Business View Magazine | February 2020

152 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE FEBRUARY 2020 serves as a popular meeting spot for kids waiting to dine at one of the Village’s numerous restaurants. Young families in particular are drawn to the area, leading to an explosive restoration of the neighborhood’s older cottage- style homes. Long considered the sleepiest of Mountain Brook’s villages, English Village has undergone tremendous growth in recent years. Now, home to a mix of restaurants, antique shops, galleries, and homes, English Village sits atop Red Mountain and features a distinctly Old World charm. English Village is centered around a beautiful piece of public art, the sculpture, “Civitas,” which was dedicated to Carolyn Smith, Alabama’s first female architect who designed and built many of English Village’s first homes in the 1920s. A new addition to Mountain Brook Village is the Lane Parke project, a cooperative effort between the city and its developer, the family-owned real estate firm, Evson, Inc. Company Owner, John Evans, talks about the area’s history and the development’s current iteration: “My grandfather bought this property back in 1946 and built 276 apartments on 20 acres, which opened in 1948. In 1954, he acquired the eight acres next door and developed 78,000 square feet of retail, with surface parking. Those projects were ongoing, but they had aged and it was time to start over again. That’s when, with the help of the city, we started putting together a plan for redeveloping the property. We put together a mixed-use PUD (Planned Unit Development) with the city and, subsequently, built a 276-unit apartment complex, and we’re in the process of finishing up 125,000 square feet of retail.” Lane Parke’s upscale apartment homes feature traditional Tudor architecture with luxury amenities such as a resort-style saltwater swimming pool and well-appointed clubhouse, a health and wellness center, a cyber business café, a dog park, and lush green spaces, all within walking distance to local shopping and dining.