City Announces Waterfront Plans

Jun 1st, 2002

Parking garage with shops and possible cruise ship terminal would serve 8-acre Mobile Landing park on riverfront

By MARK HOLAN
Staff Reporter

As development of Mobile's long-neglected waterfront bursts to life, Mayor Mike Dow said Friday the city will seek proposals to build a multistory parking garage that could serve as a cruise ship terminal.

It's unclear whether the city or a private developer will pay for all or part of the structure on the waterfront site now being developed south of the Arthur R. Outlaw Mobile Convention Center.

"It may be advantageous for us to be the owner of that parking lot," Dow said Friday. "Whatever gets us the biggest bang for the buck."

The proposed garage would contain ground-level shops and restaurants, Dow said, regardless of whether an upper floor is ever used for a cruise ship terminal.

A March trial run by Carnival for cruises out of Mobile generally was considered a success. Officials are trying to secure more trips from the city's downtown waterfront.

The parking garage also would serve visitors to the 8-acre waterfront park now called Mobile Landing, Dow said.

The waterfront project, which includes a deep-draft bulkhead on the Mobile River and amphitheater, is being financed with $15.5 million in federal funds.

Mobilians and other visitors will have their first chance to visit the site during the July 3-4 tricentennial celebration along the waterfront.

About $9.4 million of the money has been obligated for the project, which should be completed by the end of the year.

The remaining federal funds are earmarked to build a combination visitor center, ferry boat terminal and maritime museum.

Architectural plans for the building should be completed within eight months, Henry R. Seawell, president of Thompson Engineering, said during a media roll-out of the waterfront vision on Friday.

Construction will begin immediately afterward, he said.

Federal transportation officials are anxious to promote ferry boat transportation between bay communities such as Mobile and Baldwin counties, Seawell said.

Mobile Bay most likely would be served by high-speed ferry boats built at Austal USA on the east bank of the Mobile River, Seawell said.

Officials said displays inside the maritime museum will be privately funded.

A major support piling for the proposed Interstate 10 bridge over the Mobile River would rise from open greenspace along the waterfront, between the museum and the parking garage.

Dow and Seawell each said the plans they unveiled Friday are helping to accelerate private development interest in the waterfront, but they were not naming names.

Meanwhile, a report on whether Mobile needs a new Municipal Port Authority to administer waterfront activity such as cruise ships and ferry boat operations is due for release next week, officials said.

A group of about 20 city officials and community leaders have been planning the waterfront development for about six years.

"A lot of what we wanted Mobile to be is unrolling in front of us," Dow said.