A cluster of Midtown Mobile businesses built around advertising, marketing and local media has grown to include Access Magazine, which has relocated into a building at the corner of Hallett and Dauphin streets that once housed a neighborhood bakery.
The property, formerly home to Smith’s Bakery, is owned by Tony Atchison, whose Atchison Home business anchors the large brick building on the corner. By the end of this week, eight companies tied to advertising, marketing, video, film and publishing will operate out of the main building and a smaller gray structure across Hallett Street, a cluster some in the neighborhood have started calling “Media Row.”
Access Magazine, a lifestyle and style publication aimed primarily at women readers in the Mobile area, has moved its staff into the gray building after spending the past year working out of founder and publisher Hayley Hill’s home. The magazine joins two video production companies, a radio station, a marketing firm and a film production company already located in the main Bakery Building.
Advertising and marketing firm Hummingbird Ideas is also expanding into another suite within the Bakery Building this week, moving over from its longtime home in the Tower at Ryan Park next door. A wine and retail shop, Red & White, plans to open soon on the building’s ground floor in space that formerly housed True Midtown Kitchen, and a group of architects rounds out the roster of new tenants moving into the complex.
For Hill, the move represents more than additional square footage. After three and a half years in business, she said Access has reached a level of stability that once seemed uncertain for a locally owned magazine in a media market where new publications often struggle to survive their first few years.
“We’ve got our claws in,” Hill said. “I feel like the first two to three years people were afraid of us because so many magazines fail. I don’t think people are scared of us failing anymore.”
Hill, a former editor at Us Weekly magazine, said she designed the new office to mirror the collaborative, newsroom-style layout she worked in during her time there, with staff members grouped together rather than isolated in separate offices.
“It’s an open pit,” she said. “We can all talk about what we’re doing. We always say, ‘Why use words when you can use pictures.'”
Access spent the past year operating out of Hill’s home, and she said the move to Hallett Street reflects the magazine’s improving finances as its readership has grown. She said the publication has built a loyal following by focusing on lifestyle topics that resonate with women in the Mobile area, from football and the beach to personal stories about cancer survivors and other local figures who have overcome adversity.
“We’re getting more into our readers’ heads,” Hill said. “We know they are really into football and the beach, but that they also like real hero stories. We’ve become a hub connecting local women.”
Hill said editorial content remains the magazine’s top priority, and her staff spends significant time researching stories to give readers information about new products and services available locally. She said the decline of the local daily newspaper as a print news source has created an opening for Access and other local outlets to cover subjects the paper once handled.
“With the disappearance of the newspaper, stories need to be told,” Hill said. “The newspaper turned its back on a community that has so much to give. This is such a social community.”
Despite years of predictions that print media is fading nationally, Hill said she believes there is still a strong appetite for magazines and newspapers in the Mobile area. “Our growth shows people still like to see themselves in print,” she said. “It’s a very validating thing. They’re excited to be in a magazine.”
Access has also seen growth among male readers in recent years, Hill said, pointing to the magazine’s annual swimsuit edition, which she said helped drive a 20 percent increase in subscriptions among men. A football preview issue drew national attention after featuring Dee Dee Bonner, the mother of former University of Alabama quarterback A.J. McCarron, alongside his then-girlfriend, Katherine Webb.
“The football issue was really big for us. I was proud for us to be able to do that,” Hill said.
Hill said Access now averages roughly 60,000 readers each month, with readership swelling to as many as 200,000 during some special issues. She said the magazine, which remains entirely locally owned and operated, still has ambitions to grow further, but that the new office fits the vision she and her staff have for the company’s future.
“We’re excited to be on the media block,” Hill said. “We want to be with all the movers and shakers.”