Former Westlawn Middle School Now Open as West Huntsville’s Newest Modern Office Center

On the afternoon of Wednesday, June 14, hundreds of Huntsville community members gathered in anticipation to see the city’s newest office space. 

What makes this space so different from the rest in the city? Well, many of our readers probably attended middle school in this new complex. 

Local developers Garret Coyne and Beth Stender Boyer purchased the former Westlawn Middle School in West Huntsville back in 2021 with the idea of redeveloping the space into affordable and high-quality workspaces in a centralized location. They knew that West Huntsville had the potential for major growth, which Coyne was keen to elaborate on. 

“We really saw this building as a potentially new gateway into the West Huntsville redevelopment and the West Huntsville renaissance that this whole district was seeing along Governor’s corridor,” he explained.  “We saw Ninth Avenue as a secondary gateway into the corridor starting here at Jordan Lane, ending all the way down to Clinton, through Seminole past Lowe Mill, and through the Triana Ninth intersection. We see this as a great corridor.” 

This feeling of accomplishment regarding West Huntsville was also echoed by Mayor Tommy Battle in his remarks at the ceremony. 

“This is really special because it’s the repurposing of a building. It’s part of our sustainability plan. We take something that  had a purpose of that in invigorated bright young minds, and now it’s going to be part of our economy. It’s going to invigorate our business. It’s gonna make us a city that can grow.

“And it’s very exciting that we see this happening right here in the West Huntsville area. People will come in here and they’ll get started here, and they’ll go bigger and bigger and bigger, and it will keep our economy rolling for years to come,” said Mayor Battle.

During the event, Coyne also announced that local restaurant delivery service, GrubSouth, has moved its office to Westlawn as its first office-space-tenant. GrubSouth and all future tenants will have access to a conference center, kitchen, coffee bar, and collaborative workspaces as amenities. 

The developers also revealed phase II plans for the site, which will transform the nearly one-acre courtyard into an outdoor amenity for tenants featuring breakout workspaces among the courtyard plans designed by former Westlawn Middle student Chad Bostic. 

The GrubSouth announcement was not his only surprise. Coyne also shared with those in attendance that the group acquired additional buildings along Ninth Avenue to implement a larger development.     

“I want everyone to know that it’s not the last building on this corridor that we have,” Coyne revealed.  “So over the next couple of years, we will be working on two more projects on Ninth Avenue Street, totalling 150,000 square feet of new construction development.” 

“Those projects will be coming down the pipeline as we create this corridor along Ninth Avenue to bring people from the core of downtown Huntsville, out to the edge of West Huntsville, into the arsenal and into the rest of our community,” Coyne shared enthusiastically.

The space isn’t just for office tenants either. A commissary kitchen will open later this year in the school’s former cafeteria. This space will provide culinary entrepreneurs with a clean, licensed commercial kitchen to grow their business. This move makes too much sense for those familiar with the two who are also responsible for the workforce development nonprofit Hatch.

The various suites range from just over one hundred eighteen square feet to over ten thousand which shows the developers serious commitment to providing access to affordable workspace. 

If you are interested in securing your own space within Westlawn, contact Walker Purvis and Anusha Alapati Davis with Crunkleton Commercial Real Estate, who will act as leasing agents for the development.