From mall to metropolis: How the MidCity District is redefining Huntsville, Alabama

Max Ferry’s commute is so short that he can walk to work in five minutes. That's one minute shorter than his stroll to Kamado Ramen, his favorite Japanese spot in booming Huntsville, Alabama, a city buzzing with tech jobs and modern developments.

Ferry’s longest walk, about 10 minutes, is to The Camp, a food truck market where he catches live music, but even that walk may get shorter. “They are moving in the foreseeable future right next to my apartment, so that is cool,” the 24-year-old mechanical engineer told Homes.com.

Metropolitan Huntsville is experiencing an influx of talent behind recent employment-heavy investments in the region, including the coming relocation of Space Command, U.S. Space Force headquarters. Huntsville's population was 215,006 in 2020 and is estimated to be 249,102 now, according to city government data. That's a nearly 16% increase in five years.

That stream of new residents is projected to remain steady as new jobs flow into the city. Cummings Research Park is already the second-largest dedicated research and development district in the country after Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. Space Command alone is predicted to bring in as many as 1,800 positions over the next three years.

In addition, the FBI is expanding its facilities at Huntsville's Redstone Arsenal Army post to accommodate an additional 500 employees. And then there are the anticipated ancillary businesses and contractors that come in to support the larger institutions.

Ferry lives in the MidCity District, a 140-acre mixed-use development in Huntsville that combines apartments, office space, retail and restaurants in a dense urban community that's drawing young professionals. “The idea behind MidCity was to … attract and retain the next-generation workforce,” Nadia Niakossary, senior director of development for MidCity developer RCP Cos., told Homes.com.

And it is, according to Ferry, who plays on a softball team with other people in his apartment building. “I think about 50% of the people I see look like they work in Research Park and are about my age,” he said.

On the downside, the development must deal with a challenge faced by a number of rental developments in that its population is somewhat homogeneous, skewing young and white collar. Even so, those in the area say it's an improvement over what had come before.

Based in Huntsville, the company began the project in 2015 after taking over the former Madison Square Mall shopping center, “a property that lost its relevance,” Niakossary said. RCP managed the mall for two years as it prepared the master plan for MidCity. They demolished the mall in 2017, and the first pieces of the new development took shape the same year.

Niakossary said MidCity is roughly 35% complete, but the master plan is “ever evolving.”

Niakossary said RCP is hearing high demand for for-sale options in MidCity. The median sale price for a single-family home in Huntsville itself is $315,000, according to Homes.com. In the U.S., the median home price was $385,000 in October. A look at the Homes.com listings shows properties on the market in Huntsville ranging from a one-bedroom, one-bath condo for $75,000 to a six-bedroom, 10,065-square-foot-plus mountaintop estate for just shy of $6 million.

MidCity has about 1,200 apartments spread among four complexes: Encore, Metronome, Anthem House and Wellory Living. Metronome and Encore feature apartments of up to three bedrooms. Anthem House offers micro-units of approximately 500 square feet for young professionals and individuals working on temporary contracts. Wellory Living is MidCity’s environmentally friendly option, featuring net-zero energy operations.

The average rent in Huntsville is $1,204 per month, more than 40% below the national average of $1,734, according to research by Homes.com's commercial real estate affiliate, CoStar. From 2021 through most of 2024, the city saw an oversupply of apartments as new buildings were completed. Vacancy rates reached over 20%.

But the demand is catching up. Over the past 12 months, absorption has been 3,500 units, much higher than the historical average of 1,700 annually, according to CoStar.

Ferry, who works for a defense contractor, moved to the city in May. He said he toured roughly a dozen apartments before settling on a one-bedroom, one-bathroom at Encore. “When I moved in, they were … just starting to get people in,” he said. “And now there are a lot of people.”

A future wave of development will add for-sale condos and single-family homes to the mix, according to Niakossary.

“It’s so much more bang for your buck” than other markets, Cindy LaDuke with eXp Realty told Homes.com. “This is the time to buy. Once this all hits, once people keep on discovering Huntsville, it’s going to be a different world.”

LaDuke relocated to the city in May from Atlanta with her husband, who is in the military. “We have people coming from all over. Why, because this is the heart of technology,” she said.

And it isn’t just tech firms that want to capitalize on the influx. CoStar reported that in the third quarter of 2025, IKEA had leased 46,000 square feet in a plaza with a 22,500-square-foot 24e Health Clubs gym. Floriana, a popular family-run Italian restaurant in Washington, D.C., announced in October that it would open a MidCity location next year.

“When you have a Whole Foods, when you have a Trader Joe’s, when you have a Costco, it is telling people something without telling them something,” LaDuke said.

So, what is it saying? It's a popular place for an affluent middle-class population.

The arrival of such a young, highly skilled talent pool, particularly at Research Park, creates a feedback loop for new investment in the city, Niakossary said. “We’re already hearing from their contractors wanting office space adjacent to their clients."

Ferry said the biggest difference between his hometown of Orange County, California, and MidCity is that the latter is more walkable. The architecture is mostly modern, and most of his neighbors are also transplants. The only indication of a cultural difference, he said, is that he sees more people going to church on Sundays than back home.

“Huntsville is very much its own separate entity,” he said. “It’s rapidly expanding with all these transplants coming to work here. It’s a blooming metropolis.”

Between the high-tech jobs and the walkable mixed-use developments, the city is more modern than some people expect for northern Alabama.

LaDuke said her clients from outside the state often tell her that moving to Huntsville would be heading out to “the boonies.” “I would say Huntsville is a diamond in the rough because most people don’t know what Huntsville is,” she said.

Huntsville is different than the other Deep South cities such as Montgomery and Birmingham, she continued. “They can’t be compared. It’s apples and peaches.”

Huntsville isn’t just growing — with MidCity, it's redefining what a Southern tech hub looks like. With walkable developments, cultural amenities and a surge of high-paying jobs, the city is positioning itself as a magnet for talent and investment far beyond Alabama’s borders. It offers a weekly farmers market and other regular events, a variety of restaurants and the Orion Amphitheater, an 8,000-seat venue hosting acts ranging from ZZ Top to Lil Wayne.

“We’re seeing a lot of new professionals relocating here from different markets,” she said. “Huntsville is like that new frontier. It’s just a good recipe for long-term growth.”