MOBILE, Ala. — The City of Mobile is considering expanding its downtown entertainment district boundaries to include the new Regions Arena.
A proposed ordinance sponsored by Mayor Spiro Cheriogotis and Councilmember Samantha Ingram would expand Entertainment District 1 to cover the arena.
What an Entertainment District Does
Entertainment districts allow people to carry alcoholic drinks in designated open containers within their boundaries, subject to city rules.
The concept originated in Alabama with legislation permitting municipalities to designate limited areas where the ordinary prohibition on open containers does not apply. The usual requirement is that drinks be purchased from a licensed establishment inside the district and carried in a designated cup that identifies them as compliant.
The practical effect is to let a downtown function as a single connected venue rather than a collection of separate rooms. A patron can leave one establishment and walk to another without finishing or abandoning a drink, which changes how people move through a district over the course of an evening.
What the Ordinance Would and Would Not Change
The proposal leaves Entertainment District 2 unchanged.
It also keeps Bienville Square, Cathedral Square and Mardi Gras Park excluded.
Those three exclusions are deliberate and worth noting. All are public parks and civic gathering spaces in downtown Mobile, used for festivals, markets, concerts and everyday public life. Excluding them preserves them as spaces where open containers are not permitted regardless of what happens on the surrounding streets — a distinction that matters to families and to the events those parks host.
City leaders say the expanded districts meet state requirements for the number of qualifying alcohol licensees and the maximum district size. Alabama’s enabling law sets both a minimum density of licensed establishments and a ceiling on physical area, which prevents a municipality from designating a district so large that the open-container allowance effectively applies citywide.
Why the Arena Changes the Calculation
Regions Arena is being built on the site of the former Mobile Civic Center and represents the largest single addition to downtown Mobile’s event capacity in decades.
A venue of that scale brings thousands of people downtown for a single event, concentrated in the hours before and after. Whether those people spend money at surrounding restaurants and bars — or arrive shortly before the doors open and leave immediately afterward — is the difference between an arena that lifts a downtown and one that merely occupies space in it.
Including the arena in the entertainment district removes a small friction from the first pattern. It makes the walk between a pre-event dinner and the venue continuous rather than segmented.
The Arena’s Timeline
The arena has faced construction delays. City leaders had hoped it would open in time for Mobile’s 2027 Mardi Gras festivities, but Mayor Cheriogotis announced on Sept. 11 that the timetable had slipped, describing the original plan as “extremely ambitious” and citing rainy weather earlier in the year.
An exact opening date has not been announced.
Adopting the district expansion in advance of opening is sensible sequencing. Ordinances require adoption and publication, signage has to be installed, and licensed establishments need to understand the boundaries before the first large event rather than after it.
The Mardi Gras Connection
The former Mobile Civic Center, which occupied the arena site, hosted numerous Mardi Gras balls. Mobile’s Mardi Gras tradition — the oldest organized Carnival celebration in the United States — depends on venue capacity during a compressed season, and the Civic Center’s loss removed a substantial share of it.
That is part of why the 2027 Mardi Gras target mattered, and part of why the slipped timetable registered locally as more than a construction delay.
What Happens Next
The ordinance would take effect after City Council adoption and publication as required by law.
Ordinances of this kind follow a standard municipal path: introduction, consideration by the council, a vote, and then publication before the provisions become enforceable. That publication requirement exists so that the public and affected businesses have notice of a change in what the law permits.