For Cullman city council president Garlan Gudger, Jr., the question of what to do with downtown in the wake of the April 27 tornadoes can best be illustrated with a fairy tale.

“It’s like Alice in Wonderland trying to find her way back home, and she comes to a split in the road,” he said Monday night at a local Lion’s Club meeting. “He asks Alice where she wants to go, but she says she doesn’t know. He tells her, well, then either way will take you there. If we asked everyone in here what they wanted downtown to look like in five or 10 years, you’d get a lot of different answers, and what we’re trying to do is bring all those together into something uniform.”

A handful of blocks around Fifth Street SE (aka the “Busy Bee block”) and Fourth Street SE were demolished by the storm earlier this year, and dozens of businesses in those buildings remain closed. The council is finishing up some proposed downtown guidelines, as well as some potential sales tax and renovation incentives they hope will get residents back to work.

“There are about 40 landowners on the Busy Bee block, and of those, 36 are still not in business,” Gudger said. “We have a clean canvas like never before.”

Officials are looking at what defines downtown today, compared to when the city was first built more than a hundred years ago, and focusing on how the district might grow in future years.

“Everything started at the railroad tracks and expanded out, originally, but now that center is Highways 31 and 278 [in the center of town],” Gudger said. “The traffic flows from there, so we’re looking to expand from there … What is our focus on downtown, is it foot traffic, is it mixed-use with business and residential lofts above? Those are things we’re looking at.”

Gudger added that talk of rebuilding downtown in a New Orleans-style has been taken out of context, noting the comparison only implied two-story buildings with loft homes.

“It’s still going to be German-American-style architecture and feel,” he said. “That was just a way to explain two story buildings with lofts, and balconies above.”

With several property owners expected to add lofts above their businesses, Gudger said parking could be an issue soon. To alleviate the overflow, he said officials are eyeing plans to possibly add a new reservoir lot.

“Across from Weiss Cottage, we’re trying to figure out with CSX [railroad company] how to maybe set up a parking lot, like a smaller scale of what’s in front of Berkeley Bob’s coffee shop,” Gudger said. “That is something we’re going to have to look at, and we’re just taking it building by building.”

Plans to replant some of the hundreds of trees uprooted by the storm are also in the works, under the city’s tree commission.

“They’re figuring out exactly where they might want to replant in downtown, then working out into the neighborhoods,” Gudger said.

Next year, Gudger said the council hopes to lay the groundwork for a downtown master plan, which will encompass business, streetscaping and other aspects of rebuilding.

“We’re going to look at the four city quadrants, possibly with foot bridges and more parking,” he said. “We want to do that, but right now our focus is on getting people back to work in those damaged areas.”

* Trent Moore can be reached by e-mail at trentm@cullmantimes.com, or by telephone at 734-2131, ext. 220.