joe’s building, one long mural designed like a classic postcard at street-level and a 30-foot-tall mural on the parking deck with Mobile Bay wildlife.
“Words cannot express what it is like to have been able to work on these murals in my beautiful home town,” Legg wrote on Instagram. “Fairhope is a stunning place, and it is nothing short of an honor to have donned my helmet and harness and painted these murals.”
Another piece of art in the alley serves as a habitat for chimney-dwelling wildlife.
Eagle Scout Lanier Crew built a “swift tower” for his project that allows Chimney Swift birds to nest. According to Alabama Audubon, these birds have been in steady population decline since 1966 as old masonry chimneys are torn down or capped. New chimneys are built with screens or metal surfaces that don’t allow roosting.
The tower was built with the help of designs from Watershed, a company with the goal of creating developments with positive impacts on the natural world, and materials and heavy equipment were donated by the city.
Transformer boxes were painted by various Coastal Alabama Community College students with Mobile Bay themes.
In addition to the art, Fairhope also erected a new public restroom that, on the outside, serves as a public transit hub, “a central area for folks to wait and catch some sort of transportation,” Sullivan said.
According to Sullivan, the vision for Arts Alley is that it will eventually be full of art.
“There’s other art that we want to do on the parking deck itself,” Sullivan said. “There’s still some lighting work to be done, some signage to be set up. We’re going to continue to to improve.”