"We always try to stay current," Bromberg & Company president Frederick "Ricky" Bromberg said this spring, standing in front of the construction fencing that now wraps his family's jewelry store on Cahaba Road. It's a modest way to describe what's actually happening: Alabama's oldest family business, founded in 1836, is tearing into a 67-year-old building for what he called the biggest renovation the store has ever done.
If you drive through Mountain Brook Village this month, that fencing is the thing you notice. It's not the thing that matters most. The more interesting story is what's happening in the storefronts around it, where a run of anniversaries this year stretches from 2 years to 62, and where the one address with real turnover just got its fourth tenant in under a decade, this time run by someone who has lived in Mountain Brook the whole time.
What's Actually Behind the Fence
Bromberg's renovation at 2800 Cahaba Road will nearly double the store's retail space without touching the building's original 1959 mid-century shell. The plans include an authorized Rolex Service Center, an expanded custom design center, a new customer lounge, and a dedicated wing called Bromberg Galleries for bridal registry, fine china, and home décor. Construction fencing went up in early 2026, and the store has stayed open the entire time, with parking rerouted to the lot off Hollywood Boulevard. Completion is targeted before the 2026 holiday season or early 2027.
That timeline matters if you're the kind of person who does your holiday shopping in the Village. It also matters because Bromberg's isn't chasing more square footage for its own sake. The addition is built around service: a watch repair counter with Rolex's blessing, a design studio for custom work, a lounge where you can sit while someone builds you something. That's a bet on the same thing every long-tenured business on this stretch of Cahaba Road is betting on, which is that people will keep coming back if the experience is worth the trip.
The Roundabouts Fixed the Problem Nobody Talked About
Before you get anywhere near Bromberg's, you'll pass through the two roundabouts that replaced the old traffic signals at the intersection of the US-280 off-ramp, Cahaba Road, Chester Road, and Lane Park Road, right by the Birmingham Zoo entrance. The project cost roughly $4.4 million, split with the federal government covering 80 percent through the Alabama Department of Transportation and the cities of Birmingham and Mountain Brook each kicking in 10 percent. It had been in the planning stages for close to a decade before construction actually started.
Mayor Graham Smith put it plainly: "we all have a pretty solid roundabout fever right now." The line got a laugh, but the underlying claim was specific. City officials reported that retailers in the area saw an uptick in shopping once the old traffic-light bottleneck was gone, simply because people could get in and out of the Village without sitting through a light cycle at a five-way intersection.
That's not a small thing for a commercial district built on foot traffic between a jeweler, a flower shop, and a handful of restaurants. Fix the fifteen seconds it takes to get off 280 and into a parking spot, and you change how often someone decides the trip is worth it. Six months after the roundabouts opened, the city put out a call asking residents how they'd adjusted. A year and change later, the answer seems to be: they adjusted fine, and they kept coming.
One Address, Three Failed Concepts, and a Longtime Resident Who Bet Differently
Here's the exception that proves the rule. The space at 2721 Cahaba Road, Suite A, has cycled through Surf-Hound, Carrigan's Public House, and DRAM in recent years, none of which stuck. In May 2026, it reopened as Woody's Food + Bar, owned by Jason Parkman, a longtime Mountain Brook resident who started with a food truck in 2009 and later ran a Taziki's franchise before deciding the neighborhood needed, in his words, a place to "come as you are." Weekly trivia nights started May 12 and still run every Tuesday at 6:30 p.m.
The pattern at that one address is the exact inverse of what's happening one door down. Everywhere else on this stretch, tenure keeps stacking up. At that specific spot, three concepts came and went before an owner with actual roots in the community took it over. That's not a coincidence worth ignoring. It suggests the Village rewards operators who are already known quantities and is less forgiving of concepts parachuted in from elsewhere.
