From planning contributions on Birmingham’s City Walk to helping gather community input for Jefferson County Memorial Project’s new Linn Park monument, REV Birmingham is working to make downtown Birmingham a more attractive place to live, work, and visit.

REV Birmingham, short for revitalize Birmingham, describes themselves as “a place-based revitalization and economic development nonprofit with a mission of creating vibrant commercial districts.”

Although REV seems fairly Birmingham-centric, President and CEO David Fleming says the nonprofit’s work aims to benefit those far beyond the Magic City limits.

What was the inspiration for founding REV, how did you guys get started?

REV is an organization that was born out of a merger of two organizations. Operation New Birmingham, which had its roots all the way back in 1957 as Birmingham Downtown Improvement Association, whose focus was downtown revitalization. Then in 2004 Main Street Birmingham was founded through similar kinds of work in neighborhoods and commercial districts.