What happened to Brookwood Village?: The crowded history and uncertain future of a beloved Birmingham mall

Diana Hansen opened her first boutique, White Flowers, in Brookwood Village in 1986. She grew up in Homewood and said she started White Flowers in the mall because of how much she loved it there as a young girl. Years before opening White Flowers, she had a job at one of the mall’s boutiques, Betsy Prince, as a model.

“People would sit all around in chairs and watch the fashion shows. It was so much fun because it was so crowded. On weekends you could hardly walk in there,” Hansen said.

Betsy Prince had fashion shows in the mall twice a year where they would put up a catwalk next to the fountain by the escalators. Hansen modeled in the fashion shows.

Over the years, the mall has been slowly declining. Hansen and other store owners watched it move from a crowded entertainment and shopping center to an almost completely empty building. There are a few companies making attempts to redevelop the mall space, but some previous and current employees said it was declining even before the COVID-19 pandemic, and attempts at redesign are becoming increasingly difficult.

Betsy Prince opened in Brookwood Village in 1981, and current owner Bezshan Dolatabadi worked there as a shoe department manager. He grew up in Birmingham and went shopping at Brookwood Village frequently as a child.

“Malls were the place to go to hang out for young people. There was a place in Brookwood Village called Aladdin’s Castle that was just all games - pinball machines, video games … It was as much entertainment as shopping,” Dolatabadi said.

One Christmas, the fire marshal came to Hansen’s store, and it was so crowded that he told her she couldn’t have so many people inside at once. He had to send customers into the hallway to wait until others left to enter.

Those crowds from the 1970s and 1980s mall didn’t follow into the present day. Hansen and Dolatabadi went from shopping and hanging out in Brookwood Village to watching it deteriorate from their storefront windows.

Once the anchor stores such as Belk left, businesses started to suffer and move out more frequently, Hansen said.

However, in August, Fairway Investments and Pope & Land Real Estate sent out a press release announcing plans to redevelop Brookwood Village with a team including the services of Goodwyn Mills Cawood, DAG Architects and others.

Sims Garrison, chief operating officer and president of Fairway Investments, said in the release, “We are looking forward to working with the cities of Mountain Brook and Homewood to try to transform the struggling mall into something more appropriate and representative of the communities it serves.”

Dolatabadi said the Galleria took a chunk of business away from Brookwood Village, and then when the Summit opened it, got even less popular.

“People have just changed; they don’t want to be in an enclosed center. I think that’s true across the country,” Dolatabadi said. “Brookwood was no exception. People did not come there to hang out. They would come to use the restaurants outside; they would come to us and shop, but they didn’t come and just hang out in the mall.”

When The Homewood Star contacted Fairway Investments with questions regarding the press release and Brookwood Village’s future, a spokesperson said Garrison is not providing additional comments at this time. More detailed plans for the property and its development are not in the release and have not yet been announced to the public.

In October 2020, Colliers International and Arlington Properties acquired a similar contract for redevelopment of Brookwood Village. The companies brought sketches of plans to the Homewood City Council and held several public hearings, but nothing came from the agreement.

“They didn’t close on their offer. I think Colliers and Arlington have gone their separate ways,” Homewood City Councilor Jennifer Andress said.

Mike Higginbottom is an employee at Perry Computers, one of the only businesses left at Brookwood Village. He heard that Colliers and Arlington Properties ended their plans because of concerns from local residents. The firm was going to build apartments, but residents feared the extra traffic would interfere with local schools.

“That could not be the real reason. You never know with corporate decisions,” Higginbottom said. “If the money gets to a certain point, they go ‘well, we will just not do that.’”

Colliers President Joe Sandners IV declined to comment for this story on why the development fell through.

Perry Computers has had trouble getting people to realize they are still open in Brookwood Village, especially since the Chick-fil-A closed. Once the chicken restaurant removed its oldest Alabama location, it left the food court at Brookwood completely empty. People walk the halls of the mall for exercise, playing music through headphones and doing laps around the vacant retail stores.

The corridors to the left and right of the food court are empty except for Macy’s, 1st Nails and Claire’s on one side and LensCrafters, GNC and Perry Computers on the other.

In 2015, when the owners of Betsy Prince realized the indoor mall was no longer flourishing, they sold the store to Dolatabadi. He moved the location to an outside spot in the Lane Park retail district in Mountain Brook but is still disappointed to see Brookwood Village dwindling after growing up going there.

“It’s sad to see, because having lived back in the ’70s and early ’80s and having seen what that mall was like, people would not believe it now because it’s like a ghost town,” Dolatabadi said. “I hope that the companies that have bought it can do something creative with it.”

Hansen felt the same when she had to move White Flowers from Brookwood Village to Grand River in Leeds in late 2020.

“After COVID, there was nothing too much in the mall to come to. People didn’t want to park in the parking lot and be the only person in there,” Hansen said. “It was just time for me to go, but it was a shame to me because I just have a really strong feeling for that place, and I wish wonderful things would happen for it.”