True to Small Town Roots: A Case Study of Adaptive Reuse in Prattville, Alabama

Abstract

True to Small Town Roots: A Case Study of Adaptive Reuse in Prattville, Alabama, focuses on the preservation journey of a small town in Alabama. It examines the motivations for adaptive reuse, as well as the processes that are involved and tries to understand how the community perceived and reacted to these changes. It attempts to answer the questions of who is adaptively reusing these buildings and for what purpose, what the motivations were or are for keeping these buildings, how public/private partnerships have played into the preservation of these buildings, as well as why the local government has adaptively reused several of the historic downtown buildings rather than constructing modern buildings for their needs. The work also situates the story of Prattville within the larger narrative of southern industrial history.