Mobile Development Thread

[Port_of_Bama]

Data for Alabama show that the five most populous incorporated places and their 2010 Census counts are Birmingham, 212,237; Montgomery, 205,764; Mobile, 195,111; Huntsville, 180,105; and Tuscaloosa, 90,468.



http://2010.census.gov/news/releases/operations/cb11-cn47.html

[SouthSky]

Numerical growth 2000-2010

Mobile county +13,149
Baldwin county +41,850

Mobile city -3,804

[elb401]

Well, Mobile numbers are okay. Could you imagine what they would have been if the annexations didn't happen! Sam needs to put some smart growth policies in place and see if anyone else wants to annex into the city again. It’s just sad that it seems that we are losing influence in the state. It sucks that we have to wait until 2013 to get Baldwin redistricted back into our metro so we can be at least number 2 again.

Do you see B-ham's numbers......it looks like Montgomery, Mobile (if we annex more), and Huntsville all have a chance of being the biggest city in the state by 2020. Wow, I wonder what Birmingham is going to do, if they want to grow.

[SpawnOfVulcan]

Here's a link to the Pentagon Channel if you want to watch the Air Force tanker announcement live.

[Port_of_Bama]

well guys..................................... Its been a great battle and the best man has won !!

[elb401]

Its okay, like Mayor Jones said.....we have 15 other projects we are chasing. Now that Brookley if freed up there might be better deal out there.

[bystander1]

Crap. I could be wrong, but according to some hints from Montgomery city officials, I believe Montgomery was in line for a couple of suppliers had Mobile won.

Double crap.

[Port_of_Bama]

Originally Posted by bystander1

Crap. I could be wrong, but according to some hints from Montgomery city officials, I believe Montgomery was in line for a couple of suppliers had Mobile won.

Double crap.

That`s not hard to believe it would have brought 5,000 jobs to the state.

[SouthSky]

Originally Posted by elb401

Its okay, like Mayor Jones said.....we have 15 other projects we are chasing. Now that Brookley if freed up there might be better deal out there.

This is very true. Mobilians can take solace in this other development potential. Whenever problems like losing the EADS factory hit people tend to act as if that was our last gasp at a large scale development. The conversations I heard downtown tonight echoed this. It is not correct. The port and the surrounding infrastructure will always put Mobile on the map as a viable option no matter the ups or downs. We will some day get some true game changer like EADS. And it can't come soon enough.

[Port_of_Bama]

The mayor mentioned that the city has several other economic projects that will be coming to the Mobile are....

[SouthSky]

This article mentions a project worth 700 jobs.

Link - Fox 10

[Port_of_Bama]

Originally Posted by SouthSky

This article mentions a project worth 700 jobs.

Link - Fox 10

Do anyone know what company will bring the 700 jobs ? I`m looking forward to the future of Mobile !!

[Port_of_Bama]

Palms and live oaks are both, equally, a part of Mobile’s heritage. Those who believe we should have only one or the other would be rewriting this city’s history, destroying its rich biological inheritance and defacing its cultural heritage. Palms have been growing in Mobile tens of thousands of years longer than such common Mobile emblems as azaleas and camellias. Palms were almost certainly more abundant in the original Mobile landscape than oaks were.There are at least three species of palm native to Mobile and Baldwin counties — palms that were living here millenia before Columbus landed — and historical evidence indicates there might have been four.

Mobile was founded on top of a palmetto swamp, and if you spend any time exploring the Mobile-Tensaw Delta from which the old city was carved, you’ll discover that bluestem palms are so thick, you don’t see much of anything else for miles and miles.In the first half of the 1700s, Mobilians were using palm trunks for wharf pilings — suggesting there was an abundant local source of still another palm, the cabbage palmetto(the most common that we see in Mobile especially in historical midtown and downtown).

Photographs from the 19th and early 20th century clearly show that palms pre-date the live oaks and azaleas along Spring Hill Avenue, and many other prominent historic streets of Mobile. Remnants of those 150- to 200-year-old palms are still visible in front of the Visitation Monastery.

Some folks say they can remember when many of the ancient palms along Spring Hill Avenue were dug and sold off to Florida developers, in the 1950s and 1960s. It seems the Florida developers had an easier time finding palms in Mobile than they did in Florida.The city really needed the money and if the city would have never sold the palms the presence of the native trees would have a stronger presence(not mentioned in article). I think of this story with a smile every time I hear someone dismiss palms by bellowing that “Mobile shouldn’t look like Florida,” whatever that means. But of course, Mobile was the capital of Spanish West Florida.

Honest to goodness, I’m pretty content to have Mobile look a whole lot like Mobile, a city that for three hundred years has combined the temperate and the tropical, the oak and the palm. It’s that unusual combination that visitors to Mobile have always noticed, so OF COURSE you’d want to plant palms AND oaks AND pines at the airport and other entrances to the city.
Why would you want this city to be anything less than what it is? And why would those who claim to love Mobile attempt to poison its heritage with nonsense about one of its most important and historic trees?

http://blog.al.com/living-press-register/2011/02/finch_palm_trees_have_long_his.html

[elb401]

I've always thought that palms fit well in Mobile. A brochure, made in France in 1705 trying to lure colonist to Mobile, featured our city with palm trees. I have lived in Mid-town Mobile all my life and little wild palmettos are in practically everyone's backyard.

