Who Is the King of Mobile Bay? A Reader Debate Over the City’s Real Power Brokers
Plenty of names have been floated over the years for the title of “King of Mobile” — shorthand for whoever can make things happen in this city, or stop them,…
Boom, Boom, Boom: Mobile Counted Its Winnings in the Summer of 2008
Steel at Calvert, tankers at Brookley, a new container terminal and a downtown tower: in mid-2008, Mobile leaders argued the long-promised boom had finally arrived, while cautioning it was not…
Forward Mobile: The Quiet Circle of 40 That Worked Behind the Scenes
A retired executive told the Rotary Club of Mobile in June 2008 that Forward Mobile, an unpublicized circle of about 40 civic and business leaders, had quietly shaped decades of…
Baldwin County’s Sages Named the One Problem They Would Fix First: The Traffic
Asked to name the single problem in Baldwin County that could be corrected with relative ease, business people and civic figures answered with near unanimity: the roads, the bridges and…
Behind Mobile’s Excitement Over the New Airplane Plant, a Familiar History of Waiting for Saviors
As Mobile celebrates a major new aerospace plant, some longtime observers are urging caution, pointing to a long history of the city pinning its hopes on outside projects — from…
Political Notebook: A Redneck Woman for BayFest and a New Fire Chief for Bayou La Batre
Country star Gretchen Wilson was headed to BayFest, a longtime Mobile firefighter was poised to lead Bayou La Batre's department, and a former sheriff was at work on a book.
Cotton, Shipyards and Brookley: One Mobilian’s Blunt Accounting of the City’s Fortunes
Mark Berson placed Mobile's golden age between 1830 and 1860, traced its long decline through the loss of Brookley Field, and argued in 2005 that the city was poised to…
Lions Club Prepares to Roast the Outgoing Mayor of Mobile
The Mobile Lions Club scheduled a March 31, 2005 roast of retiring Mayor Mike Dow, with allies and old critics alike lined up to take their turn at the microphone.
Is Mobile’s Golden Age Right Now? A Realtor Makes the Case for the Present Tense
Oyster stands on Government Street, the Lyric Theatre, wartime shipyards running around the clock -- all had a claim. But in the third entry of a series on Mobile's golden…
Riley and Bronner Pressed Dow to Run Again, but Mobile’s Mayor Appeared Unmoved
Gov. Bob Riley and retirement systems chief David Bronner urged Mobile Mayor Mike Dow to seek re-election at a meeting shortly before Christmas 2004, but his backers conceded he was…