In the autumn of 2005, with a new mayor settling into City Hall and the Gulf Coast still sweeping up after Hurricane Katrina, the newspaper put three deceptively simple questions to a few dozen Mobile-area residents: What do you like most about Mobile? What do you like least? And what is the one thing you feel most strongly about that you suspect matters less to everyone else?
The answers, gathered from attorneys, business owners, public officials and ordinary neighbors, painted a candid portrait of a city its residents plainly loved and just as plainly wished were a little different.
What they loved
Water ran through nearly every answer. Again and again, residents named the bay, the nearby Gulf beaches and the everyday luxury of living in a coastal city. One writer described the wow factor of crossing the Bayway on a clear day; others pointed to fishing, hunting and birding within easy reach. A few singled out the region’s restaurants and festivals, while others simply cited the everyday comfort of a place where they still recognized their neighbors. Just as common was affection for Mobile’s Southern character, its historic homes and shaded streets, its Mardi Gras traditions and the unhurried pace that many said they would not trade for a faster, bigger city. School board member Bradley Byrne singled out the months from mid-September through June, when the coastal climate is at its kindest.
What wore on them
The complaints clustered, too. The summer heat and humidity drew groans from nearly everyone, often delivered with good humor. A deeper frustration was what several respondents called a stubborn negativity in local life, the reflexive habit of finding fault, which more than one blamed on the tone of the newspaper call-in columns. Others pointed to high city taxes, an airport they felt was losing travelers to Pensacola, and a public school system many judged to be underperforming. Crime and a sense that city leadership had lost its way surfaced in several of the bluntest replies.
The things they could not let go
Asked to name a private conviction, residents grew specific. Byrne argued for far earlier foreign-language instruction so that a port region tied to international commerce could raise a multilingual workforce. Businessman William Yeager pressed his long-held view that the planned Interstate 10 bridge belonged upriver at the Cochrane-Africatown crossing rather than south of the tunnel. Terry Lathan wondered aloud why Mobilians did not storm City Hall to demand lower taxes. Others worried about sprawl, the loss of green space and a small-town mindset they feared would keep the city from competing.
A city on the move, with reservations
For all the grievances, a thread of optimism held the responses together. Several credited recent leadership with putting Mobile on a path of steadier growth, courting cleaner industry and paying new attention to the arts, the port and downtown. One longtime real estate executive urged the city simply to stay the course and reward excellence. Even the sharpest critics tended to circle back to the same conclusion: Mobile was a good place to live and, most believed, getting better. This account is the first in a series drawn from those conversations.