People can say that looks don’t matter, but for me, they do. While I don’t care so much what other people look like, the appearances of my surroundings heavily influence my mood. A messy space clutters my mind and leaves me anxious. A dark or overly spartan room can bring on the blues. But the visual feast I found inside Selma’s 5 & Dime energized me, and during a recent lunchtime visit, the scene added tangible and tasty flavor to my plate already piled high with lettuces, fresh mozzarella, heirloom tomato slices, tender grilled chicken, and crunchy nuts.

The large corner building fronting Broad Street not far from the Edmund Pettus Bridge was built in the early 1900s and originally held two retail spaces before it became the city’s Woolworth department store location in the 1930s.

In 2018, local tour planner and operator, artist, real estate pro and dedicated Selma cheerleader AC Reeves bought the building, renovated it, and opened the upstairs as Woolworth Lofts, units for rent giving visitors a stylish and history-soaked spot to sleep, some providing sweeping views of downtown.

In May 2021, she opened the downstairs, dubbing it 5 & Dime (a nod to its previous life), and lured folks to the space with the first of several art installations. “Local artists decorated the front windows with whatever they wanted to create as well as a love letter to the city,” AC says, “and it was a hit.” From 2021 through 2023, a diverse cross-section of people—both residents and visitors—descended on the spot, bonding over art and tomato sandwiches. “It was organic, not like some planned unity breakfast,” AC says. “It was simply people gathering and feeling comfortable here. If we bring people together over food and art, we can do so much. That’s what I always want in this space.”

Her tools for having her way—art, fresh, wholesome food, and a friendly face—fill the 5 & Dime today. Intricate paper stars hang in a front window, holdovers from the original art project. Bunches of dried flowers festoon a rusty metal grate and reflect off vintage mirrors lining one wall. Moody blue cyanotype prints and black and white photos of Selma landmarks are scattered around, while collages of old postcards, vintage buttons, scraps of paper, found feathers, and weathered wood stand on easels. In the way back, kids and kids at heart are invited to draw on the walls. And mismatched chairs and tables representing every era and style—even a chartreuse velvet sofa—fill the massive, wide-open room.

I’d come to experience one of the 5 & Dime’s current offerings, “What Allen Is Having for Dinner,” a spread set out every weekday for lunch. The name is truth. “Whatever doesn’t get eaten during lunch is what I feed my husband [Allen] for dinner,” AC says. It might be a roasted veggie frittata paired with homemade sourdough bagels and brownies for dessert. It could be Asian chicken lettuce wraps with wedges of chilled watermelon, black beans, and rice with tangy marinated kale salad or a hearty meatball sub on focaccia.

(The “Allen’s Dinner” lunches follow 5 & Dime’s previous food-focused imitative called “100 Plates,” a culinary arts installation that brought chefs from all over to stay for a few weeks and cook 100 lunches a day at 5 & Dime.)

Amid it all, AC buzzes around, like a busy hostess entertaining in her home, greeting folks by name, helping refill tea, pointing with pride to her homemade crackers, and encouraging all to try the balsamic-glazed, roasted pear salad studded with crumbles of goat cheese, her every smile-smoothed interaction exuding authentic welcome. And that’s by design. “I feel my role is to shine a light on what is special here,” AC says. “Selma is such an amazing place, and I want people to understand how it is an important piece of our nation’s history, but it’s more than that too and still really important today. I want this place to draw anybody and everybody.”

With obvious affection for Selma spilling out of her, you could easily mistake AC for a Queen City native. She’s not; after living in Atlanta, New Jersey, and Oxford, Mississippi, she moved to Selma in 1997, begrudgingly coming to her husband’s hometown. “I was not happy about it at the time,” she says.

Twenty-seven years later, she’s beyond happy. “I quickly fell in love with Selma,” she says, rattling off a list of things fueling her affection: its downtown being the largest historic district in Alabama; its place on the Alabama River, one of the country’s most bio-diverse; the beauty of the Black Belt region surrounding it. “There’s so much to see and do and study in this place. That’s why I’m excited to bring people here to discover it. They spend money here, and that is how we’ll turn this boat around. Tourism changes lives,” she says. “That’s why I do my tours, and then why I have this space. If we can keep people here long enough, they start to get it.”

The belief that robust tourism can solve many of Selma’s current issues motivates her to go beyond planning itineraries and guiding tours, and also use the lofts and 5 & Dime, plus her hospitality, to meet guests’ diverse needs while they’re in town. “I just want to help guests get the most out of their time here.”

Yet despite her warmth and the welcome of 5 & Dime, AC was rocked by an unsettling discovery not long after opening the space. “I learned that during the Jim Crow era, while some local merchants were friendly, Black patrons did not want to shop at Woolworth; it was really unwelcoming for them at that time,” she says. Not long after, she planned a special experience for a tour group of 100 teenagers from Chicago, bringing one of the still-living foot soldiers of the Civil Rights movement to speak to them at 5 & Dime. “She shared her Jim Crow story in a spot where she had never been comfortable,” she says. “That’s what I call reconciliation, and any time I can be a part of that, that’s all I want.”

Today, not only does 5 & Dime welcome everyone in Selma, everyone in Selma plus folks from all over the country and even the world are thrilled to be there. They come for a great meal, they come to see the art, they come to gather and have conversations both meaningful and mundane.

And there’s more good coming. AC’s love of art and her own creativity inform her vision for 5 & Dime’s future. “In 2025, we’ll really amp up as a space for creatives, holding art workshops and art retreats and events,” she says. “I tell people this place is like the magic school bus, but a building. We can really do almost anything—and always amazing things—here.”