POWERGRAMS

26 ATMORE ATMORE Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage but was closed in 1970 when public schools were integrated. Long-time principal Woodrow McCorvey was the father of Woody McCorvey. While the Interstate Highway 65 exit into Atmore is lined by the four-story Hampton and Fairfield Inns, and the three-story Holiday Inn, just past the Wind Creek Casino and Hotel is the old-fashioned Royal Oaks Bed & Breakfast. Behind the Royal Oaks stands an aging grain silo that once was the tallest structure in Atmore. Right behind the silo is Atmore Dragway, where every Friday and Saturday night cars race on a National Hot Rod Association-sanctioned 1/8-mile concrete track. The dragway features LED lighting, scoreboards and fiber optic lines powering a state-of-the-art timing system. Atmore will soon have an $80 million pecan-shelling plant employing 100, but already is home to Masland Carpets, which employs 326; Alto Products, employing 310; Muskogee Technology, with nearly 100 workers; and several other prominent companies, like Brown Precision, building high-tech products for customers around the world. Every day Atmore residents can see across the Florida line, which is almost bumped by PHD Realty, Johnson Ford and other businesses located along the southern border of Escambia County. Floridians may boast of being from the "Sunshine State" but Atmore residents say the light shines just as bright on the Sweet Home Alabama side of the line, where they say "there is something for everyone." GATHER RESTAURANT When people along the Gulf Coast want to experience haute cuisine, they have an abundance of fine waterfront and port city restaurants. Yet, choosing to drive 50 miles inland for dinner is becoming more common by the day. "About 80% of our clientele drives an hour or more to eat here," says Gather chef Chris McElhaney, who opened the Atmore restaurant with his wife, Beth, in 2017. "They come from all along the coast – Pensacola, Pascagoula, Gulf Shores, Orange Beach." The McElhaneys trained under Emeril Lagasse in New Orleans, as Beth learned the front end of the business while Chris concentrated on the kitchen. He had studied mechanical engineering at Auburn before bolting for Johnson & Wales Culinary University in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1997. After Emeril, McElhaney was chef at NoJa Restaurant in Mobile, then opened the Fire steakhouse at Wind Creek Casino in 2009. Chris and Beth had opened their own restaurant in 2004 but were unable to keep it afloat after Hurricanes Ivan and Katrina. He was chef of Steelwood Country Club in Loxley before opening another successful restaurant but the partnership with another owner didn't work out. "We felt God kind of led us back here," says Chris, 43, who grew up in Bratt, Florida, a tiny town that is so near that he and Beth, 39, always just said they were from Atmore. The McElhaneys were confident they could make a go of it with a big town restaurant in a little town. But what to call their new business? "We were knocking around a lot of names," McElhaney says. "We have six kids and spend most of our time at home together around the kitchen table. One day my wife said, 'Let's all gather around the table and come up with a name,' and boom, there it was." The Gather logo is five strands of wheat in a bundle, which McElhaney says "has lots of meaning behind it," some of it religious, some of it relative to how grains of the field sustain life after the bundles are harvested. Gather has a seating capacity of 72 inside the renovated 1920s Pure Oil station that in the past century has been a tire store, salon, car wash, boutique and attorney's office – but this business seems more likely to stay awhile. Reservations are recommended a week "or two" in advance for weekends. On a Tuesday afternoon, McElhaney already has 110 reservations as Gather opens at 4 p.m., on its normal schedule of 4-9 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. When patrons pass the curved mahogany and leaded glass partition into the dining room, they enter an industrial setting similar to a garage, where they are seated at tables beneath an open ceiling with hanging steel and nautical lights. McElhaney says the front partition and another that separates the dining room from the bathroom area were bought at a New Orleans auction, supposedly the last storefront remnants of a French business destroyed by Nazis during World War II. What diners find when handed the Gather menu is an ever-changing lineup of selections that many think worthy of Emeril. The "Train Wreck" is twin fillets of beef, Nueske's bacon, fried green tomatoes, pimento grits, Conecuh crab sauce and a fried egg. It was judged the best beef dish of 2020 by the Alabama Cattlemen's Association. Yet, McElhaney says the 18-ounce USDA prime ribeye is "our best-seller by far." Every night, waitresses explain the evening seafood special, which might be fresh swordfish or cobia. The Sea and Sky segment of the menu offers duck breast, shrimp and grits, shrimp fettuccini and pan-seared scallops. There are burgers and pork chops and steak fries that are always a "huge hit." Folks who generally decline dessert are often inclined to try the signature pecan pie cheesecake. "We took a lot of Southern comfort foods and put a twist in them," McElhaney says. "We've made something new for our clientele without going too far. We take simple Southern goodness and make it better." SWIFT LUMBER INC. Robin Swift III smiles broadly and delivers a quick, matter of fact, "No" when asked if an ancestor could have envisioned modern computerized operations while running a small sawmill nearly two centuries ago. The differences are vast but equipment has incrementally improved between the time great-great-grandfather Ira Swift's small business cut railroad crossties, followed by great-grandfather Charles Augustus Swift's logging efforts, leading to grandfather George Robinson Swift Sr. opening steam-powered Swift/Hunter Lumber Co. in 1920. Robin Swift Jr. and cousin Byard Swift Jr. entirely changed the family operation in 1955, becoming Swift Lumber Inc. They removed old steam boilers and moved to gas-fired kilns to dry green lumber. They continued re-engineering the business for nearly a half-century. Yet, even the previous leaders of Atmore's oldest continuously operating business couldn't have expected the drastic changes undertaken the Swift Lumber employee uses forklift to move finished boards for delivery.

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