Mobile Economy:
Boom, boom, boom, boom
(The following article appears courtesy of Thicket magazine where it was first published in a slightly different form in the June/July issue)
By Chip Drago
Mobile Bay Times
Looking north from his 8th floor office in the Mobile County Courthouse, Circuit Judge Rick Stout scans Mobile’s downtown business district and, to the east, the state docks, but it is the city’s two tallest buildings that claim his attention – one old, the 34-floor First National Bank Building, as it was originally called, and one new, the 35-floor, 227-meter RSA Battle House Tower.
“For seven years, I’ve looked out this window (giving Stout a northern view of the downtown business district, the waterfront to the east and the area beyond downtown to the north) and now I see the RSA Tower and one, two, three, four, five old buildings being renovated or restored,” said Stout. “I see the new museum (actually art gallery, Space 301) in the back of the old Press-Register building. I see a new hotel going up. I see more activity in looking out of this window right now than I’ve seen in the past seven years combined. I used to see a few roofing projects but that was about it.”
Stout points to the 34-floor First National Bank Building, the state’s tallest when it was built in 1965, but now tired and outdated, which for about 20 years from 1975-95 seemed to proclaim Mobile an anti-Chicago, perhaps the “City of Slumped Shoulders.” Squarely in the heart of downtown, heavy and pedestrian, it towered over block after block of decaying buildings. In the late 1960’s and 1970’s, retail activity fled downtown to the city’s western suburbs. Later still, in the 1990’s, many Mobilians relocated to the Eastern Shore of Mobile Bay in Spanish Fort, Daphne and Fairhope where a commercial and residential boom continues.
Throughout the period city fathers undertook sporadic efforts to jolt downtown back to life – public support for the Riverview Hotel and office complex, a plan to restore Fort Conde Village as a commercial and tourist attraction, a waterfront convention center – but none succeeded in jump-starting a revival of the area.
“Now look there at the RSA Tower which I think is attractive and the tallest building in the state,” said Stout, “and of course it may not always be the tallest but at least right now it is and it says Mobile has got a mindset of accomplishment and achievability.”
For decades dubbed “the city of perpetual potential,” Mobile in recent years has won one economic development victory after another. Large among them are Singapore’s ST Mobile Aerospace Engineering, Australian shipbuilder Austal USA, IPSCO Steel, Berg Pipe and more recently German steelmaker Thyssen Krupp’s $3.7 billion, 2,700-employee plant whose huge footprint is already stamped into the ground north of Mobile and a $600 million, 1,500-job aircraft assembly partnership between Northrop Grumman and European Air Defence and Space Co. (EADS).
The Northrop Grumman/EADS team recently won a fiercely-contested competition for a contract worth up to $40 billion to replace the U.S. Air Force’s aging fleet of refueling tankers. Boeing is protesting the decision, but industry analysts believe that Northrop Grumman/EADS is likely to prevail. A key hurdle stands just ahead on June 19 when the GAO issues a ruling on Boeing's protest. If the award stands, Mobile’s Brookley Complex just off Interstate-10 south of downtown would join Toulouse, France and Seattle, Washington as the only places in the world where big jets are built.
Seemingly almost lost in the bustle of major announcements is the port’s addition of a $300 million container terminal which will ultimately have the capacity to handle 800,000 containers annually. Then there is the wildly successful Alabama Cruise Terminal where Carnival Cruise Lines’ Holiday is home ported. The 1,452-passenger ship has never left port at less than full capacity. Other significant projects on line or in the works include the University of South Alabama’s $40 million Mitchell Cancer Institute; the $624 million Alabama Motor Sports Park off I-65 just north of Mobile, which is scheduled to open in 2010 and will feature among six racetracks the Dale Earnhardt Jr. Speedway; and the $30 million National Maritime Museum of the Gulf of Mexico which promises to be a spectacular addition to the Mobile waterfront when it opens in 2010 as a next door neighbor to the cruise terminal.
Sometimes called the Azalea City for obvious reasons or The City of Six Flags for its heritage which includes French, British and Spanish control, Mobile is also know as The Port City, a moniker which more aptly reflects its economic reality. Founded more than 300 years ago as the first French colony in the New World, Mobile has had its economic ups and downs, all of them largely tied to the port, now the nation’s 10th largest with tremendous growth projected in the near future.
