The Real Deal

By Sharman Egan Lagniappe columnist

Heck, if I’d known I could manifest things by simply writing about them, I would have been asking for a lot more stuff.

My last column included a list of what I wanted from Santa this year. Among other things, I asked for progress on some local projects that seem to be going nowhere. And I wanted agreement on several projects critical to Mobile’s future. Two gifts showed up in my stocking before the ink had even dried on the page: progress on Arlington Park, the long-awaited park on the western shore of Mobile Bay, and agreement on development on the Old Courthouse site downtown just east of Government Plaza.

My Arlington Park gift came right after I submitted my last column and the day before it ran. Not bad considering the seeming lack of progress since the park was proposed in 2003 as part of the Choctaw Point deal. At that time the Alabama State Port Authority said it wanted to create a park and wetlands on 61 acres at the Brookley Field Industrial Complex.

The wetlands were required as part of the environmental impact agreement with the feds, to mitigate the destruction of wetlands at Choctaw Point. The site included 15 acres known as Arlington Point and 46 additional acres.

After years of legal wrangling, on Dec. 18 the Mobile Airport Authority finally signed off on a somewhat complicated deal to sell the 46 acres to the Port Authority for $1.3 million. Officials said more than half of the site would be used to create the park with the rest becoming wetlands.

So what happened to the Arlington Point part of the deal? That acreage would have provided bayfront access at the park. But it became unavailable in 2005 when it was included as part of the package offered to Northrop Grumman Corp and EADS North America to build a tanker assembly plant at Brookley Field.

If that plant is built, it could mean up to 1,000 new jobs in Mobile, said to be worth up to $40 billion. And a lot of people might say that 1,000 jobs are worth much more than 15 acres of parkland. But I’m not so sure. For one thing, the $40 billion figure that has been tossed around is the size of the contract, not the economic impact on Mobile. Northrop estimates the impact at $4 billion. Still big bucks but that’s over 15 years for the entire state.

While it’s easy to put an estimated value on a government contract (after all, does anyone track these figures 15 years later?), it’s much harder to put a value on public access to the water in a waterfront city that has none to speak of. As the folks at MasterCard like to say, some things are priceless.

At any rate, the 46-acre land sale is scheduled to close before this column hits the street, and the park itself is scheduled to open in about a year. And most readers will likely agree, that’s very good news.

My other wish-come-true was a resolution to the interminable bickering between the city and county over another park-related issue – in this case, development on the former site of the Old Courthouse.

It’s been over five years since the Mobile County Commission approved the development of a Mardi Gras park on the site. Those plans went awry when the makeup of the commission changed in 2006. Mayor Sam Jones, a former county commissioner and proponent of the park, moved over to the city side of things. Steve Nodine and Juan Chastang became commissioners and decided they’d rather see a condominium tower on the site. Mayor Jones dug in his heels, and a year ago, it looked like an impasse.

This fall the park gained steam again when the makeup of the commission changed yet again, with Merceria Ludgood (a longtime bud of the mayor’s) replacing Chastang. Meanwhile Nodine had thrown his support behind the park, in exchange for the city’s support of the ThyssenKrupp deal (are you following all this?). By late October the park looked like a done deal after voters approved a bond issue that included $1.2 million for the project.

Within days, the deal went south again. The county commission decided to use the park as a pawn to force the city to approve plans for the county’s new Probate Court building on the lot next to the proposed park. Oh what a tangled web….

In September the city’s Architectural Review Board (ARB) nixed the court building design, deciding it was too butt-ugly (my words, not theirs) for a historic district. The county asked the City Council to overturn the ARB’s decision. And what if it didn’t? The county would put construction equipment on the park site, blocking development. Na-ne-na-ne-na-ne.

Finally, after almost a year of delays, the saga ended when the ARB approved the plans on Dec. 17, while my column was on the presses. Ostensibly, the approval came after everyone agreed to changes to the building design. I think it was Santa at work on my list. In any case, it looks like we will eventually have a new court building and Mardi Gras park downtown.

I can’t wait to see which of my other Santa requests come true by the time you read this. Maybe I’ll get that riverfront condo downtown I’ve been asking for. Now that would be a real manifestation….

Sharman Egan is Lagniappe lagniappe columnist. Contact her at Sharman@SharmanEgan.com.

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