Tucked into Montgomery’s oldest residential neighborhood, a once-forgotten building is now home to a community hub like no other. Hilltop Public House—an all-day coffee shop, bar, and gathering place in historic Cottage Hill—was the vision of two friends who decided that instead of leaving the city to find community, they would cultivate it.
“In 2019, I was thinking about leaving Alabama,” shares co-owner Andrew Szymanski. “I really didn’t have anything tying me down to Alabama.”
“I was thinking about doing what some of my other friends from Montgomery had done, which is to pack up and move on and try and go find a place to live that had the things that a 30 something-year-old would be looking for: vibrant night life and entertainment, wonderful outdoor recreation opportunities, just some of those things that tell you that a municipality or city have a pulse.”
Nearly convinced that this was the way forward, a friendly catch-up charted a new course. “I was talking to a buddy of mine, Will, who’s now my business partner, and in our conversation, Will posed this question: ‘Everybody keeps leaving Montgomery specifically to go find these things. What if we stayed and created some of that?’”
That simple concept was the spark that led to the creation of two powerful local initiatives: The revitalization of a set of historic commercial buildings in Cottage Hill and River Region Trails, a pedestrian infrastructure nonprofit that is similar to the Red Rock Trail System or Singing River Trail…