Just more than five years ago, Brook Highland mom Patti Henderson saw that her area needed a community news source. With that inspiration, she dreamed up something called 280 Living.
“We sit as an unincorporated part of the county that seems to have no defined borders,” Henderson said. “280 Living encapsulated us. It gave us a sense of community and township. It provided a vehicle for the people of the community to share their stories, events and accomplishments.”
Henderson had noted a trend toward the smaller community newspapers over large city dailies in the media landscape, and indeed it has been the small papers who have held steady and even grown in the storm of change in an age of instant online news.
With a background in advertising and marketing, Henderson started a one-man shop. She wrote, sold ads and designed the paper. Her family delivered the first several issues out of the back of her pickup truck.
“The first few issues were an instant hit in the community!” Henderson said. “People loved reading about themselves. It’s been said that a newspaper is a destination, and I had many friends (and strangers) tell me they couldn’t wait to sit down with their 280 Living and a cup of coffee.”
As the paper grew, Henderson enlisted friends, and even her dad, to write articles, and other regular columnists saw the paper and asked to contribute. She eventually sold the paper to account executive Dan Starnes, whom she thought was more suited to “take the paper to the next level.” Starnes has since grown the paper’s size and reach as well as started sister papers The Homewood Star, Mountain Brook’s Village Living, and The Hoover Sun.
Like its early contributors, current editors Kathryn Acree, a Meadow Brook mom, and Madoline Markham, a 2004 Oak Mountain High School graduate, started working for the paper after noticing it in the mailbox and writing to say they wanted to send in a story.
280 Living is now delivered via direct mail to 24,000 homes from Liberty Park to Chelsea. The editors want it to be news written by the community, for the community, to feature the people and places of the 280 corridor and to share its most relevant news.
September 2007- First issue of 280 Living is printed and hand-delivered
May 2008- Oak Mountain boys soccer state 6A champs; they were also state champs in 2011
May 2008- Spain Park boys golf win state 6A champs; they were also state champs in 2009, 2010 and 2012
June 2008- First issue of 280 Living delivered via U.S. Postal Service
June 2008- US Junior Amateur Tournament is held at Shoal Creek
September 2008- Spain Park High School named National Blue Ribbon School
December 2008- Trinity Medical Center files for CON to complete the unfinished HealthSouth hospital on Highway 280 and relocated there
January 2009- Brookwood Medical Center and St. Vincent’s Hospital oppose Trinity project and request contested case hearing
May 2009- Spain Park girls soccer 6A champs, the first of three consecutive state championships
May 2009- Spain Park girls golf 6A champs
June 2009- Construction begins on the Dunnavant Valley Greenway near Mt Laurel
July 2009- 280 Living joins Facebook
August 2009- Chelsea added to paper distribution
November 2009- New 280 Living logo debuts
November 2009- Alabama Department of Transportation presents a plan for five miles of elevated toll road on Highway 280
December 2009- Grants Mill Road bridge over Lake Purdy closes
June 2010- Greystone hosts the Alabama Symphony
October 2010- Waste Management brings a recycling pick-up service to North Shelby County
April 2011- Toomer’s for Tuscaloosa, a grassroots relief organization, starts out of a Meadow Brook home after the April 27 tornadoes
May 2011- Regions Tradition golf tournament comes to Shoal Creek
May 2011- Oak Mountain boys soccer 6A champs
September 2011- Oak Mountain High and Our Lady of the Valley Catholic School each named National Blue Ribbon School
September 2011- Grants Mill Road bridge over Lake Purdy reopens
February 2012 -ALDOT announces it will put in a new traffic light system to alleviate 280 traffic
February 2012- Spain Park Boys Indoor Track and Field win state 6A championships
April 2012- Condoleezza Rice visits Spain Park High School
February 2012- Spain Park Boys Indoor Track and Field win state 6A championships
April 2012- Condoleezza Rice visits Spain Park High School
May 2012- Chelsea High girls soccer and softball win state 5A championships
May 2012- Oak Mountain High girls soccer win state 6A championship
July 2012- Trinity Medical Center files for expedited review by the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals in its case opposed by Brookwood and St. Vincent’s
August 2012- An all-new 280Living.com launched
