Work underway on study of new plantings, designs for Village Circle

Village Circle — in the heart of Mountain Brook Village — is “a historic American landscape,” said Sim Johnson, chair of the city’s Board of Landscape Design (BLD), in September.

The members of the BLD along with some local and national experts are working to give the iconic site a fresh look.

With the help of city funding and private donations, the BLD has assembled what Johnson calls “a dream team” of experts in a study of design and landscape options for Village Circle.

Those options include the introduction of native plants, combining the traffic islands on Cahaba Road in front of Realty South and Gilchrist and perhaps adding some seating.

Work on the study began in October.

“We are steadily moving along,” Johnson said.

The Village Circle project will take advantage of what is likely the permanent closure of Canterbury Road at Cahaba Road.

However, that closure is not due to the Village Circle project, but rather traffic concerns created by the planned construction of two traffic roundabouts near U.S. 280.

The lead firm in the study is The Olin Studio, a famed landscape architecture firm based in Philadelphia. Olin is developing three conceptual design options for the project for presentation in January, Johnson said.

“You will have a design that is strictly plantings,” he said. “You will have a design that looks at adding seating and using the island that Bromberg’s owns in front of their business.”

In a third option, Olin will look at a variation that adds seating but only on the two islands owned by the city, Johnson said.

Joel Eliason of Nimrod Long and Associates in Birmingham is working with Olin on the study.

They are providing “local guidance to Olin for what is feasible and what the community in all likelihood will like to see,” Johnson said.

The team lead for the planting design is Landau Design + Technology in Philadelphia. The local expert “running point” on the project is Al Schotz, a botanist from Auburn University.

There’s an “intensive study” underway of plants that are native to Mountain Brook, and organizers have contacted numerous nurseries, growers and garden shops in the area.

“We now have a good idea of what we can buy for the site, and we will be studying what is the best combination of those plants that will be lower maintenance and look great and benefit the environment,” Johnson said.

Michael Gill, arborist for the city, is a drone operator and took some video to help the “out-of-town designers” better understand the site, including traffic, tree cover, sun-shade distributions and other factors.

The city agreed to pay Olin their fee of $16,500, and the BLD raised another $45,000 from private donors to pay the other local and national experts.

Organizers will later need to raise $10,000 to $15,000 to pay for a traffic engineer to determine if it’s safe to add seating to the islands.

“We will need to specify some crosswalks, and we will have to ….. study whether it’s safe for the public to be out there,” Johnson said.

After Olin presents the three designs this month, organizers “will have to figure out what it will cost to build depending on what design the City Council likes best,” Johnson said.

That money for the completion of the project will be raised in the spring and summer, he said.

“I anticipate installation will be next fall,” Johnson said. However, “that could be pushed back.”

For more information or to make a donation to the construction phase of the project, contact simeonjohnson@msn.com.