MOBILE, Alabama — Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson has outlined a tentative timeline that could lead to the closure of the aging Mobile Civic Center complex by April 2016, part of a broader push to find a public-private partnership to redevelop the downtown site.
In a statement, Stimpson said keeping the civic center running currently costs the city roughly $2 million a year, while bringing the facility and its connected theater and expo hall into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act would cost about $20 million — and double that to bring the aging complex up to modern standards.
“Organizations can maintain their use of the Civic Center complex until April 24, 2016,” Stimpson said. A spokesman for the mayor’s office said the target closure date followed a review of the venue’s 2016 event bookings.
Stimpson’s office released a rough sequence for the transition: soliciting expressions of interest from developers in spring 2015, hosting community conversations over the summer, issuing a formal request for proposals later in the year, and awarding a redevelopment contract by winter or spring of 2016 ahead of the facility’s closure.
The mayor acknowledged the civic center complex remains home to organizations woven into Mobile’s cultural life, including several Mardi Gras societies, the Mobile Opera, the Mobile Ballet, Distinguished Young Women and the Mobile International Festival. He said the city intends to work with those groups to ease the transition even as it pursues redevelopment of the site.
City officials have not detailed what might replace the civic center, saying only that a strong public-private partnership would be needed to limit the financial burden on Mobile taxpayers while unlocking new possibilities for the downtown property.
The civic center has served as a multipurpose venue for Mobile for decades, hosting everything from concerts and conventions to graduation ceremonies, and its potential closure has stirred discussion among residents about what should take its place in the heart of downtown.