By Kevin Lee Associate editor After centuries of delayed gratification and deferred dreams, Mobile might finally be on the verge of a loftier perch in the economic firmament. Recent indications from around the globe seem to point to a much brighter future for one of the Southeast’s most Gothic towns, a place perhaps poised to finally realize its oft-noted-but-seldom realized potential.

Long road forward Founded as a European outpost to colonial ambitions, Mobile languished as a sleepy frontier town for its first century of existence, a trading post for Native Americans and new arrivals that struggled to emerge from the shadow of New Orleans to its west. With the coming of American sovereignty in 1819 and the following antebellum plantation economy, Mobile rode the cotton boom to three decades of wealth and growth before 1860. The American Civil War ended that. Economic depression followed the war and subsequent schemes to vault the former boomtown back to prominence often faltered, with Mobile moving through a period of municipal bankruptcy. New South-era railroad lines never made Mobile the transportation hub it was hoped. According to historian and journalist Christopher MacGregor Scribner, Mobile was the South’s eighth largest city in 1880 and fifteenth largest in 1910 yet during this period, local leaders continually boasted of better days just ahead. The city sought extensive ship channel dredging for the bay between 1890-1915 in hopes of attracting more deep ocean vessels into dock. Shipping increased but didn’t lift Mobile back to its antebellum heights. In the early Twentieth Century, World War I shut foreign ports and the slowing of international trade dampened expanding shipping fortunes. Fortunes reversed somewhat with construction of the state docks and expansion of the Port of Mobile in the 1920s. ADDSCO dry docks business increased and the founding of Waterman Shipping signaled a rise in economic fortune. The Great Depression seemed to dampen those hopes but Mobile’s greatest boom was on the horizon. Europe and the Pacific Rim were aflame as World War II approached. Shipbuilding at ADDSCO swelled with defense contracts and Brookley Air Base construction began in 1940. New residents poured into town lured by abundant employment. Between 1920-40, Mobile’s population grew 36 percent, but in the first four years of the ‘40s, the population ballooned 64 percent. The city underwent annexation in 1957 that tripled its area. Brookley employed 16,000 workers in 1962 and accounted for an "estimated one-third of Mobile’s gross product" per the Department of Defense, so when its imminent closure was announced in 1964, concern grew. The construction of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway was announced in the early ‘70s, a project civic leaders claimed would reverse Mobile’s tepid economics. The Tenn-Tom opened in ‘84 and failed to meet even a portion of those promises. Similar assurances were made when plans for the Arthur A. Outlaw Convention Center were proclaimed in the late ‘80s. The supposed tourist magnet opened in ‘93 but failed to deliver on the volume of visitors touted when it was sold to the public. Yet despite this 300-year track record, signs indicate more substantial fortunes are on the way.

Someone’s watching Foreign Direct Investment magazine is a London-based periodical founded to guide international financial magnates. In keeping with this aim, they recently began a tally of North American cities ripe for investiture and ranked them for readers. "Our ‘Locations of the Future’ competition has been running for five years and covers almost every region across the world," said Charles Piggott, research manager for fDi Magazine. "The methodology is designed to identify those cities that have the basics in place to flourish in the next few years by attracting high levels of inward investment." "This is the first time cities in the United States, Canada and Mexico have competed directly against one another," said Piggott. Mobile placed eighth best of fDi’s "Top Ten Small Cities of the Future" while another Alabama town, Huntsville, placed second. Small cities were categorized as those with populations between 100,000 and 500,000. "The shortlists are created by asking cities to provide data and qualitative information in much the same way investors approach locations during the screening process for capital investment projects," Piggott said. "In the second half of 2006, we invited key North American cities to answer more than 60 questions in seven broad categories. A total of 108 cities were considered by fDi’s panel of judges, which scored each city according the criteria listed below." Mobile had some key highlights. "Mobile had the second largest fall in unemployment amongst small cities, a good record of foreign direct investment deals and reasonable location costs including property and labor costs," Piggott said. The Mobile Chamber of Commerce told fDi Mobile received $84.2 million in foreign investments in the last year. Of the four deals the chamber reported signed in the previous year, the three most significant were APM Terminals at $150 million, Austal USA at $28 million and Airbus North America at $15 million. The positions were assembled through a process that broke civic characteristics into seven areas: economic potential, cost effectiveness, development and investment promotion, human resources, quality of life, infrastructure and business friendliness. Mobile placed second in "best economic potential" and first in "business friendliness" but failed to crack the shortlist in any of the other categories. Other signs of good fortune exist. "Business has picked up so much, we’ve had to add another project manager," said Leigh Perry-Herndon, Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce vice president of communications. It shows in the statistics. According to the Chamber, the last three-and-a- half years have brought 22 new businesses, 39 expansions to existing businesses, over 4,100 new jobs and $1.282 billion dollars in investments. "The phone doesn’t stop ringing here," Herndon said. One seeming failure of the past turned into one of Mobile’s biggest recent gains. "When the Boeing Dreamliner project fell through, we actually benefited from it," explained Herndon. "It woke other companies up to us." Local leaders are seeking to base a Northrop-Grumman-EADS military tanker assembly plant at Brookley. The companies have committed to building the tankers in Mobile, should they be awarded the contract by the U.S. Department of Defense and the 1,000-plus-job operation would bring high-end jobs to Brookley Field Industrial Complex. EADS recently opened a new Brookley facility designed to facilitate more than 200 engineers. Mobile County and the City of Mobile agreed to give EADS $25 million in incentives in order to land the plant. The potential aircraft assembly operation was a factor in fDi’s assessment of Mobile’s economic status as was the newly completed RSA Tower and the highly visible relocation of Fortune 500 company International Shipholding from New Orleans to Mobile’s newest high rise. However, the biggest impact in decades on not only Mobile but the entire state wasn’t present on the fDi study because its potential didn’t yet exist.

