U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg stopped traffic on Fourth Avenue North on Wednesday to announce a $14.5 million grant to help reconnect parts of the community that have been divided by transportation decisions of the past.

The announcement, staged in the middle of the downtown thoroughfare, outlined a grant to Birmingham to convert Fourth Avenue North — which includes the historic Fourth Avenue Black Business District — from a one-way road to a two-way. Fourth Avenue, like several other downtown streets, became one-way in 1973.

The award is part of the Biden Administration’s $3.33 billion in grant awards for 132 projects through the Reconnecting Communities Pilot and Neighborhood Access and Equity discretionary grant program.

“A road can either divide a neighborhood, blasting vehicle traffic through the heart of the city without regard to those who live and work there, or that same road with a better design can tie that neighborhood together,” Buttigieg said.

“A road can either serve to evacuate or to invigorate the neighborhood, and I know that this area will be invigorated,” the secretary continued. “People will be better able to take a walk, to shop at a local business, to get their haircut, walk to church, to eat at Green Acres – something I’m sincerely looking forward to doing a little later on – and to run into people and have those chance encounters that make cities, cities.”

Mayor Randall Woodfin said Fourth Avenue North is one of the most important streets in Birmingham, calling it the historic Black main street for downtown.

“It is the geographic and cultural heart of the downtown grid and we’re right here beside the Carver Theater, which has been the hub of the light life of Birmingham’s historic Black business district,” he said.

The mayor cited the barriers that can divide neighborhoods, including railroads and interstates.

“We don’t always think about the damages caused by our car-oriented local roads, like the one-way streets through our downtown, not just this one,” Woodfin said. “In a downtown like ours, fast-moving one-way streets can be in many ways just as devasting as other forms of barriers.

“Our vision is to create a truly multi-mobile city, a city where people can walk, ride public transportation or ride a bike to get to their destination,” the mayor said.

Congresswoman Terri Sewell said the conversion of Fourth Avenue North into a two-way street has been in the works for many, many, many years.

“When we talk about rebuilding our infrastructure, it is not enough to just repave our roads and bridges,” she said. “If we want to truly fix what is broken, we must be intentional, intentional about righting our historical inequities and lifting up the communities that have been left behind. I am extremely grateful for President Biden and Secretary Buttigieg for understanding that equity in infrastructure includes reconnecting communities that have been over historical time divided from economic opportunity. Investments like these will go a long way in leveling the playing field in advancing the quality of life that we know Alabamians deserve.”

Nolanda Hatcher owns the Famous Theater building next to Eddie Kendricks Park on Fourth Avenue. She said the conversion of the street could be transformative.

“I would hope that it would not only create opportunities for you to leave the city but also (for it to) be a gateway into the city center,” Hatcher said. “Right now, Fourth Avenue, as a one way going out of town, doesn’t bring anybody into town. It would be an option and, in my opinion, create the opportunity to have more people coming into town. That’s where the benefit comes in and gives the merchants an opportunity to capture those people going into town.”

The project will include design work, new traffic signals, sidewalk improvements and road resurfacing and striping, which will allow for some bicycle lanes, according to Woodfin’s office.

Sewell recalled that Buttigieg was in Birmingham two years ago to announce the Reconnecting Communities program. And the secretary returned today to award Birmingham one of those grants.

“We are not only grateful, we are ecstatic to have that partnership with this administration to really move Birmingham,” Sewell said.