What Longevity Actually Looks Like on the Ground
The Mountain Brook Chamber of Commerce tracks this kind of thing every month in its business happenings roundup, and this year's edition reads less like a list of openings and more like a run of anniversaries.
| Business | Address | Milestone in 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Ruby Ansley Interiors | 2806 Petticoat Lane | 62 years |
| Birmingham Boys Choir | Based in Mountain Brook | 53 years |
| Dana Wolter Interiors | 2713 Cahaba Road | 21 years |
| Home with Hechart | 2003 Cahaba Road, English Village | 5 years |
| Key Circle Commons | 2010 Cahaba Road, English Village | 4 years |
| Curry Corner | 2037 Cahaba Road, English Village | 2 years |
| Frida's Cocina & Cantina | 2031 Cahaba Road | 2 years |
A few of these are worth sitting with. Ruby Ansley Interiors has been designing homes out of the same Petticoat Lane address for 62 years, long enough to have outlasted several generations of trends in the Village around it. Curry Corner, owned by friends Buwhan Bashel and Bir Thapa, is closing in on two years of full-service Indian dining with a full bar in a village better known for tea rooms and jewelers. Home with Hechart, run by interior designer Alex Hechart and her mother Donna Woodfin, has quietly built a five-year run without ever needing to relocate or rebrand.
Then there's dg restaurant, formerly known as Daniel George, at 2837 Culver Road. It marked its 25th anniversary in 2025 with a rebrand, and this April it unveiled a fully renovated interior, including a redesigned bar by local architect Jeffrey Dungan and a darker, European-leaning look throughout the dining room. A restaurant doesn't invest in a Dungan-designed bar remodel a quarter-century in unless it plans on being there for another quarter-century.
Even the storefronts changing hands are staying local. Still Johnson Interiors, an award-winning design studio that's landed in Garden & Gun and Architectural Digest Mexico, relocated from downtown Birmingham's Morris Avenue to English Village at 1903 Cahaba Road at the start of this year, not because it needed a fresh start, but because it wanted to be on the same strip as Continental Bakery, Chez Lulu, and Le Weekend. And M. Cory, the women's clothing boutique at 2734 Cahaba Road, spent part of the year operating out of a temporary pop-up while its permanent space got a renovation, then reopened this May with the same owner, the same brands, and a nicer room to sell them in.
What's Worth Building Your Week Around Right Now
None of this means the Village has gone quiet. If you're looking for a reason to walk down there this month, a few things are actually on the calendar:
- Habitat Feed & Social's rooftop Girl Dinner runs weekly on Thursdays through September, with remaining dates on the 10th, 17th, and 24th. It pairs a $60 shared plate with rotating local musicians and a view over the Village.
- Avani Rupa is marking ten years in business with a ribbon cutting hosted by the Mountain Brook Chamber of Commerce, a milestone worth noting given how much of this year's story has been about staying power.
- The Birmingham Zoo Gala, the Zoo's largest annual fundraiser, brings cocktails and animal encounters starting at 6 p.m., followed by a dinner catered by Hot and Hot Fish Club and a live auction. It's black-tie optional and for guests 21 and up, so it's more of an occasion than a Tuesday-night stop, but it's the kind of event that fills up the Village's restaurants and bars before and after.
The Actual Takeaway
Put the fencing, the roundabouts, and the anniversary list side by side and a pattern shows up that a quick drive-through wouldn't tell you. The Village isn't being disrupted this year. It's compounding. The businesses with the deepest roots are reinvesting rather than cashing out, the one location that couldn't hold a tenant finally landed one with actual ties to the neighborhood, and the biggest capital project on the street is a jeweler betting on more personalized service, not more foot traffic. The traffic problem that used to make a quick errand annoying got fixed a little over a year ago, and it's still paying off in the kind of small, repeated visits that keep a 62-year-old interior design firm in business.
If you already live here, you've probably felt all of this without being able to name it. That's usually how it works with a place that's working.
Hannah Sells Birmingham keeps an eye on projects like these because they end up mattering to the people asking about Mountain Brook down the road, whether that's a family sizing up the Village's daily rhythm or a longtime resident curious what their street will look like once the fencing finally comes down. If you ever want a plainspoken read on what's changing here and what isn't, reach out anytime.