The city’s first big economic heyday occurred in mid-19th century when cotton was king. The mark of prosperity remains in the many antebellum homes that line the city’s older streets. A second boom arrived with World War II and the nation’s hunger for war ships to defeat its Axis foes. Shipyard workers streamed in from points north, east and west, so many that boarding houses accommodated weary workers by renting beds in shifts. After the war, Mobile settled back into an easy economic gait, never really stopping, never really galloping.
Stout arrived in Mobile as a six-year-old in 1953. It was a few years later as a high school student in the early 1960’s that Stout asked his father, a native of Indiana and also a lawyer, why they moved to Mobile. After all, neither he nor Mrs. Stout had family or friends already living in Mobile.
“He said he looked at a map back when he was making the decision on where to relocate and he just felt that Mobile, because of the waterway, its port, its geographic position and whatever other factors, was really destined to catch fire and expand and be a place of prosperity,” Stout recalled.
“After that Brookley Field closed, Alcoa shut down and Waterman Steam Ship, too,” Stout laughed ruefully. “There was a lot of economic degradation over those intervening years from 1953 until fairly recently. It wasn’t a downhill slide but there was no real growth here, certainly no boom town atmosphere.
“It was interesting to me, throughout my law practice, when I had occasion to hire a recent law school graduate and I would ask why they wanted to come to Mobile, several of them with no family here almost like déjà vu would say in essence the same thing my father said precipitated his decision.”
So it seems people have always harbored the belief that good times were just around the corner in Mobile and of course it may be 50, 55 years since those thoughts entered my dad’s equation and led to his determination to move here that the prophecy is in the process of being fulfilled.”
Win Hallett, president of the Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce, points to 1985 as a pivotal year in Mobile’s fortunes.
“Several elements came into play starting in 1985,” said Hallett. “We’d had county commissioners, architects, judges, city commissioners going to prison. It was a total mess. But we also started the Tell the World campaign and raised a lot of money for that. The players then – Fred Delchamps, Frank McRight, Bobby Guthans, Sage Lyons, just go on down the line, a huge number of people – said we are not going to put up with that corruption, that sordid behavior. The city and the county agreed that the chamber would be the economic agent of record. The first thing they did was they fired everybody (at the chamber) and hired Wally Lee and brought in professional people to help mobilize the business community in conjunction with the other institutions in the public sector. Arthur Outlaw came in as mayor and he began trying to build better race relations and to get the city government’s act together. And four years later, Mike Dow with all his energy and salesmanship replaced Mayor Outlaw.”
A better organized and focused business community, Dow and Sam Jones, now Dow’s successor at City Hall but then a leader on the county commission, pulled together and Mobile began to break free from a decades’ long lull, according to Hallett.
“We’re an overnight success,” said Hallett. “Yeah, after 23 years, an overnight success.”
Going back to the 1970’s, the Retirement Systems of Alabama and Dr. David Bronner have been invested in the Mobile community. But it was not until the 1990’s that RSA staked a major claim on the future economic success of the Mobile area. In the late 1980’s, Bronner and RSA undertook the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail, an ambitious plan to diversify RSA’s holdings while also stamping Alabama as a golfing Mecca with a dazzling necklace of 18 courses at eight sites throughout the state.
After a couple of previous financial roles in the Mobile area with industrial prospects and debt restructuring, a location for the Robert Trent Jones Trail Mobile golf courses brought RSA back to town.
“We wanted a site down there and then the mayor and I started to look at some different things,” Bronner recalled. “We passed on some things. We decided to do some things. It wasn’t just do anything and everything. We turned down lots of concepts and projects. There were things I didn’t think I wanted to handle. Not everything is a good fit.”
But much was a good fit. In addition to the RSA Tower, Bronner and the state employees’ pension fund came to bear on so many projects that editorial cartoons and radio talk show banter rechristened Mobile as “Bronnerville.” Those projects included the restoration of the historic Battle House Hotel, the purchase of the Riverview Hotel, the Grand Hotel in Point Clear on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay, creation of the Somerby retirement village in west Mobile and the cruise terminal.
Beyond the concerns of some over one person’s wielding so much influence, some commercial real estate interests howled about the introduction of hundreds of thousands of square feet of office space into a market that wasn’t clamoring for it. RSA was able to play the game under a different set of rules than those that applied to the private sector, they charged.
Area real estate execs thought RSA probably had a major out-of-town tenant lined up to move into the tower when it opened and, although their theory didn’t pan out, things worked out favorably regardless because the Mobile economy continued to hum along even as the national economy skidded.
Bronner scoffs at his critics who, he says, would live in a stunted world, based on fear and free of competition.
