Huntsville updates

[HSVTiger]

[QUOTE=HSVTiger]every city has one from time to time, ours is the new Metro Jail



By JOHN PECK
Times Staff Writer [email protected]
A city panel voted Tuesday to fire the contractor of the problem-plagued county jail, a move that could add millions of dollars to the cost and push completion to 2008.

The action by the Public Building Authority comes amid repeated work delays and mounting cost overruns fueled by disputes between the contractor and consultants over several support beams that cracked when cell modules were being set.

James W. Dawson, president of Dawson Contracting Inc. of Rainbow City, and the firm's attorney, Bill Fishburne of Birmingham, could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

City officials said Tuesday that the firing will halt all work on the site while a structural specialty firm from Atlanta designs repairs and a new general contractor is ultimately hired.

"Realistically, it may not be until the middle of winter before work resumes," said Cissy Cates, assistant city attorney.

Cates said the city continues to investigate the cause of the structural failures and could wind up modifying Tuesday's "termination for convenience" action to a "termination for cause." A "for cause" declaration could pave the way for the city to seek to recover damages from the contractor's performance bond, which essentially ensures completion of the job.

Architects and structural engineers are required to carry insurance for "errors and omissions" that may be blamed for problems. Cates said the work of the project architect, 2WR/Holmes Wilkins Architects Inc., will also be reviewed to determine if the jail's design is the problem.


Work expected to resume
http://www.al.com/news/huntsvilletimes/index.ssf?/base/news/1155806162167120.xml&coll=1
Work on the jail could resume in about a month, after a formal contract is negotiated, officials said.

The agreement with Lee Builders calls for a "cost plus" reimbursement plan until the city and contractor get a firmer handle on the task and remedial steps needed to stabilize the building. The authority would then negotiate a fixed price contract, which would replace the 7.5 percent markup agreement with Lee.

Wednesday's action comes two months after the authority severed its construction contract with Dawson Contracting Inc. of Rainbow City amid structural problems discovered last fall when jail modules were being set in the $30 million, 1,300-inmate expansion.

The structural issues set off a string of actions by the authority, including the hiring of outside experts to determine what went wrong and who is at fault.

[HSVTiger]

Vista Hotel planned

This is a new brand expanding rapidly across the south, Birmingham and
Lincoln will also see new inns. These will be the new prototypes whatever
that is.

Vista Inn & Suites Huntsville East - Huntsville, Alabama
Over the mountain near the Moores Mill /Shields/ US 72 intersection

[Huntsville_secede]

Great another hotel out in this area. A microtel is already being built. Restaruants and other things should follow. Just a thought, I know they are talking about building a collector road that goes over Chapman Mt. and runs parallel to 72 since it is supposed to be upgraded to insterstate grade. How in the world are they going to widen 565/72 over Chapman Mt. Where is the room to add these two extra lanes?

Originally Posted by HSVTiger

Vista Hotel planned

This is a new brand expanding rapidly across the south, Birmingham and
Lincoln will also see new inns. These will be the new prototypes whatever
that is.

Vista Inn & Suites Huntsville East - Huntsville, Alabama
Over the mountain near the Moores Mill /Shields/ US 72 intersection

[Huntsville_secede]

http://www.al.com/news/huntsvilletimes/index.ssf?/base/news/115589280828160.xml&coll=1&thispage=2

Council voices support for tax plan after forum
Vote on TIF set for Thursday; about 50 attend public hearing
Friday, August 18, 2006
By JOHN PECK
Times Staff Writer [email protected]
The Huntsville City Council on Thursday night unanimously backed Mayor Loretta Spencer's proposed special tax district for schools and several downtown public facilities.

The council will vote on the issue at its regular meeting Thursday.

A straw poll of council support came at the end of a public hearing on the latest Tax Increment Financing, or TIF, plan. About 50 people attended, many of them city school board members and city department heads.

The TIF also must be approved by the Madison County Commission, which seems more divided on the issue.

Speakers at the public hearing mostly approved the plan, saying the enhancements would help revitalize downtown and stabilize older neighborhoods. Opponents decried spending money on school buildings rather than programs and questioned some of the proposed recipients such as the Huntsville Museum of Art.

The $35 million TIF plan would help pay for a rebuilt Lee High School, a downtown parking garage on Green Street across from the former Times building and a new collector road over Chapman Mountain. It also would funnel millions of dollars for renovations to Butler High School, the Von Braun Center, the County Courthouse, the old Councill School and other public facility improvements.

