Change coming to downtown Demopolis, thanks to Gracie, GOC

“I don’t like to sit around and talk about what Demopolis needs. I want to be the one to actually take action.”

Reginald Gracie has done just that. By himself and with a group of ambitious friends, he is saving abandoned homes and breathing life into downtown Demopolis.

“We all have visions; we all have goals,” said Gracie, owner of Reggie’s salon on North Strawberry Street.

“My purpose is community – all inclusive, all people,” he said. “Anything we do I think it should be inviting for everybody.”

A Demopolis native and a 1985 graduate of DHS, Gracie took a few years of “getting myself together” to realize what he wanted to do. After earning his degree in business management from UWA, he started working at the former James River plant in Pennington. While there he began studying cosmetology at Alabama Southern University and doing hair on the side.

During that time he opened a clothing boutique and salon and bought an old home on East Washington that he painstakingly began to refurbish as time and money became available. “It was an enormous project.”

As if he didn’t have enough to do, Gracie also served on the Board of Trustees at St. Paul Baptist Church which, at that time, was undertaking a major project.

Even he realized he couldn’t do it all, so he closed the clothing store. Once his house was completed, however, he decided, “I need to do something else.”

He was asked to join a group of guys planning holiday parties at the Civic Center. From that “great group of guys” grew the seven-member Gentlemen of Change who, Gracie believed, “could do a lot more and be very beneficial to the community,” said Gracie.

Members of the group with Gracie are Conrad Murdock, Charles Jones Jr., Charles Raby, Thaddeus Johnson, Joe Morris and Greg Russell.

With a vision of what could be, Gracie said, “we’ve been working and thinking and planning and traveling.”

Together the group purchased two adjacent buildings on North Walnut Street across from the Public Square that once housed the employment service center. Plans are to create apartments above and develop retail space below.

Soon after that purchase, the Demopolis Inn came up for sale. Gracie was intrigued because his first apartment was in building. After much study, the GOC purchased it.

The Demopolis Inn has 18 apartments, all occupied, and a long waiting list of prospective renters. “The rental market is wide open,” said Gracie. Long-range plans are to open an unused section as a hotel.

The GOC will reopen the Inn’s restaurant and the pub formerly known as The Cellar with an overhaul of the décor. “You can’t just throw a bucket of paint on the wall.”

The pub will keep its “dungeon” look, he said, and the courtyard in back will have firepits to provide “a beautiful oasis to dine.”

The group has talked with potential chefs and have come up with a menu but will wait until after the pandemic has eased before opening.

Add to all this activity is that Gracie has started his own construction company with Patrick Woodall. One of the first major projects for Gracie Woodall Enterprises is tackling the rehab of an abandoned home on West Washington in the same block as the house Gracie refurbished for himself. The new project will convert the duplex into four apartments.

Gracie isn’t finished. He plans to bring back his clothing boutique, probably in the spring of 2022. The boutique will remain small and will be located inside the same building as Gracie’s salon.

Gracie remembers a bustling downtown from when he was a boy. “I look at the downtown area,  and that doesn’t mean it has to continue to look the way it looks,” he said. “It’s time for us to stop talking about it and start working to make it better.”

Downtown Demopolis, as it once was, is gone, he continued. Most retail is on U.S. Hwy. 80, “but that doesn’t mean you can’t have retail downtown.”

Stressing again the need for more apartment living, Gracie said, “We need to get more people coming back downtown. In order to do that you have to have something for them to come downtown for…If some people are living downtown, that could be the spark.”

More downtown businesses also could attract people from outside the city, he added. “Demopolis is a hub for surrounding counties, so bring people here.”

More opportunities also lead to keeping tax dollars here.

His advice: “Stop talking about it and just do it. Put a plan in place and make it happen.” Then, he added, “You have to work the plan.”