David Fleming is President and CEO of REV Birmingham, focused on Birmingham’s City Center and historic neighborhoods. A native of Birmingham, David’s professional career has included real estate and working on Capitol Hill in DC. David leads REV which manages the downtown BID, the City Center District Management Corporation.
David developed a love for his city and its history at an early age. This led to a desire to work for its development and to realize its potential. He attended undergraduate school at Samford University and studied history and political science.
He began his place management career in the early 1990s as an intern at Birmingham's downtown economic development agency then called Operation New Birmingham (ONB) where he studied the potential to create a business improvement district in downtown. This research led to the creation of the BID he now leads. After a short time on Capital Hill working for a local Congressman, David returned to ONB full time leading initiatives around parking and transportation, historic preservation and business support.
David moved to a local real estate firm that was focused on downtown properties. In that role David was asked by the property owner of a district of historic buildings called Pepper Place to set up a summer farmers market to attract crowds and be a platform to promote local food. He was successful in starting and running the Pepper Place Farmers market in 2000, and this market remains a popular now weekly event in Birmingham to this day.
David returned to ONB having decided that the nonprofit place management and economic development space was a better fit. He took on greater management responsibilities by leading the team of the organization working to support development projects. He was successful attracting new restaurants, guiding loft building conversions and parking planning.
In 2004 David launched a new nonprofit organization called Main Street Birmingham to focus on the non-downtown urban neighborhood commercial districts. This was with the support of the City of Birmingham. David built this program and team by focusing on small business development, changing blight to assets, and being creative about partnership that would meet missional goals as well as bring resources. An example of this is the partnership he developed with the Jefferson County Department of Health who, at the time, had won a $13 million grant from the Federal Government to address obesity and smoking. David argued that healthy neighborhoods are a key to healthier people and access to healthy food was a problem. This won Main Street Birmingham a significant amount of funding to study the Food Deserts and built the organizations' capacity to address the food scarcity issue. This was branded as the Urban Food Project and led to a multi-year program to use existing businesses in the communities to provide healthier products for sale.
In 2011 David applied to he job of the CEO of ONB after his predecessor's retirement and argued for the merger of ONB and MSB. David orchestrated this merger and built an organization designed to bring place making skills to downtown and neighborhood commercial areas. the organization was rebranded as REV Birmingham.
REV brought the first "pop up shops" to Birmingham to demonstrate the potential vibrancy of districts and successfully built momentum and intertest in the urban core. REV launched and managed for five years the first bikeshare system in the city. REV also developed some real estate in a neighborhood district transforming derelict properties into vibrant attractions and changing the image of the district.
David has always been a public policy advocate. He was a leading part of a coalition to create a state historic tax credit. He also lobbied for changes to the state's BID law and TIF law to make the better tools for Birmingham.
David believed in supporting local businesses and building a pipe line to fill vacant spaces. REV has a robust small business development program that has attracted significant capital to grow small and local businesses. Most of these are minority owned businesses.
Through our his career he has been a leader in master planning efforts including the 2003 City Center Master plan, 2013 City of Birmingham Comprehensive Plan, 2019 City Center Master Plan, 2021 Downtown North West Plan and has been asked by other communities to give them advice on planning efforts that will be effective.
In his non-REV role he has served as Chairman of the Birmingham Planning Commission, and is currently on the Downtown Redevelopment Authority and the Birmingham Historical Commission.
David has been married for 20 years to his wife Brooke and they have a 16 year old son raised in their 100 year old house in the city. The Flemings are members of the Cathedral Church of the Advent in downtown where David sings in the choir.