Colonial Brookwood Village (also known as Brookwood Village or Brookwood Mall) is a 750,754-square-foot (69,747 m2) upscale shopping mall located near Birmingham in "the hub of Mountain Brook, Vestavia, and Homewood, Alabama".
It was constructed in 1973 by the Shepherd family. The original building was designed by Giattina Fisher Aycock Architects and won a design award that year from Shopping Center World Magazine. Because the mall is located next to a stream bed with weak soil, the foundation for the mall is built in deep piles bearing on rock strata. A feature of the original mall was a large skylit atrium in the center with a large fountain populated with tree-like sprayers that filled the area with white noise and mist.
In 1997, Brookwood Village was purchased for $35 million by Colonial Properties and renamed "Colonial Brookwood Village." Colonial embarked almost immediately on an extensive $50 million overhaul which was completed in 2001. Major additions include a new two-story food court with a "front entrance" for the mall, facing a new outdoor shopping street.
Colonial Properties have announce the addition of a 9 story office tower on the western end of the mall proper to house its corporate headquarters as well as additional office and retail space. Further expansion will include a mix of retail, office, residential condos and possibly a hotel.
In 2005, the Rich's location -one of the mall's original anchor stores, was converted to Macy's on March 6 marking Macy's third entry into the Birmingham market.
Anchor tenants for Brookwood Village are Macy's on the east end (replacing Rich's which had been in the mall since 1975, 232,000 sq ft (21,600 m2)) and Belk (which replaced Parisian in 2007, 106,000 sq ft (9,800 m2)), occupying the western end, representing a same-owner upgrade from McRae's (Pizitz until the late 1980s). Other major tenants include Gus Mayer, Cache Luxe, Betsy Prince, Ann Taylor Loft, Z Gallerie, Books-A-Million (formerly Books & Co.), Victoria's Secret, Hollister Co. and Banana Republic. Full service restaurants include Plaza III the Steakhouse, Brio Tuscan Grille, Cocina Superior, and McCormick & Schmick's Seafood Restaurant.
In February 2006 Colonial Properties went before the Homewood Planning Commission with plans for a new nine-story office tower to be located adjacent to Belk on the west side of the mall. In April, law firm Johnston Barton Proctor & Powell announced that they would be moving from their present offices in downtown Birmingham into 40,000 square feet (4,000 m2) of the new $35.8 million 160,000-square-foot (15,000 m2) office building. Colonial Properties Trust also plans to consolidate its Birmingham-area staff of about 150 people into the new building. Plans call for 13,000 square feet (1,200 m2) of ground floor specialty retail, a covered walkway connecting the building to Belk, and redundant power feeds from two separate substations to reduce the likelihood of outages.
Future plans for Brookwood Village have previously also mentioned a luxury hotel, but no firm plans regarding that possibility have been announced.
