Prichard’s mayor can see past the asbestos, the lead paint and the old cars dumped in the lot — all the way to a soccer tournament. Mayor Carletta Davis says a state environmental review and a brownfield designation could unlock the money needed to turn the long-shuttered Prichard Municipal Stadium into a working venue again, and she is betting the city’s future on youth sports tourism.
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In a video posted to her mayoral Facebook profile, Davis said the Alabama Department of Environmental Management is reviewing the city-owned stadium, and that a brownfield designation — a term usually reserved for old factories and other abandoned properties believed to contain harmful chemicals — could make the city eligible for state and federal funding to clean up and restore the facility.
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Why a football stadium qualifies as a brownfield
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The answer, Davis said after Thursday night’s City Council meeting, is what decades of neglect left behind. \”There have been tires stored there. There were old cars stored there. They had paint stored there and herbicides stored there,\” Davis said. \”The building itself is very old. It was built prior to the lead paint law. We are sure there is lead paint and asbestos and all of those things there.\”
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Brownfield programs exist precisely for properties like this: land whose environmental problems scare off normal redevelopment, but whose cleanup can be financed through targeted state and federal programs once the contamination is documented. Once ADEM’s review is complete, Davis said, the city could pursue funding to remediate the issues and repair the facility.
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What the mayor wants to build
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The vision goes beyond reviving the annual football game that gave the stadium its identity. \”We don’t have any athletic meeting spaces here in the city of Prichard right now, other than at our parks for our youth sports,\” Davis said. \”We would like to have a soccer stadium, and we feel like we could host a championship soccer tournament there. We could turn it back into a track and field area. We are looking at all the different possibilities, but youth sports tourism is a huge industry.\”
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Resident comments under her video backed the idea, and the emotional pull is specific: bringing the \”Battle of Prichard\” — the annual Vigor-Blount football rivalry game — back to the city whose name it carries. The game has been played at Ladd-Peebles Stadium in Mobile for the past three years.
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How the stadium was lost
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The city-owned football field, track and bleachers — visible to every driver passing on Interstate 65 — have been unused since at least 2020, when Vigor High School announced its football team would no longer play home games at the facility because of its \”extremely embarrassing\” condition. A stadium that once anchored Friday nights in Prichard became, in the span of a few seasons, a landmark the school system wanted its teams seen playing in only from a distance.
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The path back runs through paperwork before it runs through concrete: ADEM’s review, a formal brownfield determination, grant applications, and then construction bids. Davis has pitched the project as an economic development play as much as a recreation one. Communities across the country have found that youth sports complexes draw traveling families who eat in local restaurants, stay in local hotels and fill weekend schedules that empty industrial corridors cannot otherwise attract.
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For now, Prichard residents watching from the interstate can see the bleachers where the Battle of Prichard used to roar. Whether they see cranes there next depends on a state environmental review and the city’s ability to win the funding that follows it.
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