'We're proud of our TIFs'

Spencer said the broad council support and the low turnout at Thursday night's hearing signals the public realizes the TIFs are working. Previous TIFs helped pay for the new Providence and Columbia schools in west Huntsville, the rebuilt Huntsville High School, repairs to several northwest schools, and other city infrastructure improvements designed to induce development.

"We're proud of our other four TIFs. They do bring in new growth in retail, residential and commercial," she said.

A TIF is a defined boundary that targets blighted or undeveloped areas for improvements. The city borrows money within the TIF for infrastructure investments such as a new school, road or public facility within the TIF. As property values rise within the TIF boundary, the increased property-tax revenue is used to repay the construction debt over the next 30 years.

For the TIF to pass, the City Council, County Commission and city school board must agree to forfeit any growth in property-tax revenue from the defined TIF. Each would continue to collect the same dollar amount it receives today while the growth is redirected to pay back the debt.

City Planning Director Dallas Fanning said the latest TIF has a school component like all the others but also puts a strong emphasis on public facilities such as the parking garage, VBC and the new collector road over Chapman Mountain.

"This is as much about neighborhood revitalization and stabilization and rebirth of neighborhoods, especially in the Lee High area, as well as inducing development along U.S. 72 and, to a lesser degree, the Winchester Road corridor," he said.

Dick Hiatt with the Northeast Huntsville Civic Association said the investments will help neighborhoods.

"This is a wonderful way to go," he said.

'Back door' tax hike?

The proposal had its critics. Ralph Timberlake called it a "sham," saying citizens could see a "back door" property-tax increase without an actual increase in the tax rate. Timberlake urged public officials to find the money through savings. Jackie Reed pressed officials to force developers to help pay for public schools.

Bill Cox said the TIF investments in fringe areas such as the Providence and Columbia school projects in far west Huntsville upset the demographic balance of neighborhoods.

"The city went to the trouble of building these shiny-dime schools for outlying districts and ignored the older areas of the city," he said.

Walker McGinnis, a city school board candidate, said he supports the TIF but wants assurance from the school board that it would make much-needed repairs to several southeast Huntsville schools. The TIF includes language forcing the city school board to commit $10 million from its non-TIF capital money for schools in southeast Huntsville.

Resident Jerry Cox pressed officials on whether property-tax gains forfeited by the TIF would hurt other property-tax-funded city services. Fanning noted that one TIF has already been paid off and that others are on track to be paid off early. The TIF-dedicated revenue returns to the overall city coffers once the TIF debt is retired.

Records show that $83.4 million has been borrowed so far in previous TIFs. City Finance Director Randy Taylor said about $11 million of the city's $188 million operating budget comes from property taxes. The city's capital improvement plan is fed by $11 million in property taxes and $27 million in sales taxes.

County Commissioner Mo Brooks said commissioners need more details. Brooks said the county would surrender $8.5 million in county property-tax revenue from the proposed TIF and get only $2 million for courthouse renovations. He also complained that southeast Huntsville should get more from the TIFs.

[HSVTiger]

Huntsville International parking deck expansion.
over a 1000 slots, the existing deck is to the left, new part
foreground.Should be finished next year.

[Exodus]

I know this is off subject, but my wife was around the new Providence community in West Huntsville today, and she described the area as looking similar to Detroit, but clean. Would that be an accurate way of describing it ? I haven't had the chance to check it out, so I can't say.

[HSVTiger]

Originally Posted by Exodus

I know this is off subject, but my wife was around the new Providence community in West Huntsville today, and she described the area as looking similar to Detroit, but clean. Would that be an accurate way of describing it ? I haven't had the chance to check it out, so I can't say.

I would say it is more a combination of Twickenham and Five Points since most of the housing styles are copied from there. It is a very nice development, new school, restaurants, Homewood Suite Hotel etc worth the look. New Urbanism is how it is described .Detroit not so much.

[neilson]

Originally Posted by HSVTiger

I would say it is more a combination of Twickenham and Five Points since most of the housing styles are copied from there. It is a very nice development, new school, restaurants, Homewood Suite Hotel etc worth the look. New Urbanism is how it is described .Detroit not so much.

It seemed nice, but too perfect. Like a Movie Set almost, or that city on "The Truman Show". I know there's a market for a development like Providence, but the fakeness of it in all honesty creeps me out.

Outside of that bubble is the Auto Dealers and University Drive, ya know.

[HSVTiger]

If you like butterflies, from WAFF

Taylor of Mesa, Arizona made it a point to visit the butterfly house while in Alabama seeing relatives, and she wasn't disappointed.

