The Semmes Community Playground was scheduled to open with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 11 a.m. on Saturday, Feb. 3, 2007, Mobile County Commissioner Stephen Nodine announced, giving the fast-growing community in northwest Mobile County its first park of the kind.
The playground was located at 10141 Moffett Road, directly behind the Semmes Community Center. The public was invited to attend.
The first of its kind in the western corridor
For years, Nodine said, the citizens of Semmes and the surrounding areas had been obliged to use other parks, in other communities, for recreational activities. There was no dedicated community park serving the western corridor of Mobile County.
“Now the citizens of Semmes and northwest Mobile County will have access to their own community park,” Nodine said. “This is a major investment in county resources that ensures a safe and healthy environment for families and especially children.”
Nodine said the funding and revitalization of parks and recreational facilities had been a priority for him since taking office.
What was built
The park covered roughly 10,400 square feet and was constructed at a cost of about $600,000. It included considerably more than swings and slides. The project also delivered:
- Picnic pavilions
- A walking trail
- Restroom facilities
Those additions matter more than they might appear. A playground with no shade, no restrooms and nowhere for adults to sit is used briefly and abandoned. A park with pavilions and a walking trail becomes a place where families spend an afternoon, where a church holds a picnic, where neighbors meet.
Part of a larger investment
The playground was one piece of a broader package of recreational spending in the Semmes area, which the county totaled at roughly $1.7 million in community improvements. The other components were:
- A $300,000 upgrade to the soccer field at Mary G. Montgomery High School
- $800,000 worth of sidewalks in the area
Nodine described the playground and the other park renovations as “quality of life issues,” a phrase that in county government usually signals spending that cannot be justified by economic return alone but is defended on the grounds that people want to live in places worth living in.
A celebration with a marching band
The dedication was arranged as a genuine community event rather than a ceremonial photograph. The Mary G. Montgomery High School marching band and cheerleaders were to be on hand to help with the celebration, and a color guard was to take part in the festivities. The cheerleaders were preparing to compete at a national competition two weeks later.
Semmes in 2007
It is worth remembering what Semmes was at the time. It was not yet a city. Incorporation would not come until later, and in 2007 the community along Moffett Road was an unincorporated area of Mobile County, dependent on the county commission for the services a municipality would ordinarily provide.
That dependence explains a good deal about why the playground mattered and why a county commissioner was the one cutting the ribbon. Residents of Semmes paid county taxes and lived, in effect, at the county’s discretion for parks, roads and recreation. A community park built with county money, on county initiative, was both an amenity and an argument, a demonstration that the western corridor was no longer content to drive into Mobile whenever the children needed a swing set.
Northwest Mobile County was growing steadily in that period, absorbing families drawn by land, schools and a rural quiet within reach of the city. The infrastructure of community life, sidewalks, ball fields, a place to walk, took longer to arrive than the subdivisions did. In February 2007, some of it finally did.