Clearing Mobile’s blighted houses is about to get a lot more expensive, city officials told the City Council this week, as new federal environmental rules push demolition costs for some properties from a few thousand dollars into five figures.
During its Tuesday meeting, the council approved four contracts to tear down condemned houses found to contain lead-based paint, at 854 Marine St., 7238 Ninth St., 962 Sunset Ave. and 716 Shannon St. The work is split between two contractors, NuVision Service and Caribbean Design LLC, with individual contracts ranging from $8,800 to $9,900.
City spokesman George Talbot told the council that complying with Environmental Protection Agency requirements for asbestos and lead-based paint mitigation can roughly triple the cost of tearing down a typical two-story structure, from about $3,500 to close to $10,000, once testing, inspection and special landfill disposal are factored in. Talbot said the city is looking at ways to hold down those costs where possible, though he could not say how many of Mobile’s blighted properties will ultimately be affected, since the full scope of the problem is still being determined.
That determination is being made by a team hired through a Bloomberg Innovation grant the city received in late 2014. The group, known as the I-Team, has already identified 1,256 abandoned and blighted structures citywide, according to project manager Jeff Carter. He cautioned that not all of those properties will necessarily require demolition, since the team has not yet completed a survey to determine which structures can be salvaged versus which need to come down.
“We believe the number of demolitions is much lower” than the full count of blighted properties, Carter said, adding that the higher costs tied to lead and asbestos mitigation will not change how many homes the I-Team ultimately surveys.
Carter said many of the affected homes share a common profile: they were built during a boom in home construction in Mobile in the 1940s and 1950s, before lead-based paint was banned in the late 1970s.
Despite the added expense, Talbot said Mayor Sandy Stimpson’s administration remains committed to the effort. “We’re going to clear them as fast as we can,” he said. “There are only so many dollars we can spend, but it doesn’t change our commitment.” Demolition on the four newly approved properties could begin within two days of contract approval, with each job expected to take about a week to complete.
Beyond the blighted structures themselves, the Bloomberg I-Team has also cataloged more than 6,000 vacant lots across Mobile through citywide surveys. To help the I-Team and the city’s legal department navigate the legal and administrative issues tied to those properties, the council last week approved a professional services agreement, capped at $32,000, with the Center for Community Progress, a national nonprofit that advises cities on blight and land-bank policy.
I-Team Executive Director Joan Dunlap said the agreement will allow the Center for Community Progress to review Mobile’s local ordinances governing abandoned property. “The mayor’s office and the City Council, through their passage of the resolution this week, give their full support to addressing inconsistencies and gaps in our local ordinances, many of which are out of date and have been amended over the years in ways that haven’t resulted in clear, enforceable laws on the books,” Dunlap wrote in a statement. She said the center will base its recommendations on practices used successfully in other cities, with both the council and the state legislature getting a chance to weigh in once the recommendations are complete. Dunlap said she expects those recommendations sometime this spring.
The center’s on-site consultant for the project will be Frank Alexander, a law professor at Emory University and a co-founder of the Center for Community Progress. Dunlap said Alexander has ties to the Gulf Coast region and is looking forward to working with Mobile on a consulting basis.
The land bank discussion was not the only contentious item on Tuesday’s agenda. Mayor Stimpson also told the council that the administration had installed a temporary barricade on a cut-through street in the Rosswood neighborhood, an effort to curb a recent string of burglaries. Stimpson’s chief of staff, Colby Cooper, said the neighborhood had experienced eight to ten burglaries over roughly the previous two weeks, and that residents hope to eventually replace the temporary barricade with a permanent gate once they raise the necessary funds.
The move drew swift pushback from several council members. Councilman Fred Richardson said he opposes closing off any public street and would vote against the measure when it comes before the council. “It’s not a crime fighting strategy,” he said. “Putting up a piece of iron does not catch any criminal.” Instead, he argued, it simply inconveniences residents.
Councilman C.J. Small and Councilman Levon Manzie voiced similar concerns. Manzie warned that approving the barricade would set a precedent that could lead every neighborhood in the city to request similar restrictions. “There’s crime activity in every neighborhood and every community would want a gate,” he said. “We’d go from the Azalea City and the Port City to gate city.” Small said he understood from a resident’s television interview that most of the break-ins stemmed from people on foot, meaning a vehicle barricade would do little to stop them.
Councilwoman Bess Rich took the opposite view, saying she supports any measure that might help keep Mobile residents and neighborhoods safer. “I welcome the chance to see this happen throughout Mobile,” she said. “I want to thank the administration for opening and embracing this project.” Councilman Joel Daves, who represents the Rosswood area, said it was important to let neighborhoods have a say in their own safety measures, noting that the street in question is often used by drivers looking to avoid the intersection at Cottage Hill Road. “I support the mayor’s and chief’s work to allow the neighborhood to control its own destiny,” Daves said.
A separate dispute simmered over industrial activity on the Mobile River. Councilwoman Rich pushed to revisit the amount of coal that Cooper, Marine and Timberlands, known as CMT, is permitted to store at its dry cargo facility, after Jemison Street resident Herb Wagner questioned whether the facility’s storage capacity had ever been clearly defined when the council previously denied an appeal of a Planning Commission decision allowing the storage. City Planner Richard Olsen told the council that while he had earlier interpreted the commission’s intent as capping capacity at less than 1 million tons, more recent discussion among commission members suggested capacity could instead be tied to CMT’s historic footprint rather than a specific tonnage figure. At issue is whether CMT may store between 460,000 and 500,000 tons of coal at the site, or as much as 1.3 million tons. Wagner also raised concerns that the capacity question had never gone before the commission for a formal vote or public input. Because Rich was on the losing side of the council’s earlier vote on the matter, procedural rules prevent her from placing the item back on the agenda herself; she asked colleagues who voted with the majority to bring it back for reconsideration. An attorney representing CMT, Stephen Harvey, did not return calls seeking comment.
In other business Tuesday, the council approved an $89,700 contract with Aeiker Construction for drainage improvements at Hank Aaron Stadium. Rich said she voted against the measure in part because the Mobile BayBears remain behind on rent at the city-owned stadium, having paid only one quarter’s worth of rent over the past two years. Cooper said during a pre-conference meeting that the team’s next rent payment is due by the end of March. Rich also asked administration officials to clarify whether the Southern League baseball team is responsible for covering electricity costs at the stadium.
The council also approved a $68,858 contract with Farnell Heating and Air Conditioning to replace the air conditioning system at the Fort Conde welcome center downtown. Rich asked for more detail on a separate plan to relocate the welcome center and place the historic fort under management of the History Museum of Mobile. Cooper said the administration was not yet prepared to release specifics but confirmed the move is planned. Rich noted that more than $500,000 has been spent on the welcome center in recent years and said she remains unsure what future use the building would serve.
A vote on a $19,000 emergency contract with Ben M. Radcliff for shoring work at a downtown parking deck was held over. The repair follows an accident in which a Port City Rental truck, driving up a ramp to the deck’s second level, struck a support structure. Brad Christensen, the city’s director of real estate asset management, compared the temporary shoring to scaffolding that will remain in place until permanent repairs are finished. He said work on the structure began this week and is expected to be completed by Feb. 5.