She says the butterfly house "is one of the main things I wanted to see. It's beautiful."

It's also been a huge success.

Admissions to the garden have doubled since the butterfly house and an adjoining children's garden opened at a total cost of two-and-a-half (M) million dollars, according to Harvey Cotten, chief operating officer of the privately run botanical garden.

A concrete path winds over the floor of the house through plants and past a stream that includes a small pond that's home to largemouth bass and bream. Turtles sun themselves in another pond near a cascading waterfall.

While popular butterfly houses like the ones at Callaway Gardens, Georgia, and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, focus on tropical varieties, the Alabama attraction is geared around species and plants native to North America.

Cotten says the butterfly house has trees, shrubs, annuals and perennials.

"We've got attractor plants and host plants," Cotten says. "That's what I think is so exciting about it -- we can show the whole life cycle."

Visitors can see caterpillars munch on plants inside the house and watch them form their chrysalis.

Inside a small enclosure, newly emerging butterflies stretch their wings for the first time.

You just have to look quickly.

Adult butterflies live only two or three weeks, so the two-thousand mail-order butterflies that were used to stock the house originally are long gone.

Now, it's populated by their offspring and additional butterflies that are raised in Florida and Texas and shipped in weekly at a cost starting at $3.50 each.

Pests are a constant threat.

Cotten says if they find a spider "we kill it because we can't fumigate," adding: "We pull down all the webs. They catch the butterflies."

Little Chinese button quail, which eat both plants and bugs, also are used for pest control.

"They just run around. Normally they don't fly," Cotten says.

Butterflies are warm-weather creatures, so the house will shut down for the fall after Labor Day. It will reopen on Memorial Day, when the entire process will begin again.

Located down the road from another popular Huntsville tourist stop, the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, the botanical garden and butterfly house offer a nice contrast to the old rockets and engines on display at the space museum.

Cotten says the goal is to make Huntsville, located in Alabama's Tennessee Valley region, ever more attractive to families looking for something to do.

[HSVTiger]

at the Museum of Art

http://www.al.com/entertainment/huntsvil...ntertainment/1156065445114170.xml&coll=1
Beginning today the walls of the Huntsville Museum of Art will display a small portion of what is now Meyerowitz's finished photographic archive of the destruction following the fall of the World Trade Center buildings on Sept. 11.

The traveling exhibition, "Aftermath: Images from Ground Zero," is a sample of the more than 8,000 shots Meyerowitz took. With 31 large-scale pieces in the show, including one 10-foot panorama, viewers will get a glimpse of Meyerowitz's eight months inside the cordoned-off site that was ground zero.

The exhibition will continue in Huntsville until Oct. 22, meaning that Meyerowitz's powerful photographs will be showcased on the five-year anniversary of Sept. 11, a designation shared only with the Mobile Museum of Art and the Museum of the City of New York, where the permanent archive is housed.

[HSVTiger]

Huntsville International Improvements
This will greatly improve the security and waiting area before entering the concourse and gates. Visitors will have a good view of the planes without having to go through security.
Passenger Screening and Public WaitingCurrent Status: Under DesignEstimated Completion: Fall 2007Fun Facts:•Addition of 20,000 square feet to public waiting and security screening•Addition of 200 seats in public area•Paradiesgift shop expansion in concourse and terminal •New public restrooms with family restroom•Concessions expansion and addition•Larger security screening area•Public observation area •Expanded U.S. Army Display•Upgraded Flight Information Systems•New customer service kiosks.


there will be two sections like this on each side of the above render.

[HSVTiger]

Originally Posted by HSVTiger

to place the real deal in, the standing one is a mockup.



very much like this



Construction has begun on a new transportation terminal and visitors building that also will include space for the recently refurbished Saturn V rocket, now lying in the open at the rear of the Space Center.

The building will face Interstate 565 on a site just west of the tall, model Saturn V rocket that has become an icon of the Space Center. The real Saturn rocket will be displayed on its side, broken into its stages, and will be visible from the interstate through big glass windows.

The building will be spacious and open, so the Saturn V display area will be a perfect place for organizations and industries to hold special events, said Space Center CEO Larry Capps.

".

the site plan

[HSVTiger]

Downtown Madison will see some changes. The fast growing suburb has railroad tracks right through the middle of town as do most southern towns.
approx population 36,000

The improvements will include:

Four-laning the railroad intersection.

Creating three lanes of traffic from Palmer to Mill Road.

Replacing cracked clay sewage lines underneath Sullivan.

Traffic signals at Sullivan and Palmer and Sullivan and Front Street, located on each side of the railroad crossing.

