With construction costs mounting, Mobile mayor says arena was obvious priority

MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) - With construction costs rising, Mayor Sandy Stimpson said a new downtown arena was the obvious priority.

Stimpson on Thursday spoke for the first time about his administration’s decision to hold off on three projects that have been on the drawing board for the last few years – a waterfront park, a new animal shelter and a facility to train police and fire-rescue workers. The combined cost of all three does not equal the expense of the arena, but the mayor said replacing the deteriorating Mobile Civic Center outranks them in importance.

“It was losing money,” he said. “And we’re not losing money on the animal shelter. We’re not losing money on Brookley by the Bay. We’re not losing money because of the public safety training.”

Mobile recently borrowed $250 million to help pay for the roughly $300 million arena project. The city is spending an additional $38 million on an adjacent parking garage. He acknowledged that will consume substantial resources.

“You’ve only got so much capacity to do so many projects at a time and do them well,” he said. “And so, we chose to put the others kind of on the back burner until we could get more information.”

Brookley by the Bay is the city’s name for a park envisioned for 300 acres near the Mobile Aeroplex at Brookley that Mobile purchased in 2020 for $33 million in state and federal funds. About a third of that land fronts water, providing access to Mobile Bay. The city released a master plan in 2023, and design work has been completed for initial roadwork, sidewalks and bike lanes. An amphitheater and an educational building are about 30 percent designed.

That was always envisioned to be a long-term project, though, and city officials said there is not enough money to move forward now.

“I don’t think that we recognized how expensive it would be to really build it out to where it was a Class One, a class A-type park,” Stimpson said.

The other two projects have been hit by sticker shock. Very early preliminary estimates put a combined police and fire training facility in the $13 million dollar range. But after partially designing it, the estimated cost is $30 million. The city cleared some land on Montlimar Drive for an animal shelter. But Stimpson says after partially designing it, cost estimates ballooned from $8 to more than $20 million.

White-Spunner Construction is evaluating the animal shelter, along with two other city projects, to help identify possible cost savings. The company has provided a preliminary report with a range of options. But city officials said the feedback provided so far indicates that the possible savings are not substantial enough.

“If you go back to COVID, it seems like that everything that started being priced after about that time, there was just a huge escalation in cost,” he said. “I think some of it had to do with just the delivery of the products, you know, supply chains being broken.”

Stimpson said the police and fire training facilities are old but remain adequate. He said there is less urgency for a combined training facility. He said the city recognizes, however, that the need is more critical for a new animal shelter that is better located.

Instead of constructing a brand-new facility, Stimpson said the city is negotiating for the purchase of an office building that could be turned into a new animal shelter. He said that could come up for a vote in the City Council in the next few weeks and that plans could be finalized before he leaves office later this year.

“We’ve found a possible pathway to make something happen sooner, cheaper than – or less expensive – ‘cause it won’t be cheap – than what start down zero and build it completely greenfield,” he said. “So we’ll see how that unfolds.”