By Ashley Toland Editor

It takes a village…and a flag

I knew The Villagers of Spring Hill were back when I saw a bevy of classy ladies dressed in turtlenecks and multi-colored blazers filling the seats of the GP auditorium at the March 4 city council meeting. And, too, it always smells better when they are there.

But anyway, back in January, they asked the council to put a moratorium on any new developments while they finalized their plans for the redevelopment of a substantial chunk of Spring Hill (think – if Mountain Brook and Fairhope had a baby), which includes Lavretta Park, intersections of Old Shell and McGregor and Bit and Spur, Museum Drive and the surrounding area in the Oh-Eight.

The moratorium essentially killed the Mitchell Company and CVS’s plan to build a pharmacy at the corner of Old Shell and McGregor. But with a lot of “late nights,” hard work and I’d imagine a little bit of sweat, the Village People and the developers were able to do a little CPR on the CVS and have reached a compromise. The council unanimously approved a waiver of the moratorium, so the store could be built. Well, as long as the mayor approves diagonal on-street parking spaces in front of the store.

If you haven’t seen the plans for this, you should really head over to www.thevillageofspringhill.com. They have “before and afters” of Old Shell and McGregor and Bit and Spur and Museum Drive. The “afters” are truly stunning, and I can’t wait for them to come to fruition.

The Village hired the urban planning group Dover, Kohl and Partners, who drew up the plans.

Flags to help quiet city?

There are times when I feel like I’m writing for The Onion when I am reporting what happened at city council – you know, times like when I have to write about a councilor’s desire to throw marshmallow confections off the top of the RSA Tower on New Year’s Eve. Yeah, times like those times.

And yet another one of those times came at the March 4 meeting. There was an ordinance on the agenda for the council to “amend the Mobile City Code relating to noise generally.”

I’m glad they’re tackling the noise, in general. I guess specific noises, like Nodine’s laugh and “Uncle Henry Show” callers screaming “Roll Tide,” are safe for now. But when the council decides to address this more explicitly, those two are top on my list of offenses.

But anyway, this really lovely lady addressed the council to speak on this item, though they voted to hold it over for two weeks.

She has been really offended by people loudly playing their “boom boxes” in their yards and cars who drive by her house blaring “loud and vulgar” music.

When Fred, who seemed to really like this lady, asked her for her suggestions on how we could turn down the city’s volume knob, she suggested we should fly flags in our neighborhoods that would tell people to keep the noise down.

I think that will totally solve the problem. Furthermore, I think in addition to our general noise flags, we may also want to consider murder, rape, robbery, DUI and drug dealing flags. Hey, we are the city of six flags. I smell a theme developing here.

And my question is do we each get individual general noise flags to put on the front of our houses next to football and historic district flags or would it just be like one big community, general noise flag to protect the entire neighborhood?

I vote for the former because if you hear a car coming by blaring music, you could run out and wave your noise flag, well assuming you can make it out there in the five seconds it takes for them to drive by your house. And if you do, clearly, the person would then turn down their music.

Two more burning questions…

Will the flags be city-issued or would you be required to purchase your own noise flag? If they are issued by the city, we could just distribute them with garbage carts.

The only thing more astounding than this suggestion is that Fred actually seemed to be considering it.

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Ashley Toland is Lagniappe editor. Contact her at ashleytoland@lagniappemobile.com.

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