Here is a video (from the press register/al.com) of a walk to the +1,000 yrs old Indian Mounds (little pyramids) that are in the middle of the delta. Since Mobile was built on the reclaimed east end of the delta, this is most likely what Mobile looked like when the first french settlers arrived:

http://bcove.me/k6bqeir3

Also here are some other videos from the delta.

http://bcove.me/igqvjm9q --a tour of the middle delta
http://bcove.me/khti9yx0 --manatee research

It would be neat to see what Bienville and his crew saw.

[Port_of_Bama]

Originally Posted by elb401

I've always thought that palms fit well in Mobile. A brochure, made in France in 1705 trying to lure colonist to Mobile, featured our city with palm trees. I have lived in Mid-town Mobile all my life and little wild palmettos are in practically everyone's backyard.

Here is a video (from the press register/al.com) of a walk to the +1,000 yrs old Indian Mounds (little pyramids) that are in the middle of the delta. Since Mobile was built on the reclaimed east end of the delta, this is most likely what Mobile looked like when the first french settlers arrived:

http://bcove.me/k6bqeir3

Also here are some other videos from the delta.

http://bcove.me/igqvjm9q --a tour of the middle delta
http://bcove.me/khti9yx0 --manatee research

It would be neat to see what Bienville and his crew saw.

Yes palms fit in well with our area and the Cabbage palmetto are natural to our area they have been here for thousands of years....My family from northern Alabama say always make the comment that Mobile is trying to be like Florida because we have palms.

Palms are native to Mobile and Florida developers bought palms from Mobile so palms had to have been more abundant in Mobile than in Florida.If Mobile would have never sold the majority of it`s palms their is no telling what the city would have looked like.

[Port_of_Bama]

Gatotkoco Drive is a reminder of the first time the Brookley Aeroplex came close to landing an aircraft plant.
In the late 1990s, city leaders renamed Military Road for a mythical bird in Indonesian culture as officials courted that country's IPTN to build turboprop planes.
The project, which was to cost $100 million and employ 700 workers, was scrapped in 1998 by the state-owned firm when Indonesia's ruler was forced out and the country's economy tumbled.
Brookley was again a finalist in 2003 for Boeing Co.'s 787 plant -- projected to cost $500 million and employ 1,200. But Boeing stayed in Everett, Wash., possibly thanks to billions in tax breaks.
Now European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. officials are mulling whether to appeal the U.S. Air Force's choice of Boeing to supply a new fleet of aerial refueling tankers. Unless they do, Brookley will be passed over for the third time.
This time, Mobile gained EADS' Airbus engineering center at Brookley, not just a tongue-tying street sign.
Site leader David Trent said employment could rise from today's 205 workers to 230 by year's end.
"The tanker announcement really has no effect on our employees or our immediate workload," Trent said. Engineers there design cabins and cargo spaces.
And Airbus Military NA, another EADS unit, employs about 30 at Mobile Regional Airport.
State and local leaders are trying to persuade EADS to build civilian Airbus freighters in Mobile even though the military prize appears to have slipped through its grasp. If that appeal doesn't work out, the Mobile Airport Authority may have to look to other futures for the former air base.
Brookley is the region's largest industrial park, with 1,700 acres hosting more than 100 businesses that employ about 3,700 people. Mobile officials tout its transportation advantages -- a 9,600-foot runway and a deepwater dock next to a railroad and Interstate 10.

http://blog.al.com/press-register-business/2011/02/eads_tanker_loss_could_shift_b.html

[Port_of_Bama]

I hope some one (Alxxx) will post pics of GulfQuest.

[future_mobile]

Lol. Port_of_Bama read my mind. I would really love to see some pics of Gulfquest's progress. Im away at UAH for college and I won't be back in Mobile until March 21. I would love to see some progress on this long awaited project.

[Port_of_Bama]

O

wners of a vacant, hurricane-ravaged hotel on the Causeway spanning Mobile Bay are exploring the possibility of building a new hotel there, a project that could clear away a stark eyesore near Battleship Memorial Park on the road linking Mobile and Spanish Fort.
The Spanish Fort Planning Commission is expected to consider a request by Bay Point LLC to update the zoning of the property covering about 13 acres and sitting prominently near Interstate 10.
The former Las Brisas on the Bay hotel closed after being flooded by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In earlier times, it had been a Ramada Inn.
Although Bay Point is considering a 250-room hotel, the property is also up for sale, according to Jacob Cunningham of Fairhope, one of the partners.
If Bay Point received a satisfactory offer, it might prefer to sell rather than develop the acreage itself, Cunningham told the Press-Register.
At present, the property is zoned R-1, a low-density, single-family zoning. City leaders allowed the hotel on the non-conforming zoning when Spanish Fort gained jurisdiction over the Causeway in 2003.

http://blog.al.com/live/2011/03/new_hotel_proposed_for_causewa.html

[Alxx611]

Originally Posted by Port_of_Bama

I hope some one (Alxxx) will post pics of GulfQuest.

well not much to see still, just pillings, but they have gotten taller. Got some pictures to come from Mardi Gras too. Its a real shame with the tanker deal and the census numbers (on the same day too), but we still have a lot going for us to come