“It happens every time you put in a new building, always, the same as in Montgomery,” said Bronner. “You have to have Class A office space to attract outsiders that you would not attract otherwise. It forces people to improve their properties to keep their tenants or to attract new ones. It’s no different than in any other city. Owners hate to put money back into their properties because they like to see them as cash cows and they don’t like to maintain them. New properties force them to do a better job for the tenants that are there.”
In all, Bronner estimates RSA’s investment in the Mobile/Baldwin County area at about $500 million, give or take a few million.
“I think we’re progressing (with RSA’s investments in Mobile),” said Bronner. “We’re not where we want to be. We’ll get there. If you pull off the Airbus thing (tanker deal, plus the commercial aircraft manufacturing that EADS has pledged would accompany the huge military contract), the whole city will never be the same. If Airbus does its thing there, you are basically sitting on the hottest city in the U.S.”
For RSA’s extensive involvement in the Mobile area, Bronner credited not only Dow, but the Mobile electorate whose favorable vote on a tax increase to fund public education was also in Bronner’s eye a litmus test on the city’s worth as a place for RSA to invest its money.
“That (vote weighed heavily) on the original downtown stuff, correct,” said Bronner. “You can help people but they’ve got to help themselves if you are really going to have a success and education is really the key element to success.”
“One big thing, (Mobile) had a mayor who was very responsive and was a delight to work with at that time – Mayor Dow,” said Bronner of RSA’s expanding interests in Mobile. “Hopefully Sam will fall in same category. The city needs leaders who will help me not only be successful but if there’s a problem, help me solve it rather than shrugging their shoulders. When there is somebody like that in place, I go back and add to it (previous investments).”
Any future RSA projects in the works for Mobile?
“Nothing I can talk about,” said Bronner.
But others suspect RSA investment will beget RSA investment.
Bess Rich is a former city councilwoman and unsuccessful mayoral candidate who now serves on the Mobile Area Board of Water and Sewer Commissioners. She believes RSA’s investment in downtown is such that a deeper commitment is probable.
“His RSA investment is strong and he is a big player in the picture so there is no denying his clout,” she said. “I look for him to take over the (now publicly owned) Convention Center as his hotels require its success. Maybe he will do something with the Civic Center, too. Condos, shopping and an entertainment district would be terrific. That area is ripe for redevelopment. It could truly become a great complex and a great asset to downtown.”
Sam Jones, who succeeded Dow as mayor of Mobile and defeated Rich among others, said recently that the city would consider a developer’s proposal to raze the city’s old auditorium, while keeping the theater, in order to bring condominiums and retail to the southside of Mobile’s downtown area near I-10.
“I think most Mobilians realize Bronner's strength and respect his business sense and abilities,” Rich added. “They might not like his style but if there are benefits to our quality of life, they'll be happy with the outcome.”
Bronner’s immediate plans in Mobile may be less grandiose than condos and an entertainment district, but perhaps equally as challenging. He is going head-to-head with the railroad over its trains whistling through downtown Mobile in the wee hours.
“Our number one priority now is to get rid of the train whistle (which sounds throughout the night and early morning along the tracks between the state docks and Water Street, disturbing the sleep of Battle House and Riverview hotel guests). That’s very, very important. There are two big hotels and that damn whistle is very disruptive, very disruptive to an evening’s sleep. With no sleep, people don’t want come back. It ruins your reputation. That’s our top priority right now.”
For Mobile’s part, the city is sleepy no more.
“When Forbes magazine says you are the fastest growing small metropolitan area in the country, that is significant,” said Hallett. “You expect to hear that from me, but not from Forbes.”
From 2001 through 2007, the chamber boasts 48 new industries and 68 expansions with a reported capital investment of $5.71 billion and the creation of more than 10,000 new jobs.
Able to view Mobile both from the inside and the outside, as a fan and as a competitor, Jay Garner was once vice president for economic development at the Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce and is now president of an Atlanta-based economic development consulting firm, the Competitive Strategies Group.
“There really is a good explanation for why Mobile (is booming) and the key in most instances is because Mobile has the product or the infrastructure to attract those types of businesses that are locating there now,” he said. “For example look at the expansions that are occurring on the waterfront at Austal and Atlantic Marine. They are already there but the fact of the matter is: where else would they expand? If they were to pick up and relocate they would have to pick up and relocate to waterfront someplace else and finding property along the waterfront now is next to impossible.
“Then there is aviation-related industry. For years Brookley was a tremendous resource. It started to reach its potential with Mobile Aerospace, a division of Singapore Aerospace Technologies which we recruited in 1991. Mobile Aerospace at this point is the largest private employer in Mobile the last time I checked.
