Article on the"New Plan for Old Mobile"
Company to develop plan for downtown Mobile
Thursday, January 31, 2008
By KATHY JUMPER
Real Estate Editor
Urban planners are hitting the streets this week, starting work on a 10-year plan to transform 9.9 square miles of downtown Mobile into a great place to live, work and play.
"We will have initiatives that can be done in 10 years and list how to implement and fund them -- from the private or public sector," said Keith Weaver, an associate principal of urban planning firm EDSA's Baltimore, Md., office.
The city's last master plan was done in 1996 and is outdated, Mayor Sam Jones told a crowd of business owners and city workers who attended Breakfast with the Mayor on Wednesday at the Mobile Museum of Art.
"Developers and property owners are constantly asking us, 'What is the city's plan?,'" Jones said. "It's critical that we do it now with so much going on in our city."
The city earlier this month hired EDSA, a worldwide urban planning, landscape
architectural and graphic design firm, to devise "A New Plan for Old Mobile."
The firm, which has more than 220 employees working in four U.S. locations and an office in Beijing, is being paid $300,000. Completion is scheduled for September, according to Weaver.
The new master plan will cover an area triple the size of the 1996 plan, Weaver said.
It is bordered on the east by the Mobile River, the south by Interstate 10 and Duval Street, the west by Houston Street and the north by Three Mile Creek and the neighborhoods north of Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue.
A team of people versed in historic preservation, real estate and economic and community planning will design a strategy intended to stimulate economic growth, determine the type of houses needed to attract residents and suggest new attractions that could be added to the downtown mix, according to Weaver.
The Mobile-based engineering firm Volkert & Associates will tackle traffic, parking and infrastructure.
The planners will work with community action groups, businesses and property owners, Weaver said, and host public meetings in March, May and August.
"Public participation is integral to everything we do with urban design," Weaver said.
A new master plan developed by the nonprofit Village of Spring Hill, intended to revitalize commercial corridors in that area, could be incorporated into the larger city planning document, where applicable, Weaver said.
"I see them as part of the master plan, and they have set the tone a bit," Weaver said of the nonprofit's initiative, which favors a Main Street concept, similar to that in Fairhope, with shops close to the street.
The Downtown Mobile Alliance contributed $100,000 from its budget to the master plan project, said Elizabeth Sanders, executive director. The nonprofit group promotes downtown development.
"We think of ourselves as a partner," she said.
There should be no duplication in the work being done by her agency and EDSA, according to Sanders.
"We are working on more detailed things, like parking, Water Street gateways and management work on Bienville Square," she said.
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