“Make me an angel, that flies from Montgomery,” croons John Prine in his classic folk song “Angel from Montgomery.”
Town officials in Montgomery are hoping that angel comes in the form of outdoor recreation—especially with last summer’s opening of Montgomery Whitewater Park, the country’s fourth such recirculating paddling facility that its developers are banking on spurring the local economy.
That’s right…a town long known as the birthplace of the civil rights movement—with Rosa Parks spawning the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955—is also becoming known for a civil engineering marvel. Designed by three-time Olympian Scott Shipley of Denver, Colo.’s S20 Designs/Calibre Engineering, the 120-acre park features two artificial river channels, one built to Olympic standards. It’s been billed as the world’s most advanced channel system, with Class II-IV rapids to accommodate everyone from beginners to experts for rafting, kayaking and stand-up paddle boarding. It also offers a restaurant and beer garden (aptly named “Eddy’s”); a concert lawn; rock climbing wall and zipline; and hiking and biking trails—all just minutes from downtown. Additional plans call for a ropes course; access to the Alabama River for flatwater kayaking and paddle boarding; and a hotel and retail outlets. Though running the river requires a fee, admission to the park is free, keeping it accessible to the community.
The gamble on the six-year, $80 million investment appears to be working. As well as increasing quality of life for residents and visitors—including those from the adjacent Maxwell Airforce Base—in April Meta announced plans to build an $800 million, 715,000-square-foot data center on 1,500 acres nearby, citing the facility as playing an important role in its decision. It even held their opening announcement there, with executives rafting the course afterward. The venue also hosted the U.S. Olympic trials in April, one of several such events it’s hoping to hold in the future. Indeed, when community leaders first envisioned the public/private project, they codenamed it “Project Catalyst”—a nod to the stimulus it could provide to the community.
“It’s not an understatement to say this project is truly transforming Montgomery,” says Leslie Sanders, chair of the Montgomery County Community Cooperative District, the multi-partner organization that oversaw the project. “It will be an ongoing catalyst for growth for years to come.” It’s also caught the state’s attention, with the park earning the Project of the Year award from Business Alabama. “Since opening in July, the park has drawn crowds from across the nation, helped us recruit new high-paying jobs and provided recreational opportunities for local residents,” maintains Montgomery County Commission chair Doug Singleton.
Rivers as Recreational Hotbeds
Montgomery isn’t the only community employing the “If-you-build-a-river-they-will-come” recipe for economic success. It’s one of four of such man-made venues in the U.S.—joining Riversports Rapids in Oklahoma City, the U.S. National Whitewater Center in Charlotte, N.C., and Adventure Sports Center International at Wisp Resort in McHenry, Md.—all using an artificial river to boost business and quality of life. A host of similar courses have been built worldwide for Olympic competitions, from London and Sydney to China and Brazil. The courses in the U.S. have hosted everything from international competitive events to commercial rafting operations.
“These parks are becoming event and activity hubs and the focal point of their communities,” says Shipley, who has had a hand in designing three of the four. “They turn often under-utilized urban areas into true recreational amenities that are fun for the whole family. Millennials want to have an adventure on their vacations, and these make that possible. They bring rafting to the people. Instead of people having to spend money to travel and raft once a year, they can now do it after work.”
Billed as the world’s most profitable such park, with over 1 million visitors per year, Charlotte’s U.S. National Whitewater Center, which opened in 2006, offers more than 30 different recreational activities housed on 1,300 acres—including 50 miles of trails and access to the Catawba River. Each of its seven pumps can fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool every 12 seconds. It draws more than 250,000 commercial rafters every year. “Rafting is definitely our number one activity,” says brand director Jesse Hyde. “It’s become super popular.” Opening in 2016, the $45 million, 11-acre Oklahoma Whitewater Center, known as Riversport Rapids, brings the same draw to Oklahoma City, featuring the world’s highest-volume, pumped channel in the world, running up to 1,400 cfs at full capacity.
But neither of them have Montgomery’s slave trade, segregation and civil rights history as a backbone. While “From Rosa to Rapids” might not become a marketing slogan anytime soon, local officials want that lesson to be learned as well.
A Firsthand Visit to Montgomery Whitewater
I get educated in both in early May with a visit to the facility. My first morning, I get a quick tour before the park opens from kayak manager Paul Belle Isle. The course is empty, just giant, blue Lego-like blocks nestled inside a rectangular concrete culvert. The features are called RapidBlocs and are Shipley’s patented creation that allow the rapids shape to be easily changed. Make a wave bigger or eddyline sharper for Olympic-caliber competition, and easier for recreational paddlers.