A big difference in the project will be a change in how motorists enter the downtown area. Drivers will no longer be allowed to make a left turn onto Main Street. Chynoweth said it's safer if drivers turn left onto Front Street and go around.

http://www.al.com/news/huntsvilletimes/index.ssf?/base/news/1156151761108300.xml&coll=1

[HSVTiger]

well it sounds good anyway I-565/County Line Interchange
from HSV Times

"Mayor Sandy Kirkindall said a few minor details are the only things left to be done on the County Line Road project. Motorists now have four lanes to drive on from Madison Boulevard to U.S. 72.

Now that the widening project is complete, Kirkindall said the next anticipated road project that will involve County Line Road is the construction of an interchange from County Line Road to Interstate 565.

Plans for an interchange have been in the making for several years, beginning with the administration of former mayor Jan Wells.

Kirkindall said the interchange from County Line Road to I-565 is needed to reduce the amount of traffic at the Wall-Triana Highway interchange. That intersection is the only interchange in Madison. Portions of the Wall-Triana intersection were reworked to allow for better traffic flow.

"We have submitted a request to our congressional delegation for an appropriation to fund the project," he said.

Kirkindall said the estimated cost of building a new interchange at County Line Road and I-565 would be around $8 million."

[HSVTiger]

Botanical Garden wins award

"The Huntsville Botanical Garden was named Alabama's 2006 Attraction of the Year, it was announced Tuesday at a tourism conference in Auburn.

Santa's Village at Alabama Constitution Village also won recognition as Alabama's 2006 Event of the Year.

The awards were announced during the Alabama Governor's Conference on Tourism, which was attended by some 250 state tourism leaders.

In 2005, the 112-acre garden saw more than 250,000 visitors from 47 states and 30 countries, officials said. The attraction featured Waterworks in the summer, Galaxy of Lights in late November and December, and the Scarecrow Trail in September and October, featuring more than 120 scarecrows designed by local residents. A Children's Garden and the nation's largest butterfly house opened this summer. "
source HSV Times

[HSVTiger]

Originally Posted by HSVTiger

Another new hotel planned

Cambria Suites planned for Huntsville
A new hotel brand is coming to Huntsville, offering more suites and upscale service.

Local hotelier Vijay Patel, of Eclipse Hospitality, said Tuesday that he has signed a deal with Choice Hotels International to build the first Cambria Suites hotels in Alabama, one of which will be on University Drive in Huntsville.

Patel said that a location for the $10 million hotel hasn’t been pinned down, but plans are for it to be built “West on University where the growth is, near (Cummings) Research Park and the Target Shopping Center.’’

Eclipse Hospitality says it will select a site within the next six weeks and construction is expected to take six to eight months. Another Cambria Suites is planned for Mobile.

The location of this inn appears to be across from Burger King just west of
SuperTarget at the top of the hill, maybe.

[neilson]

Originally Posted by HSVTiger

The location of this inn appears to be across from Burger King just west of
SuperTarget at the top of the hill, maybe.

Next to the Fireworks Superstore, Tattoo Parlor, Beer Store, and 2 Strip Clubs?

I thought that stuff was technically in Madison County and not Huntsville-zoned.

[HSVTiger]

Originally Posted by neilson

Next to the Fireworks Superstore, Tattoo Parlor, Beer Store, and 2 Strip Clubs?

I thought that stuff was technically in Madison County and not Huntsville-zoned.

There have been recent annexations in that area, hard to keep up with
it, but the lot in question is in the city limits. That whole area behind
the car wash, Mama Fu's etc will be opened up to development all the way
to Old Monrovia via Waddell.

[neilson]

Originally Posted by HSVTiger

There have been recent annexations in that area, hard to keep up with
it, but the lot in question is in the city limits. That whole area behind
the car wash, Mama Fu's etc will be opened up to development all the way
to Old Monrovia via Waddell.

Yeah but do you forsee the Fireworks Superstore, Tattoo Parlor, Beer Store, and 2 Strip Clubs remaining open much longer?

After all, they DO provide services that we otherwise couldn't recieve in Huntsville or Madison.

[HSVTiger]

Originally Posted by neilson

Yeah but do you forsee the Fireworks Superstore, Tattoo Parlor, Beer Store, and 2 Strip Clubs remaining open much longer?

After all, they DO provide services that we otherwise couldn't recieve in Huntsville or Madison.

depends how bad a developer wants that land. I imagine the price is steep.
Eventually they will move or close. It will be interesting to watch this area
between there and Jeff Rd. The area is too valuable to sit idle.