In 1994 when I left we were announcing the Indonesian (aviation) deal. They were going to build a regional jet, a turbo prop (at Brookley). Then they had a change of government in Indonesia with Sukarno leaving and Habibbi coming in. And that project went away, but it showed the world Mobile’s capability to attract an aviation-related industry. I remember they named a street after Habibbi (at Brookley) which I think they unnamed after that (the deal fell through). It would’ve employed 800 people.
“Then something like TK comes along which wanted port access for transportation and needed to have a substantial, large plat site and could get permitted,” said Garner. “Not many of these kinds of opportunities are out there which is why it came down to Alabama and Louisiana. Once again, infrastructure played a significant role in all of Mobile’s successes which is great. If you don’t have product, you’re not going to have success.”
As a site location consultant working all over the country, Garner said he understood perhaps better than most in the Mobile community the role that Gov. Bob Riley and Neal Wade, the state’s director of economic development, played in Mobile’s success.
“Gov. Riley and Neal Wade have made a huge difference in the success of the state and specifically in Mobile,” Garner said. “They are at the forefront in all high profile, mega projects that locate in Mobile and the state. You always have to have the locals to make it happen, but it was driven in this case by Riley and Wade, based on what I’ve heard and what I’ve researched.”
“Your governor is a great salesman which is not to say the locals in the community aren’t integral and key to the success,” he said. “Economic development is always sold on the local level and they have to make it happen. The Mobile County Commission did and other players in assembling incentives. It takes a lot of money from the locals and they are equally responsible in making it happen. Still, the effort has to be led by a quarterback and based on the feedback I’ve heard and seen on the state level, Riley is an all-pro quarterback.”
“The key, the bottom line is: if Mobile didn’t have the product, if it didn’t have the (9,600 foot) runway (at Brookley), if it didn’t have the port, if it didn’t have the land, then it wouldn’t have had the success,” said Garner.
Mobile has probably bitten off as much as it can chew for the foreseeable future, according to Garner.
Even if the tanker deal gets scuttled, Mobile need hardly despair, said Garner.
“If it doesn’t stick, something else will happen because Mobile is blowing and going,” he said. “That’s a nice problem to have. Mobile can’t take too much more. Labor, skill labor availability become issues.”
Nevertheless, the city has 27 economic development prospects still on its board, according to the mayor. Jones also noted that he, on behalf of the city, hosted a 2008 Summit for Workforce Development in Mobile May 14-15. According to Jones, the city expects to add 4,000-5,000 new jobs by 2012.
Alabama State Port Authority Director/CEO Jimmy Lyons laughs, saying he probably knows more about the manufacture of large jets than any other port director in the world.
His point was that Mobile has sustained its teamwork approach to economic development so that he has been a regular attendee at Paris Air Shows and is at the table when meetings with EADS or another aviation prospect are held. The same is true for a potential new port customer and representatives of the Brookley Complex, he said. Industrial recruits see this unity and respond to it, said Lyons.
“Of the big things, I attribute to every victory we’ve had has been the unity we’ve shown,” said Lyons. “We’ve had a couple of stumbles along the way, but we have operated in a unified manner as a community, as a single organization sitting down, the mayor and the county commission president, (University of South Alabama President) Gordon (Moulton), (Mobile Airport Authority Executive Director) Bay Haas, me, the chamber people pledged to each other to support each other and to work together on projects.”
“Every one I’ve worked on – my first big project was the IPSCO project and that was 1998 – has been a great example of teamwork,” said Lyons. “At the table with IPSCO, Dow pledged to help and it was not even in the city. That’s an example of everything and everyone being willing to play whatever role they needed to play to contribute to the effort as a united community. I’m a port director and I’ve been to three air shows and I’m going to a fourth. I know more about airplanes than I ever thought I would know.”
Political rivalries and jealousies that flare up over who gets credit are not unusual and can sabotage a community’s economic development, said Lyons.
“Looking at communities as an outsider, if I see officials always taking shots at each other, blow ups between the chamber and the city’s legislative delegation, leaders split down the middle on virtually every issue, do I want to become part of that?” Lyons asked. “Now our legislators will fight over Democrat and Republican type issues, but when it comes to an issue having to do with the good of the community, our delegation pulls together.”
“I know for a fact and I’ve worked all the big ones in some capacity and I’ve seen it firsthand: you can tell when you look at a prospect and they see people working with each other to satisfy their needs, it lights them up and they say, ‘This is a place we want to be,’” Lyons said.
