Welcome to Northside Initiative
Residents, congregations, and business owners on Birmingham's Northside already know what these blocks should look like. We put capital, partners, and staff behind that plan — in Norwood, Druid Hills, Fountain Heights, Evergreen, North Birmingham, Collegeville and Acipco-Finley, seven adjacent neighborhoods north of downtown.
“The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world.”G.K. Chesterton
Northside Initiative exists to move capital, partners, and political attention onto seven adjacent neighborhoods — Norwood, Druid Hills, Fountain Heights, Evergreen, North Birmingham, Collegeville and Acipco-Finley — and to keep them there long enough to matter. Our measure is plain: children who can walk somewhere safe, families in houses that do not leak, adults in work that pays, and storefronts with the lights on — on the same blocks, in the same decade.
“Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.”G.K. Chesterton
Learn MoreNew homes on the vacant lots between the homes that never left — small buildings, built steadily, by builders from these blocks — so the neighborhood fills back in without being torn down and started over.
Learn MoreHealth-and-safety repairs — roofing, electrical, plumbing, heating and cooling, structural — that keep a legacy homeowner in the house they already own, instead of losing it one leak at a time.
Learn MoreA registered apprenticeship building electricians and mechanical tradespeople from these blocks — paid on-the-job training instead of tuition debt, and a career at the end of it.
Learn MoreThe everyday gathering places between home and work — storefronts, fellowship halls, corner groceries — restored across seven neighborhoods, anchored by the district at 12th Avenue North and Carraway Boulevard.
Learn MoreSmall-business financing for Northside residents — so the investment coming to these blocks is owned by the people who live on them.
Learn MoreWhere we work
Northside Initiative works in a defined footprint on Birmingham's Northside — Norwood, Druid Hills, Fountain Heights, Evergreen, North Birmingham, Collegeville and Acipco-Finley. Concentrating on seven adjacent neighborhoods, rather than spreading thin across the city, is what makes neighborhood-level change measurable.
One of Birmingham's oldest residential neighborhoods, laid out along a landscaped boulevard just north of downtown and listed as a National Register historic district.
The neighborhood that took care of Birmingham — its residents staffed Carraway’s wards for ninety years — and whose civic league won one of the first great victories of Black neighborhood power in the city.
One of the city's earliest neighborhoods, sitting just northwest of the central business district, with a housing stock that predates most of Birmingham and a congregation on nearly every other corner.
The oldest crossroads on the Northside — two frontier roads laid out in 1822 still meet inside it — and the smallest of the seven, built by families who walked to the furnaces, the rail yards, and the hospital nearby.
Built as an industrial town in its own right before Birmingham annexed it, North Birmingham still carries both the assets and the burdens of that history — including a long fight over environmental cleanup.
Home to Bethel Baptist Church, a National Historic Landmark and a headquarters of the Birmingham civil rights movement, surrounded by the brick bungalows that families have held for generations.
Named for the American Cast Iron Pipe Company, the employee-owned works that has anchored the neighborhood since 1905, and for the Finley rail yard beside it.
Come work a Saturday. Homeowner repair crews, vacant lot clean-ups, and tutoring all run on volunteer hours.
Volunteer TodayCongregations, businesses, and organizations carry this plan together. If yours wants a lane, there is one open.
Partner With UsLong before anyone wrote a strategic plan for the Northside, its congregations were the plan — the meeting room, the meal, the first phone call when a roof failed. From Bethel Baptist in Collegeville, a National Historic Landmark of the civil rights movement, to the sanctuaries still open on nearly every other corner, the churches are the oldest institutions on these blocks that never left.
Meet the Churches