Mobile Bay Area: Random Thoughts (Birmingham, Huntsville: credit, tax credit, to live in)

[natedoggbry]

What are y’all’s thoughts on roundabouts? I live in Spring Hill and often drive through Crichton and it’s just infuriating how the area where Sage comes out with no light right there and people try to always turn left on Spring Hill. Then if you’re wanting to keep going west on Spring Hill everyone has to merge into 1 lane while moffett(less used than Spring Hill in my opinion) gets no light and 2 lanes. Is that area a possibility for a roundabout? Not sure how it would do with 4 lane road merging with a 4 lane road

[Surge0001]

So the Planning Commission will take up the Bungalow Court and 42 lot extensions of Longleaf Gates subdivision on Whitebark Drive. It's something but need way more to make up for the loss of our housing market


In the upcoming city council meeting the city is taking up on selling 214 acres along the Shelton Beach Road Extension which has got me curious as to why

[Southsky]

Speaking of the council meeting, a contract with Moffatt and Nichol "to perform design and development services for the Mobile Riverfront Redevelopment Project" is on the agenda. Anyone have any ideas on this?

[Surge0001]

So I couldn't but notice that Mobile is doing the exact opposite of what Birmingham and Huntsville right now. It seems all that's happening in those two cities are multiple apartment complexes being constructed with limited projects going on while Mobile is the exact opposite, multiple projects happening/announced in the past few months with very limited attempts at alleviating our housing shortages (although it does seems to ramping up, looking at google earth pro, there's definitely more houses being constructed than a year ago, but I don't believe there's a major apartment complex being built right now, I assume the Saraland apartment complex begins construction later this year)


Also I'm curious how corporation's will treat Mobile once we integrate Baldwin County into the metro. The metro grows from 430k to 655k. (a 50% increase) Not only that but metro would be considered a rapidly growing metro because Baldwin County is gaining 5-6k every year.


Oh yea Love's opened a few days ago next to the Walmart Distribution Center, apparently they support about 90 jobs which is WAYYY more than I was expecting

[Otakumaster]

Originally Posted by Surge0001

So I couldn't but notice that Mobile is doing the exact opposite of what Birmingham and Huntsville right now. It seems all that's happening in those two cities are multiple apartment complexes being constructed with limited projects going on while Mobile is the exact opposite, multiple projects happening/announced in the past few months with very limited attempts at alleviating our housing shortages (although it does seems to ramping up, looking at google earth pro, there's definitely more houses being constructed than a year ago, but I don't believe there's a major apartment complex being built right now, I assume the Saraland apartment complex begins construction later this year)


Also I'm curious how corporation's will treat Mobile once we integrate Baldwin County into the metro. The metro grows from 430k to 655k. (a 50% increase) Not only that but metro would be considered a rapidly growing metro because Baldwin County is gaining 5-6k every year.


Oh yea Love's opened a few days ago next to the Walmart Distribution Center, apparently they support about 90 jobs which is WAYYY more than I was expecting

The population on Mobile's side of the bay has not really grown much. So I get that and there I wasn't aware of any actually housing shortage on that side either.

[MardiGras251]

Originally Posted by Surge0001

So I couldn't but notice that Mobile is doing the exact opposite of what Birmingham and Huntsville right now. It seems all that's happening in those two cities are multiple apartment complexes being constructed with limited projects going on while Mobile is the exact opposite, multiple projects happening/announced in the past few months with very limited attempts at alleviating our housing shortages (although it does seems to ramping up, looking at google earth pro, there's definitely more houses being constructed than a year ago, but I don't believe there's a major apartment complex being built right now, I assume the Saraland apartment complex begins construction later this year)


Also I'm curious how corporation's will treat Mobile once we integrate Baldwin County into the metro. The metro grows from 430k to 655k. (a 50% increase) Not only that but metro would be considered a rapidly growing metro because Baldwin County is gaining 5-6k every year.