Lyons seconded Garner that Riley was an exceptional sales leader for the state.
“The governor was a big factor,” said Lyons. “He’s a great salesman. In any organization, and I learned this in the private sector, the best salesman in the company is the CEO and that’s what Riley is for the state, the chief executive officer. If the CEO will present himself well and go where he needs to go, that’s a powerful sales force and I give him a lot of credit for it.”
Since 2002, the Port Authority has jumped from 20 million tons of cargo through the public terminals to 27 million tons in 2007. Anticipating increases in steel, container and coal tonnages that are expected by 2010/2011, port officials project the following:
Coal: In 2002, handled 10 million tons / 2010, anticipate 26-30 million tons.
Containers: 2002, handled 20,000-plus TEUs (Twenty-foot Equivalent Units); in 2008, handle 118,000-plus TEUs; by 2010/2011, anticipate “conservatively” that figure to be 250-300,000 TEUs.
Steel: 2002, handled 300,000 tons of iron/steel articles; in 2007, handled 755,800 tons and by 2010/2011 total tonnage is expected to equal 5 million tons.
Predictably, rail car volumes are also rising with 20,000 cars annually associated with the Central Gulf Railway (rail ferry service); 3,000 cars annually associated with the Berg Spiral Pipe project at the old International Paper site, and Thyssen Krupp rail volumes yet to be quantified.
The Thyssen Krupp project will require the new $85-95 million marine terminal to handle the inbound slab for their manufacturing process. The export volumes, estimated to range between 500,000-1.2 million tons, may require additional sheds and floor strengthening, but an evaluation of export needs is only now beginning, according to port officials.
The Northrop Grumman/EADS project is “turn key” for the port. There is no need for upgrades to accommodate their volumes. That no upgrades were necessary may have been an attractive factor to NG/EADS in their site selection decision, according to Lyons. And, in fact, he noted, the Port Authority fabricated pieces, utilizing containers and PVC pipe, in the shape of the tanker components and performed a cargo handling demonstration project (using cranes, barges, and special transporters) from main port to the Brookley site in less than three hours. The demonstration was persuasive, Lyons said.
Commercial/industrial real estate veterans Gavin Bender, Lee Metzger and Bernie Heggeman and shipping agent Mike Lee liken Mobile’s economic future to a ship that can be seen on the horizon – for all the talk of a boom, it’s not here yet but you can see it from here.
“Let’s understand that the boom is still a potential boom, but is looking more of ‘when,’ not ‘if,’ said Bender.
Bender also credits Riley and the state’s economic development team for the landing the international projects. Mobile is a good product to sell, he said.
“Mobile is a great product to market because of the underdeveloped infrastructure (Brookley Air force Base), the cost of living, the number of colleges and universities that lead to a percentage of the available work force with at least some college credits, and the overall quality of life,” he said. “In some respects it was our turn.”
While he was an early and outspoken critic of the RSA Tower, Bender doesn’t negate Bronner’s impact. With at least $250 million invested in the downtown area alone, how could it not lead to the investment of private capital there, he asked.
Bender said the downtown resurgence is especially interesting because it is “all homegrown.” The RSA Tower is 75-80 percent leased and almost all the tenants were already in Mobile. The buildings that were spruced up in reaction to competition from the RSA Tower are also doing well, said Bender.
“This means there has been about 200,000 to 250,000 square feet of office space absorbed in the last few years, “ he said. “This absorption rate is easily ten times the average absorption rate for the downtown market. The reason this is exciting is that all this is happening BEFORE we feel the impacts of the Thyssen Krupp project, the EADS/Northrop Grumman project or the container port.”
While no one wants to prosper off the misery of others, there is no denying that Mobile’s economy got a boost as a result of Hurricane Katrina and the disruption it caused in New Orleans and along the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
“The other areas of Mobile (outside the downtown area) started recovering and growing after Hurricane Katrina,” said Bender. “Offices, warehouses and retail spaces all filled after the hurricane due to the sudden influx of population. The city’s revenues increased dramatically. Mobile was the first major city east of Katrina’s main landfall left intact. The Mississippi crowd came east to Mobile and the Louisiana crowd went north and west to Baton Rouge and Texas. This sudden ‘hurricane benefit’ is the reason locals have been doing well and why there is a great deal of ‘homegrown absorption’ in the total market.”
Hurricane Katrina and public/RSA dollars have brought Mobile to the brink of a boom and recent successes in economic development should “take us to the next level,” said Bender. “It’s an exciting time to be working and investing in Mobile.”
