No Small Plans
Harvey Robbins's tiny hometown had become a shadow of its former self. So this self-made businessman decided to take matters into his own hands. Welcome to Tuscumbia, Ala.
Published December 2004
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COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLETucked into the northwest part of red-clay Alabama, in Colbert County, sits Tuscumbia, a population-8,000 blip off old Highway 72. It's the home of Harvey Robbins, a hometown entrepreneur who in 1995 sold his life's work, a company called National Floor Products, for some $120 million. Robbins had planned on retiring with his wife of 52 years, Joyce Ann, into a life of golf, bass fishing, and traveling to every corner of the world. It didn't take. The Robbinses quickly realized their favorite corner of the world is in Alabama.
They returned to Tuscumbia. But the four-square-block downtown wasn't full of life the way they remembered it. Tuscumbia is the county seat, and a little bit of government business seemed to be all that was holding the town together. "When I came into office in 2000, you could shoot a rifle in the middle of Main Street at any time of the day and not hit anyone," says Mayor Wade Gann. "There was nothing going on downtown."
Nothing except Harvey Robbins.
One early evening in 1999 he and Joyce Ann were driving down an empty Main Street, and they stopped in front of an old soda fountain that had long been abandoned and forgotten. It had been the Deshler High School sweetheart hangout, and a courting spot for Harvey and Joyce Ann. The two were saddened by their hometown's drawn-out slide into irrelevancy. And here was the dilapidated evidence staring them in the face.
Robbins had found his later-in-life mission -- to make Tuscumbia vibrant again. Fortunately, he already had the infrastructure in place to make the changes he envisioned. In the late 1980s, he had established Robbins Property Development to renovate buildings he purchased and maintain properties he owned. So he had a crew of multitalented guys at his disposal as he went about building a 21st-century Tuscumbia. Whatever that meant. There was no prototype, no blueprint for resuscitating a town. Robbins and his people winged it, as they still do.
Initially, it wasn't a grand scheme; Robbins simply wanted to give folks a few shopping, dining, and entertainment options to bring foot traffic, which would bolster Tuscumbia's meager sales-tax receipts enough to pay for civic improvements. Soon the plan grew more ambitious. To make Tuscumbia self-sustaining, the town's coffers needed filling, and that wasn't going to happen with a handful of stores that often closed at the whim of the owners and were always locked by 5 p.m. "Like Harvey says, you can't sell from an empty wagon," says David Blazer, vice president of Robbins Property Development and the guy who makes the backhoes run on time.
Blazer spearheaded phase 1 of Robbins's vision: a makeover of the town's traditional center, Spring Park. It worked from the get-go. Crowds flocked to see the new 48-foot-high waterfall, a bronze statue memorializing Chickasaw Princess Im-Mi-Ah-Key, a replica train running on 4,000 feet of track, and the piece de resistance, a choreographed fountain, music, and light show modeled on the Dancing Waters at Opryland.
Robbins then turned his sights on the abandoned ice cream shop that got him thinking about civic revitalization in the first place. It's now the Palace, an ice cream parlor and local social center decorated with items turned up in the renovation. Robbins poured well over a million and a half dollars into Spring Park, the Palace, Cold Water Books, the Pilot House restaurant, and some new apartments. He never wanted all the financial and managerial burden, though, so he decided to help other small-business owners help him revive Tuscumbia.
Robbins is the benevolent landlord for many of the new businesses that have popped up in town, offering reasonable rents, whatever renovations owners desire, and advice...if they ask. He encourages stores that draw consumers with a higher level of disposable income by offering specialty items not found at Wal-Mart. Robbins's main goal is that all the properties he owns and manages bring in a 1% monthly return, so that the bottom line (that is, Tuscumbia itself) stays healthy. Here are some stories from Harvey Robbins's thriving new hometown.
A town's roots
No store represents the nostalgic everything-old-is-new-again feel in Tuscumbia quite like Coldwater Seed & Supply. Dwight James, a banker in town for 23 years, was interested in buying the business, which had been a farming mainstay since the 1930s, but it needed a thorough cleaning and repair job and he didn't want to run up debt fixing it. James paid a visit to his old high school classmate David Blazer and was assured that Robbins Property Development would do the necessary plumbing, painting, and relighting to make the store more viable. James follows the Robbins pattern and offers a wide range of hard-to-find products, including some 150 different varieties of seeds. The antique red-oak bins filled with Rattlesnake pole beans, Kentucky Wonder bush beans, Truckers Favorite white corn, and Better Boy sweet tomatoes lure gardening enthusiasts and self-sustaining farmers from five counties. And since his customers are DIY types, James has brought in live baby chicks, turkeys, and ducks for holiday feasts. So far, so good: One early-planting-season afternoon James had 143 customers. "Harvey's led a renaissance," he says. "I never envisioned Tuscumbia making the turnaround."
