John Boone and Hunter Renfroe had a busy 2018, as their real estate development group Orchestra Partners was involved in several projects key to the ongoing downtown renaissance of Birmingham.

Last year saw the opening of the Woolworth, the group’s social house concept at Five Points South, and the completion of the first phase of Founder’s Station on Morris Avenue.

In addition, construction finished on Printers Corner, which repurposes the building through a mixed-use concept.

Now, getting into this year, the group has already announced plans for Phase II of Founders Station with Mercantile on Morris scheduled to be completed late this year. McAdory Taps, a self-serve tap room concept, is expected to open in the Spring, with condos for sale and office space for lease.

Construction is also expected to be complete later this year on the Frank Nelson Building. Demolition of its first two floors is nearly complete and the ground floor still available for lease,

But while that may sound like a lot of activity, it’s only part of a larger vision, Boone said.

“We have ideas for Birmingham that Birmingham isn’t even ready for yet,” he said. “We have ideas that we’re getting ready for five years from now for a building that just sold, and we know they’re not going sell it now. But in five years we’ll have a plan that will justify that price.”

That comment illustrates what Boone and Renfroe say are several philosophical concepts that are integral to their partnership and their mode of doing business.

First off, Boone said, they think the conversation about their work in Birmingham has moved on from “Who are those guys?” After projects targeting Five Points South and Morris Avenue, the question may now be whether they can pull off their vision for downtown.

“It’s not about real estate,” Renfroe said. “It’s about having a community impact. A lot of our values sound like a non-profit. The reason we didn’t take that angle is we want it to be scalable. And you can scale a lot more efficiently if you can drive profits back into new projects. Our philosophy is about taking the city one neighborhood at a time and trying to move it forward as fast as we possibly can. It’s about taking areas and deciding what does this area need?"

For an example, look at Five Points South. Renfroe said other developers might not have considered the area at that time, especially when chains were moving out.

“That was probably the last thing on anybody’s list,” he said. “It was about growing up here and looking through the grime on the windows and knowing that neighborhood is awesome and can be awesome.”

The Woolworth is located on 20th Street in Five Points South.

Their project was the Woolworth, referred to as the “Topgolf of bowling” destination. The aim was simple. Instead of creating an attraction similar to surrounding businesses, which would draw people in for valet parking and a short, convenient, focused outing, the project instead was about getting people to commit to a sustained experience in the area. It was about driving people from the metro area to Five Points South and rediscovering what was already there.

“They’re more likely to park, then they’re more likely to walk further. Then that changes perception, because they’ll walk past things that are already there,” Renfroe said.

Of course, that concept took six months to hit on, but Renfroe said this is the partners' typical way of doing business. They identify needs in areas, then look at the surrounding property. Renfroe says Boone handles what the market needs, while Renfroe comes up with the concepts that will make the property work. But those decisions often happen prior to putting property under contract. They say they rarely act on deals brought to them by brokers, unless they’ve already been looking at the property, as was the case with Mercantile.

Another example is the work on Morris Avenue at First Avenue North. Their plan was for a mix of retail and restaurants to take up the ground floors, along with a new plaza, green space and seating. The tenants would be a mix of boutique stores and eateries leading to retail on Morris Avenue. The Essential became one of those restaurants. But the plaza was about making Morris Avenue more visible to First Avenue North, something they said was absent from previous attempts to revitalize the area.

Instead of being essentially an exciting looking alley, they said, Morris Avenue is now the pathway to an entertainment district.

The Essential has a prime location on Morris Avenue.

“You can supply demand, or you can create demand,” Renfroe said. “That’s what Apple did with the iPhone. They created a market that didn’t exist. We can afford to be a lot more aggressive because if you’re creating demand, you’re generating so much more value than what the market perceives at the moment. We can be a lot more thoughtful because we don’t wait for opportunities to arrive.”

Then there are other projects, like the Frank Nelson Building, or The Frank. At a time when downtown Birmingham has lots of vacant office space in highrise buildings, they decided to offer 100,000 square feet of office space in a 10-story building.

That may have sounded crazy, Boone said, but Orchestra Partners isn’t following a business plan so much as a vision supported by sound business fundamentals.

“The fact that it’s a philosophy and not a business plan means there’s no way for us to get away from it,” Boone said. “We believe in it. We come into work every single day, and what matters is the impact we’re trying to have on one of our submarkets. The math gets difficult. Clients and projects can be difficult. But we know what to do.”

So what’s next? There’s Five Points Lane, the outdoor market concept featuring a recovered alley connecting 20th Street to a bar. Tenants will include restaurants and entertainment. It is expected to open in the Spring or Summer. They’d also like to see Morris Avenue follow the way of other parts of Birmingham, such as Pepper Place, and become an entertainment district.

Eventually, Boone said, Orchestra Partners may venture outside Birmingham, taking some concepts with them to parts of the country where they feel that good building stock is waiting to be used, or used well. They also want to continue the momentum they’re seeing in Birmingham, they said, staying true to the vision.

“We’re trying to build a city that we want to live in,” Boone said.