Since they first met at BSC, John Boone ’06 and Hunter Renfroe ’08 have traded ideas. Whether they were planning Sigma Nu events – Boone was the fraternity’s president and Renfroe the social chair – or investigating problems in the city around them, the two quickly figured out how to work together.

“John sees what’s wrong in the world, and I analyze and flesh out how we can tackle the problem,” Renfroe says. “We would put together the framework for changes we wanted to make in the future as we philosophized.”

Through Orchestra Partners, their real estate development firm, Boone and Renfroe now invest their shared ideas into Birmingham and its historic buildings. Their mission aims to create sustainable neighborhoods by redeveloping existing properties within charming Birmingham markets and communities like Five Points South, Avondale, Parkside, and Morris Avenue.

Orchestra Partners projects have become some of Birmingham’s most popular and innovative destinations, including Founders Station, Morris Avenue’s first true mixed-use experience, featuring retail and Pilcrow Cocktail Cellar, a basement bar owned by Joe Phelps ’07, their Sigma Nu brother.

“Hunter and I create neighborhoods where we want to live,” Boone says. “The bars and restaurants we design are places where we want to eat, and the office spaces we work on are places where we want to work.”

The mindset behind Orchestra Partners emerged, ironically, once they left Birmingham. After a few post-grad years in the city, Boone moved to Washington, D.C., where he became interested in education reform. Renfroe, with his wife, Whitney Mayfield Renfroe ’09, moved to Boston to get his MBA. Both ditched their cars in the walkable cities and gained a new perspective on urban living.

“I deliberately looked only at schools where I could live in the core city and walk to class,” explains Renfroe, who chose Boston University. “What I decided was that the only way to change my lifestyle was to get out of the car. Humans were meant to live in cities and were designed to walk, but we hardly ever do it.”

A few hundred miles south, Boone was experiencing the same lifestyle change in D.C., where he walked 45 minutes to work every morning. He later moved to Florida to work for a charter school development company, which merged his interests in education and real estate development. However, he moved back to Alabama once Renfroe called him with an idea to build a walkable lifestyle in Birmingham.

With parallel experiences in bigger cities, plus a solid friendship and shared idealism, the two launched Orchestra Partners in 2015 with their first acquisition in Five Points. To Boone and Renfroe, the Southside neighborhood is something that’s nearly impossible to replicate, from the physical design, like Cobb Lane’s cobblestone block, to the history of the streets as the old turnaround for the trolley.

Their mission to establish walkable and livable communities relies on creating experiences. Founders Station, one of Orchestra Partners’ first projects, combines a variety of experiences in one of Birmingham’s most compelling locations.

“It blew our minds that nobody has ever done what we did in Founders Station because everybody who walks down Morris Avenue talks about what a cool street it is,” Boone says. “It truly speaks to what we’re trying to accomplish – making downtown a neighborhood that has everything you need for urban life.”

Boone and Renfroe believe building connectivity – a core principle of Orchestra Partners’ business model – is essential. Alongside Tom Leader, the nationally renowned landscape architect who designed Railroad Park, Orchestra Partners recently unveiled a Parkside District master plan that features pedestrian pathways and mixed-use redevelopment concepts for Powell Steam Plant and other historic properties on the west end of Railroad Park, positioning Parkside as the central hub of connectivity and a vibrant entertainment destination.

Boone and Renfroe hope to see BSC students get off campus and connect with the city’s core, particularly as the Parkside project further connects the campus to downtown. Renfroe credits Dr. Ed LaMonte’s “Experience the City” course for opening his eyes to downtown’s potential.

“It was simultaneously inspiring and depressing,” Renfroe says about the class. “We have such a cool city, but we walked past vacant building after vacant building. That’s the reason why I’m doing what I’m doing.”

Now, by recognizing the inherent value in old downtown buildings, Renfroe and Boone are an essential part of the city’s revitalization.

A shortened version of this story was published in the Fall/Winter 2019 issue of ’Southern, BSC’s alumni magazine.

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