Lee is president/CEO of Page and Jones, a shipping agency in its 116th year and headquartered in Mobile. He also serves on a number of chamber and city maritime committees as well as chairman of the board of the Convention and Visitor Bureau.
Lee, 60, started working at the family-owned shipping agency as a youngster. No one heard more often than he, said Lee, that Mobile’s day was coming; it was inevitable. Still, years and years flowed by with one about the same as the other.
“Now people are looking at what a gem we are – the weather, the location, all the things that add up to a great quality of life,” he said. “We are an easy place to like once people take a look at us.”
Mobile’s lackluster era was not all its fault, said Lee. There were factors at play beyond the city’s influence.
“The port took a big hit in the 70’s when the containers shifted to the east and west coasts,” he said. “It was nothing anybody did wrong. The big markets were in the Orient and Europe. We were left in the wrong spot (on the central Gulf Coast). Now with Central America, South America and the Caribbean (active), suddenly we are in a good spot. The east and west coasts have gotten congested and the overflow cargo comes to Gulf ports. The fact is that industry is developing here, too, so suddenly cargo is worth bringing in here and we have the automotive industry throughout the region. All of those factors have come together to push shipping in the Gulf so that it has jumped back to like it was before automated containerization left us on the outside looking in.”
Lee noted the irony that the concept of containerization originated in Mobile with shipping legend Malcolm McLean and it contributed to sluggish times at the port here.
“But it’s coming back with a vengeance,” he said.
Thyssen Krupp alone should account for an additional 60-70 ships arriving in port with slabs of raw steel for processing at its local carbon and stainless plants, said Lee.
“Seventy ships at a time is a huge jump (in port activity),” he said. “We’re looking to go from 1,000 port calls to 2,000 in the next couple of years.”
The container terminal at Choctaw Point will inevitably boost truck traffic enormously.
“I think we’ll see a lot of warehousing and distribution locate here,” he said.
The strain on the community will also be enormous as it struggles to meet the infrastructure needs of unprecedented growth, Lee conceded.
It is “absolutely critical” that the process be expedited for locating and building a new I-10 bridge over the Mobile River to handle the increased traffic and relieve a bottleneck that has developed at the Wallace Tunnels, said Lee.
“We are extremely far behind, way, way late in getting started (on meeting the coming infrastructure needs),” said Lee. “To me, every day is critical at this point.”
Heggeman takes a more studied, cautious view of the Mobile area economy.
“Looked at in another way, in a soft national economy, what’s happening here makes it feel like a boom,” said Heggeman. “We‘ve got a stable market. The local economy is steady. It’s not necessarily an increase or a decrease, but steady and during these national times that is what separates us from the rest of the country.”
When the national economy is in retreat, developers and investment money look for niche markets where there are signs of life, where something’s going on, said Heggeman.
“It’s very obvious the port markets are being targeted right now,” he said. “We’re in the spotlight. We’re getting more attention now than I’ve ever seen in my (about 30-year) career. It’s attention and inquiries and people looking. It remains to be seen about this so-called boom. The new wave of people and business hasn’t shown up yet. The anticipation is here, but the boom hasn’t happened yet. The hype and the excitement are here. Two years from now we’ll see how strong we are.”
“If we meet growth projections for the next 10 years, you’re talking about doubling the population,” Heggeman said. “Our quality of life right now is extremely nice. All that growth comes with a price and we need to be planning ahead if that is the case.”
If utilities and the transportation system are over-burdened, the quality of life could nosedive and today’s party could lead to tomorrow’s hangover and raw nerves, according to Heggeman.
Hallett concedes the temptation to become giddy over growth. A danger exists that this “new” Mobile could steamroll what is unique about “old” Mobile. Hallett said leaders are working with consultants to avoid the mistakes of other “boom towns.”
Change is neither always good nor always bad, said Mobile attorney Palmer Hamilton who has long been active in historic preservation in Mobile.
While prosperity remade Houston, Dallas and Atlanta in ways unrecognizable and alien to their pasts, in Mobile, it could add to the city’s flavor and perhaps even “give us back our old heritage,” said Hamilton.
“Throughout most of Mobile’s history, it was a cosmopolitan port city,” said Hamilton. “It had fine restaurants, cultural events and an educated, informed citizenry. That heritage was smothered during its last spurt of growth during and after World War II. This new spurt could be different. This time it might result in us returning to our roots.”
So far, he said, he was more excited than worried.
