1 of 2
Photo by Erin Nelson.
Piggly Wiggly, Bluff Park
Ken Harden and Naseem Ajlouny are seen at the current location of Piggly Wiggly in Bluff Park. Harden and Ajlouny have partnered to build a new Piggly Wiggly in the Bluff Park Village shopping center off Tyler Road.
2 of 2
Sketch courtesy of city of Hoover.
Bluff Park Village redevelopment sketch
The owner of Bluff Park Village is partnering with theowner of BuyLo Quality Food Stores to build a newPiggly Wiggly in Bluff Park Village. This renderingshows the future layout of the center, with the PigglyWiggly and a new Mills Pharmacy on the right.
A recently approved tax incentive deal to spur the expansion and redevelopment of Bluff Park Village should serve as a catalyst for more commercial development in the rapidly changing Bluff Park community, city officials and residents said.
The Hoover City Council approved $3.5 million worth of sales tax rebates for a project to expand and redevelop the Bluff Park Village shopping center Jan. 16.
The deal includes the relocation of the Piggly Wiggly grocery store from the adjacent Shades Mountain Plaza shopping center to a new 26,000-square-foot store to be built on the Bluff Park Village property.
Mills Pharmacy also plans to relocate from Shades Mountain Plaza to a 3,000-square-foot space to be constructed next to the new Piggly Wiggly, said Ken Harden, the owner of Bluff Park Village.
Harden said he also plans to remodel the rest of the 80,000-square-foot Bluff Park Village and build another commercial building on the vacant lot on the Clearbrook Road side of the development.
Ben Smith, a Bluff Park resident affiliated with a restaurant group that includes the El Barrio restaurant and Paramount Bar in Birmingham, said he has already signed a lease to open a new restaurant in Bluff Park Village called The Electric. It will have about 30 seats in a roughly 2,000-square-foot space and will serve sandwiches and salads for lunch and dinner and have a full bar. Smith said he hopes to be open by summer.
The Bluff Park Village redevelopment project represents an investment of about $9.5 million, Hoover Mayor Frank Brocato said.
“This gives us an opportunity to invest in one of our historic neighborhoods,” Brocato said. “I’m very excited about this for Bluff Park and our city.”
It’s not a typical deal with developers, the mayor said. It’s a deal with two Hoover residents with deep ties to the city who want to invest in the community.
Naseem Ajlouny, the owner of 13 Piggly Wiggly stores, grew up just down the street on Alford Avenue. He now lives in Southlake but has several family members still in the Bluff Park area.
Ajlouny said he had planned to shut down his store in Bluff Park at the end of his lease in Shades Mountain Plaza in 2021 until he was approached with the idea of relocating to Bluff Park Village.
Brocato said losing the Piggly Wiggly would have been a tremendous loss to the Bluff Park community. City officials spent two years developing a tax incentive deal to keep the store.
Harden will receive a rebate of 33 percent of sales taxes collected from new stores in Bluff Park Village, including the Piggly Wiggly, over the next 20 years, up to a maximum of $1.5 million.
Ajlouny’s company, Buy-Lo Quality Food Stores, also will receive a rebate of 33 percent of sales taxes from new stores in Bluff Park Village over the next 20 years, up to a maximum of $2 million.
Ajlouny said Bluff Park is a changing community, with a lot of young families moving in who do more European-style shopping — coming to the store more frequently to get fresh fruit, fresh meat and fresh seafood.
Bluff Park deserves a store like that, and he has stores like that in other locations, but the 14,500-square-foot space he has at Shades Mountain Plaza is not big enough for the amenities he wants to add, he said.
The new Piggly Wiggly will be modeled after a similar Piggly Wiggly in Dunnavant Valley in Shelby County and will offer a fresh seafood and meat department, a deli with a hot bar and a wine center, Ajlouny said.
Harden, a resident of Bluff Park since 1995, said he acquired Bluff Park Village in 2004 after Delchamps went through bankruptcy and closed its store there. He bought the shopping center and brought it back to life, adding a 54,276-square-foot ArmorSafe Storage facility where Delchamps was and renovating the rest of the complex.
By 2010, he had all the storefronts rented out, he said. Today, the center includes a Dollar General, Plaza Cleaners, Happy Tails pet grooming, Appear Photography, Salon D, New China restaurant, A&T Nails and a Hoover Police Department substation.
Dollar General just renewed its lease for another five years, and after The Electric restaurant moves in, he will have just four vacancies totaling 4,400 square feet in the existing building, he said.
Ajlouny said he hopes to begin design work on the new grocery store very soon and hopes to have it open by May of 2021. In the meantime, he will remain open in Shades Mountain Plaza, he said.