Big steel If German maufacturer Thyssen-Krupp agrees to break ground on a new steel plant in North Mobile County, it stands to change the area as maybe only Brookley did before it. The company is set to decide between the Mobile County site and one near Baton Rouge May 11. Alabama winning the battle for what is widely touted as the biggest construction project in the United States in the next 10 years will, in part, depends upon an incentive packages worth at least $300 million. Gov. Bob Riley asked local government to contribute $60 million to the effort with $40 million coming from Mobile County and the remaining $20 million from the City of Mobile. The state is doing its part by waiving taxes on the new industry. New legislation will give Thyssen-Krupp a 10-year break from utility taxes, a 20-year break on property taxes and a 30-year break from state income taxes. If chosen, the 3,500-acre Thyssen-Krupp site near the Tombigbee River will employ 29,000 during that five-year construction phase alone. The project represents a $3 billion investment that will eventually create 2,700 new jobs estimated by the Chamber of Commerce to pay between $50,000 and $65,000 a year. It’s postulated workers will be drawn from a 75-mile radius around the plant, encompassing parts of neighboring states and the southern portions of Alabama’s traditionally impoverished Black Belt. Not all legislators embrace the tax breaks with fervor. "I’m not so sure it will all even out in the long run," said Dr. Joseph Mitchell, the representative for State House District 103 in Mobile. "The taxes paid by the employees with their income will be diffused throughout the state and the goods that these auto and steel manufacturers sell elsewhere, none of that will benefit us. We won’t get any of that money only the municipalities where that stuff is sold." Mitchell said Thyssen-Krupp will owe effective sums-in-lieu to the state for education, but he sees possible problems there, too. "It will be hard to enforce," said the legislator. "If they don’t turn it in, what do we do? How do we earmark the funds for education? If there’s not a bell that goes off when those funds arrive, a system to call it to our attention, how will we know?" Despite his reservations, he approved the legislation. "I saw the jobs involved and it made me vote for it," said Mitchell, "but I wanted to keep some of my colleagues aware of these other questions. We need to be teaching our folks new skills that allow them to go anywhere in the world and work, not just teach them how to work on the next plantation." Some see the incentive gamble as worth the risk. "If you look at Tuscaloosa when Mercedes started operations there, at Montgomery when Hyundai came in, at Jackson, Mississippi when Nissan came in, you can see the definite impact on their markets and this is bigger than all of those combined," said Lee Metzger, president of the Mobile Area Board of Realtors. He foresees Thyssen-Krupp affecting all realty. "The 30,000 construction jobs for four years will have a big impact on the rental market in North Mobile County," said Metzger. "You can draw a 30-minute radius around the plant site and that will be where the rental business will be affected." "If the median salary of those permanent jobs is $50-75 thousand as they say," continued Metzger, "using that number would suggest they can buy $200,000 homes. And everything here is so affordable compared to the rest of the country. Our median price is 66 percent of the national average. Anyone getting transferred in here is going to be really pleased. In conjunction with the EADS facility, it’s certainly exciting. I’ve been here all my life and this is the most exciting time I can remember." The real estate leader thinks the effect ripples outward. "It’s not just in realty but in all the cottage industries involved," Metzger said. The Chamber of Commerce estimates it will include another 38,000 to 52,000 indirect jobs over 20 years. These corporate reverberations reach through a community in all arenas. "It’s these upper and middle management types that serve on boards," said Mobile Arts Council Executive Director Bob Burnett. "They’re the ones that make a strong base for cultural organizations." "We’re likely to see attendance at museums pick up," Burnett said. "Season ticket sales to the symphony and the opera will go up. Underwriting normally picks up, too." It’s a familiar pattern. "Ciba-Geigy and Degussa have been good supporters of the arts for years," Burnett said. The pair of German companies have operated chemical plants in Mobile County for decades. "These people are well-educated and they want the community to know they will be a benefit." Illustration is at hand. "Look at what RSA is doing with the opening of the Battle House," said Burnett. "They’re throwing this huge gala benefiting The Museum of Art, the symphony, the opera, the ballet and the Centre for the Living Arts." The arts spokesman’s assurance comes from experience. "When the CEO of Thyssen-Krupp was here not long ago," Burnett said, "they took a whole day to look around downtown. Here I thought I was just going to be meeting with his wife and he was as interested in the cultural and arts activities as she was. It was a good sign." It was only the last in a recent string of favorable omens long sought and hard-earned. Kevin Lee is Lagniappe associate editor. You can e-mail him at klee@lagniappemobile.com