Town Madison Groundbreaking Sets Table for Smorgasbord of Restaurants

MADISON — Neither a yearlong pandemic, labor shortages, a long delay getting construction materials, a complete building redesign, nor the threat of rain, could stop the lollapalooza of restaurants announcing they are coming or expanding to Town Madison this week. 

Five Guys, Super Chix, Outback Steakhouse, Slim Chickens, and a new restaurant concept known as Prohibition, all broke ground Tuesday on a central site at the corner of Stadium Way and Zierdt Road, just blocks from Toyota Field.   

Madison Mayor Paul Finley, who just returned from a quarterly meeting with the mayors of the 10 largest cities in Alabama, said he always returns home more fully aware of how special Madison County is, and how bright the future is in North Alabama.

“It is not lost on me that we are not just having one groundbreaking at Town Madison, but we are having five groundbreakings in one day at Town Madison,” Finley said. “As economic development continues to happen in this area, there are a lot more announcements coming in the days ahead and I commend everybody who has been a part of it.

“With labor and construction costs where they are, you have a lot of different choices. Many investors would hold tight, but you haven’t; so, thank you to these five businesses and investors, for your investment in our city.” 

Tyjuana Watson Lewis, managing partner for Outback Steakhouse in Huntsville and now at Town Madison, said as a resident of Madison, she is excited about all the developments going on. 

“We will be bringing a new prototype of Outback called the ‘Joey’ to Town Madison,” she said. “It will be a sleek new building, much more streamlined, and this will be the first one of its type to open.”

Deepen Patel, partner and CFO of Power Brands Hospitality Group, gave an intriguing description of their new concept restaurant, Prohibition, which will be next door to their Five Guys and Super Chix concepts.

“We have been wanting to bring Five Guys and Super Chix to Madison for a while, and were happy to have found them a home in Town Madison, but we also wanted to bring something unique and special here,” said Patel. “We generated ideas from our current portfolio of restaurants and from restaurants we have visited.

“That is how we came up with Prohibition, a rooftop gastropub with a chef-driven menu and specialty cocktails, what I describe as approachable and affordable. We are very excited about that project.” 

Patel said he and his family moved to Madison 20 years ago.

“It has been absolutely incredible to see the amount of growth and development that has been happening in such a short period of time here,” he said. “It takes a lot of planning and work, so, on behalf of the Power Brand team, we really want to say thank you for giving us a chance to continue in the growth of the Town Madison community.”

Alan Renfroe, cofounder of Legends Development representing Slim Chickens, acknowledged that due to residual fallout from the COVID pandemic, it has taken a few months to put the final deals together.

“On behalf of Slim Chickens, we want to say how proud we are to be a part of all the excitement and growth here at Town Madison,” he said. “We are excited to be a part of all the activity happening here and we are looking forward to growing this part of the Town Madison community.”

T.J. Lee, founder of Leeland Ventures, who was instrumental in bringing Slim Chickens to North Alabama, introduced their building partners, Hudson Company.

“They specialize in building fast casual type restaurants, and they will build-to-suit Slim Chickens to meet their specifications,” he said. “Also, to Louis (Breland) – what a fantastic development. I don’t know of anybody who could have pulled it off but you guys.

“And you have knocked it out of the park here in the shadow of the stadium.”

Breland said he is grateful for the confidence awarded him when his company started Town Madison with a vision of it becoming a destination for people from all over the state of Alabama, making it a tremendous asset to the city of Madison, to North Alabama and all of Alabama.

“A lot of work goes on behind the scenes, and without the leadership of Mayor Finley and people like Madison County Commission (Chair) Dale Strong and District 2 (Commissioner) Steve Haraway, who has been here from the beginning, our team is working 18 hours a day through some crazy times, but as you can see, we are coming out the backside like we always hoped we would,” Breland said.

“Stay tuned because the hits are going to keep on going, there will be more announcements, and more announcements, and more announcements coming shortly.”

Strong, standing alongside Haraway, reflected to just a couple of years ago when the development was nothing but bean fields, cornfields, cotton fields and wheat fields.

“I want to thank Mayor Finley and your city council, your planners, and the people of this community because this development will lead to the next tax dollars to create more police officers and more firefighters, new fire stations and police stations,” said Strong. “This is how you grow an economy.”

He pointed out that less than two miles down the road, the FBI is building a $1.3 billion campus on Redstone Arsenal, bringing more than 4,000 people to the area, along with the U.S. Space Command moving its headquarters to Redstone and the Mazda Toyota Manufacturing plant, which will be adding more than 4,000 jobs.

“Town Madison is perfectly positioned not only for today, but for the days ahead. I commend those that have seen the vision,” he said.