On Tuesday, the Mobile City Council appropriated $40.5 million in city funds for capital projects around the city, the majority being $34 million for the Mobile Civic Center.
The lion share of the civic center funds was $29 million, which will go to construction of a parking facility on the civic center site. The parking garage will be owned by the city but will be used for both the civic center and for an on-site office building that will be constructed for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Jim DeLapp, Mobile’s executive director of public works, says that $29 million is not the final cost of constructing the parking garage: The city will still have to put the project out for bidding and see what contractors estimate the cost will be. The Mobile City Council will also have to approve a contract for construction of the parking garage, he says.
Mobile City Councilmember William Carroll, in whose district the civic center lies, said he was supportive of the efforts to move forward on the parking deck. But he said he wanted to make sure the final design of the garage was in line with the standards outlined in the city’s Downtown Development District guidelines.
“We want it to be a vibrant building that matches the area and adheres to all of the concepts within the [Architectural Review Board] and the DDD, and also form-based codes,” Carroll said. “I would hope that [the corps building and the garage] arrive somewhere close to the same time. Given the number of people working in the corps building, we need parking places to keep them off the street.”
In addition to the funds for the parking garage, the appropriation included $3 million for a design contract for the civic center’s arena and theater. In a plan proposed by Populous Architects last year, the city would shift the footprint of the civic center to the east, keeping the arena and theater but demolishing the expo hall.
The design contract would only cover about 25-30% of the design work for the facility, DeLapp says. But it would give enough information for an updated cost estimate, which the city needs before it moves forward with a full refurbishment of the civic center, he says. The current estimate for renovations from Populous was about $170 million.
In addition, the city wants to make sure that potential sponsors of the civic center have a chance to give input on the design before moving forward.
“We don’t want to go all the way down the design, and be 25, 30, 50% designed, and then a big sponsor comes along and says, ‘we want this, that or the other in the design,’” DeLapp said.
DeLapp says that he hopes to have a design contract up for approval by the council in the next few weeks.
Also in the $34 million was a $150,000 line item for a marketing contract for the civic center. DeLapp says that will be used to hire MELT, LLC, an Atlanta-based sports marketing company, to find sponsors for the civic center. DeLapp and Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson have both said that they hoped to partner with a sponsor to help offset the costs of a renovation of the center.
DeLapp says he’s confident that the city will be able to find a sponsor for the civic center.
“That’s something the city has overlooked for many years,” DeLapp says. “Most other arenas and stadiums, everything, even Hancock Whitney, they pay to have their name on the stadium.”
The council is expected to vote on the contract with MELT next week.
In addition to those three items, the council also approved $1 million for the site design and utility relocation contract at the civic center site and a $1 million contract for project management of the civic center renovation.
Construction on the corps office building is expected to begin in June. DeLapp says that the goal is to have the construction of the parking garage completed around the same time that the office building is completed, at the end of 2024.
DeLapp says he’s hoping the renovation of the civic center will be completed no later than early 2027.
