Spanish Fort has settled a five-year-old lawsuit tied to a crumbling bluff overlooking Mobile Bay by agreeing to buy out two homes that were left teetering on the edge after years of erosion, a deal city leaders say will ultimately cost more than $2.5 million.
The dispute began in 2009 when homeowners on Patrician Drive sued the city, blaming a failed drainage system for washing away more than 30 feet of the bluff beneath their properties over the following years. A Baldwin County jury sided with the homeowners, finding that the city had failed to properly maintain the drainage system feeding a concrete ditch between the two lots, and awarded more than $1.3 million in damages, an amount later reduced to $500,000 because of a state cap on municipal liability.
After the verdict, a circuit judge ordered the city to begin emergency repairs immediately despite Spanish Fort’s pending appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court. Before crews could get to work, a record rainstorm at the end of April pushed the situation to a crisis point, eroding the bluff to within just a few feet of one of the homes. The city scrambled to approve emergency contracts for engineering and construction work, with cost estimates climbing toward $2.5 million as the extent of the damage became clear.
Rather than continue trying to shore up the bluff around occupied homes, the mayor said the city ultimately decided it would be more practical, and cheaper in the long run, to purchase the two properties outright and demolish the houses. As part of the settlement, the homeowners agreed to give up the reduced $500,000 judgment in exchange for the sale, and the city dropped its Supreme Court appeal.
Stabilization work on the bluff was set to begin this week, with the project expected to take about two months. Once the site is secured, crews plan to build a retaining wall near the top of the roughly 100-foot bluff, which sits above the highway connecting the Eastern Shore to the Mobile Bay Causeway. The two lots will eventually be turned into green space maintained by the city.
The mayor said the settlement is a significant expense for a city with an annual operating budget of about $6.3 million, but noted that conservative budgeting by past councils and mayors left Spanish Fort with enough cash reserves to cover the cost without borrowing.