It’s a Friday and right now the park is only open three days a week, Friday-Sunday, from 11 a.m. until 6 p.m. It will switch to full-time come summer. While the waterway is empty now, it’s about to come to life with the push of a button. Paul leads me to a computer screen in the control room, where he turns it on. At 100 percent power, its five electric pumps can pump 125 cfs each into the course—even though they only use four at a time, for a total flow of 500 cfs. Each pump costs $250 an hour to run, times seven hours a day, that’s about $7,000 in electricity a day to run. The power comes thanks to a deal worked out with partner Alabama Power.
We then walk up to the top pool— it’s amazing to see what the team was able to create with just 22 feet of drop—and see the fruits of the multi-layered partnership emerge onto the course. Adjacent to where paddlers scootch onto a George Jetson-like conveyor belt for the journey up, the flow separates into two channels, an easier, 1,600-foot-long Class II-III course (the longest in the country), often the domain of its instructional programs and inflatable kayak rentals; and a harder, 1,200-foot-long Class III-IV competitive channel, which is what racers in the recent team trials used.At first the surge is a cacophony of unpredictable currents, forming waves and eddies that are there one second and gone the next. But then the water finds its groove, flowing into each of the two channels until the streambeds are full.
“We took the best parts from all the other parks and put them into this one,” says Shipley. “It’s a true state-of-the-art whitewater course.”
All along, the local public has been waiting to see how it would turn out and what, exactly, its developers were bringing to their town. “Positive curiosity,” is how Belle Isle sums up the general public’s response to the park. “It’s called Montgomery Whitewater, but all they hear is ‘water,’ so they think it’s just a typical water park,” he says. “We’re educating them that it’s actually an outdoor recreation facility.”
Operations manager Craig Heflin does the same with me later that afternoon. He’s a former paddler for kayak company Wave Sport who ran a kayak school in Atlanta for years before becoming a cop. Now he’s back in the paddling game. Selecting from a large quiver of rental and instructional boats (I opt for a Jackson Antix), we get cinch down our skirts in the holding pool below and then paddle over and onto the conveyor belt. It’s an odd feeling, scootching onto an escalator for your shuttle, but has its advantages. I tighten my backband and take a sip of water on the moving ramp.
Up top, we plop into a large pool next to a hydraulic formed by the water coming out of the pumps. It’s Craig’s creation with the RapidBlocs and we surf it a few times before heading downstream. He leads me into the easier channel first, catching eddies, surfing waves and dodging the occasional inflatable kayaker before dropping off a horizon line of a rapid called Geronimo and dumping into the pool at the bottom. There, we paddle back onto the escalator and plop out into the pool above once again. This time, we veer left into the competition channel, past the wooden launch ramp recently used for the US Olympic Kayak Cross Team Trials.
“This one’s faster and bigger, but you’ll be fine,” Craig yells over his shoulder as we plunge in.
Indeed, the eddies are artificially fast, without the rocks of a regular river to slow down and break up the current. Your leans need to be fast and true. At a rapid named Sweet Caroline— a nod to Neil Diamond’s classic for the “Bum, Bum, Bum!” three big wave hits that come right afterward—we take turns surfing the top wave. It’s as good—and fast—as any you’d find on most rivers, only with onlookers sitting in chairs and drinking beers just a paddle length’s away. Another series of drops is nicknamed Curly, Larry and Moe and a final one Baptism, for its obligatory dunking.
Day Two at the Park
The next day I return, paddling it by myself. It’s Saturday and the course is far more crowded with rentals, lessons, commercial rafters and a community raft race for local businesses. There are 22 teams signed up—all filled with people who would otherwise likely never experience whitewater rafting—with guides provided by the park. They take two timed laps each down the competition channel, with an announcer egging them and the crowd on. There’s carnage, sure, and several swims, but safety personnel lining the sides help them with throw ropes whenever needed. Between runs, bands play under an adjacent tent.
After a few laps on each course, I hit Eddy’s Bar and Restaurant for a burger and local Common Bond IPA. Hockey, basketball and baseball games command the TVs. A glance around shows what the scene is all about. It’s a weekend night and people are out enjoying their new park. A graduation party of 100 take over one corner. Other people have set up their own chairs and hammocks by the river, drinking, eating and listening to live music. “People like to be next to a river,” says Paul, adding they drop the flow down to just one pump in the evenings for ambiance. Kids play pickup football and Frisbee on a nearby field. Other children ride a zipline and tackle the climbing wall. A bridge leads to a playground. It’s a vibrant community setting. And while it may have been expensive, it’s working.
A couple next to me is from the air force base. Two paddlers the table over came from Atlanta. Another couple drove down from Birmingham. And there are locals, locals, locals, here just to hang out at sunset.
Is it artificial? Sure. But it’s exposing people to rivers who otherwise might have never been, and giving them place to sit and enjoy it outside. When we leave, the parking lot is still packed full. “Friday night lights,” says Paul.
