A comprehensive look into Huntsville’s infrastructure: Mayor Battle envisions communities within ‘bigger community’

The goal is to see individual neighborhoods thriving as part of a much larger landscape. That’s how Mayor Tommy Battle envisions Huntsville, already the largest city in the state, as the metro area continues to grow in population and expand commercially. As part of a plan for infrastructure, Battle and his administration introduced what they […]

Real Estate Update: Rental Woes Ravage Small Businesses

This entry of the Huntsville Business Journal’s Real Estate Update takes a step back from the residential real estate market in order to take a look at developments in commercial real estate.  The August 2022 report from Alignable, the nationwide small business online network company, shows a record-breaking 40% of small businesses nationally being unable […]

Real Estate Update: A Return to Pre-Pandemic Market Conditions

The Huntsville Area Association of Realtors’ (HAAR) report for the month of July has been released. These figures suggest that the reverberations of the pandemic disruptions to the residential real estate market have largely settled out.  802 homes sold in Madison County last month, down from 930 sold in July of 2021, and even a […]

HSV Ranks #2 in Best Places for Career Opportunities – 2022 Edition

Despite rising inflation and recent stock market instability, it’s still a job seeker’s market. There are roughly 11 million job openings available nationwide as of May 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). For the same month, there were 6.5 million hires. Data from June 2022 shows a 4% increase in the percentage […]

Imagining Huntsville’s Future: The City of the Stars

A claim, put forward by Yahoo Finance in April and further analyzed on AL.com last month, suggested that the average price of a home in Huntsville could reach a million dollars by 2030.  Seems a bit steep, doesn’t it?  And yet, this future may not be as outlandish as it appears at first glance. Gabrielle […]

Alabama ranks 45th in labor productivity among states

With numerous economic experts predicting that the U.S. is headed toward recession, one of the many concerning signals is a sharp decline in labor productivity. After more than a decade of below-average productivity growth, the COVID-19 pandemic raised the prospect of a productivity boom. Many low-productivity jobs were eliminated early in the pandemic, while major infrastructure investments and the accelerated adoption of […]

Real Estate Update: High Inflation Hits Market

The Huntsville Area Association of Realtors’ (HAAR) Economic Report for Q1 2022 illustrates the rapid inflation that has hit all aspects of American economic life. The rate of inflation hit 8% in March, a four-fold increase since that month the previous year.  With the 8% inflation rate far outstripping the approximately 2% increase in median […]

Mayor Battle outlines new goals and development for Huntsville’s BIG Picture plan

The genesis of Huntsville’s master plan came during Mayor Tommy Battle’s second term in 2014 when the city was the third largest in Alabama. In 2018, the mayor’s office unveiled The BIG Picture master plan at a time when the city had grown into the state’s second largest. Four years later, with Huntsville now the […]

Solid Ground Mental Wellness workshops open the conversation for local businesses

Mental health conditions have long been perceived as something that developed outside the workplace. The past couple of years, however, have made it clear to many that workplaces directly impact employee health in every way–not just spreading infection, but also increasing the potential for anxiety, depression, and other disorders.  Rachel Sullivan of Solid Ground Counseling, […]

Mayor Battle announces closure of TIF

A financial tool used to provide millions of dollars toward school improvements and job creation will retire in August, two years ahead of projection and nine years before its required closing. On Wednesday, Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle announced that the City of Huntsville will soon make its last bond payment to close a tax increment […]