With more than 3,000 educators in town for a week-long professional development conference, the City of Mobile rearranged parking plans this week to work around Tropical Storm Bertha’s approach. The MEGA Conference, held at the Mobile Convention Center, drew the large crowd of teachers and school staff even as the tropical storm warning covering Mobile threatened flooding and gusty winds through midnight Wednesday.
City officials closed the Convention Center’s parking garage as of 6:30 p.m. Tuesday as a precaution. Conference attendees were redirected instead to the Cruise Terminal Parking Garage at 201 South Water Street, where parking was offered free of charge for the duration of the closure. A complimentary shuttle ran between the Cruise Terminal garage and the Convention Center from 6:45 a.m. to 5 p.m. to keep attendees moving between the two sites without needing to walk through deteriorating weather.
If the Cruise Terminal garage filled to capacity, attendees were told to use the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Parking Deck at 109 St. Joseph Street, next to Regions Arena, as a backup option. Parking there ran $5 for up to 12 hours, with the same complimentary shuttle service extended to cover that location as well.
At the time the parking changes were announced, the National Hurricane Center placed Bertha’s center about 105 miles south-southeast of Mobile, tracking west at 6 mph. The National Weather Service forecast 1 to 3 inches of rain for the area, concentrated mainly along Alabama’s coast, as the tropical storm warning remained in effect for Mobile through midnight Wednesday.
The parking adjustments allowed the conference to continue largely uninterrupted even as the storm pushed through the region, giving thousands of visiting educators a way to reach the Convention Center without navigating flooded or wind-affected areas near the downtown waterfront.