From Segregation to Recreation
The whitewater park is serving as an impetus for other outdoor recreation growth as well. The next day I tour the downtown riverfront with Will O’Connell, founder of nonprofit River Region Trails whose group helped build the new Cypress Nature Trail downtown, with plans to extend it even more. A ferry boat sits at a dock, offering rides along he Alabama River, formed 20 miles upstream where the Tallapoosa and Coosa rivers join. “For years the Alabama River here has been hidden from Montgomery, but now we’re opening that up,” says O’Connell.
A tunnel under the train tracks downtown—which once led slaves from their ships to the town square to be sold—now leads to amphitheater, park and concert venue. “Downtown was never really a place people came for fun,” O’Connell adds, adding they’re also trying to build mountain bike trails nearby and offer a location for SUP and kayak rentals. “Historically, we’re restoring an area known more for segregation than recreation.” It’s working. The city recently got a visit from and official designation from national nonprofit Main Steet USA.
Later, I grab a beer at the local Common Bond brewery with Experience Montgomery’s Aqaun Robinson. He sheds more light on how the whitewater park is finally putting Montgomery of people’s map. “We’re sitting in a major travel corridor at the junction of I-65 and 85, and we’ve never given people a reason to stop in Montgomery before aside from our history offerings,” he says. “We’re hoping the park will be a catalyst to help ignite that. We want to capture those people from the north driving down to the beach, and the park is helping grab their attention.
“It’s been pretty well received,” he adds, adding he knows a local grandmother who recently celebrated her 80th birthday there. “The community’s definitely embraced it and it’s already paying dividends. It’s a true outdoor park for the community. You can get in the water if you want, but you don’t have to—think about how many people go to the beach but don’t get in the water.”
And it’s also luring new business to town, from companies like Meta to others that are now dipping their toes into possible relocations. “Quality of life definitely helps with industry recruitment,” Robinson says, adding that it’s also alluring for sports tournaments visiting Montgomery. “We knew potential employers and employees were looking for that.”
Officials say that without the park, Meta might well have moved elsewhere. “It’s the most technologically advanced whitewater facility in the country,” says the co-op district’s Sander. “Something like that makes a Meta stop and say, ‘This is a progressive city, a progressive county, and a progressive state. Combine that with partners such as Alabama Power and it makes a compelling case.”
For Shipley, whose passion is paddling and exposing others to it, the proof comes from the smiles on people’s faces as much as it does the city’s pocketbook. “It’s bringing a new vibrancy and economic development to Montgomery County for sure,” he says. “But the venue is also truly changing the area’s quality of life, both for locals and visitors. And companies are noticing this and looking to move.”
Info: Montgomerywhitewater.com.
If You Go
Stay: For hotels, try the Trilogy Autograph at 108 Coosa Street in the heart of downtown and a short walk to museums and the Alabama River nature trail. It’s affordable, historic and quaint, with an awesome breakfast restaurant serving the best grits around. Bonus: Rooftop bar overlooking downtown.
https://trilogyhotelmontgomery.com/
Eats: No visit to the south is complete without sampling its southern fare, which includes everything from Boudain balls and okra to fried green tomatoes, and shrimp and grits. “Mac n’ cheese is a vegetable here,” maintains Craig Howard from Experience Montgomery. Enjoy Happy Hour and dinner at the Capitol Oyster Bar (http://www.capitoloysterbar.com/) at 617 Shady Street, serving up some of the best seafood in the city while overlooking the Alabama River. For brewery fare, try Common Bond Brewers, the city’s only production brewery, with a nod to local flavors and fresh ingredients. https://www.commonbondbrewers.com/
Other Activities: Coosa River Adventures offers kayak, stand up paddle board, and canoe rentals and shuttles down the Coosa River, a 7-mile trip with up to Class II rapids. It also offers 51-mile overnight Tallapoosa River trips, ending at historic Fort Toulouse. https://coosariveradventures.com/
Museums: Montgomery is becoming known for its museums, from those dealing with the slave trade to those for Hank Williams, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Rosa Parks. A couple faves include: The Legacy Museum, located a block from one of the most prominent slave auction spaces in America and dock and rail station where tens of thousands of black people were trafficked during the 19th century; The National Memorial for Peace & Justice, the nation’s first memorial dedicated to the legacy of enslaved black people, people terrorized by lynching, and African Americans humiliated by racial segregation and Jim Crow; Freedom Monument Sculpture Park, a 17-acre site along the Alabama River showcasing art and original artifacts in an interactive view into the lives of enslaved people, honoring the four million formerly enslaved Black people who won freedom after the Civil War. To lighten it up, try the Hank Williams Museum, an ode to the legendary country singer and songwriter (and his “Drifting Cowboys), who won a talent show in Montgomery when he was just 14, sparking a storied musical career until his untimely death at age 30 in 1953.