Oh yea Love's opened a few days ago next to the Walmart Distribution Center, apparently they support about 90 jobs which is WAYYY more than I was expecting

I think that’s definitely going to enable more development from corporations at that point. Might even grab Jackson county ms along the way.

[evlb401]

What is interesting is that Baldwin could possibly be considered a core county along with Mobile. Much like Shelby is considered a core county with Jefferson. It is why B-ham metro is so large.

Any county with 25% of workforce commuting to Mobile and Baldwin combined would bring those counties into the metro. So you would have a metro of Mobile, Baldwin, Washington, and Escambia County, AL. Mobile-Daphne Metropolitan area would be pushing 700,000.

[Surge0001]

Originally Posted by evlb401

What is interesting is that Baldwin could possibly be considered a core county along with Mobile. Much like Shelby is considered a core county with Jefferson. It is why B-ham metro is so large.

Any county with 25% of workforce commuting to Mobile and Baldwin combined would bring those counties into the metro. So you would have a metro of Mobile, Baldwin, Washington, and Escambia County, AL. Mobile-Daphne Metropolitan area would be pushing 700,000.

Wow that's wild, I didn't know that, that could definitely bring Escambia county into the metro, especially if/when North Baldwin county were to grow. I'm curious as to why there's no development in north Baldwin County. Sure, you got Bay Minette and unincorporated Stockton but that's it, they are sorta growing but no where near the degree of their southern counterparts. It's not an infrastructure issue they have three exits within about 4 miles of enter Baldwin County (from Mobile County) like what you see on I-10 in the southern part of Baldwin county. Sure it's farther from Mobile proper but both I-65 and I-10 enter from Baldwin County as of right now are 4 lane highways. They both seem over capacity however, I-65 doesn't have that sharp 90 degree turn like I-10 does so the chances of stand still traffic on I-65 is significantly lower. Maybe it's the growth of North Mobile that will be the catalyst.



Honestly growth in North Mobile County seems to be a big catalyst for expanding our metro, that's how we got Washington, and we'll get George County, and possibly get Greene county if Citronelle can pull off a big boy move and rapidly expand itself. Although right now it seems unlikely to happen. Citronelle needs to become self-sufficient, right now it's still heavily reliant on Saraland and Mobile for it's basic needs. Maybe when it finally has a 4 lane highway, bigger developers might be willing to take a shot at citronelle and it can be self sufficient and become a mini urban core and spread influence into west Washington County and then Greene County


As for Jackson County, I think that'll be the longest shot, the lower I-10 corridor is exploding right now, however Jackson County is already self urbanized and has also integrated to Harrison County metro. The population center for Jackson County is in the southwest corner rather than the east with a water shed on the southeast portion of the county, making development there difficult. It's very interesting, when they made Alabama and Mississippi into states they just cut them in half instead of following topography. There's a strip of Mississippi Land that goes from I-10 up to Wilmer that is separated from the rest of Mississippi because of a water shed and is instead connected to Alabama. They should've really given that land to Mobile and divide the land by the topography

[mcalumni01]

Originally Posted by Surge0001

So I couldn't but notice that Mobile is doing the exact opposite of what Birmingham and Huntsville right now. It seems all that's happening in those two cities are multiple apartment complexes being constructed with limited projects going on while Mobile is the exact opposite, multiple projects happening/announced in the past few months with very limited attempts at alleviating our housing shortages (although it does seems to ramping up, looking at google earth pro, there's definitely more houses being constructed than a year ago, but I don't believe there's a major apartment complex being built right now, I assume the Saraland apartment complex begins construction later this year)

Explain more on why you say that (bold text)

[Surge0001]

Originally Posted by mcalumni01

Explain more on why you say that (bold text)

It's just my observation from reading the other two forums, a lot of their focuses have been on the apartment construction, particularly Huntsville, Birmingham has had some retail and Amazon info in the mix, but I'm mostly seeing Multi houses construction talks. I can think of at least 10-12 projects producing 50+ jobs beginning construction or announced in just the past 2 months in the Mobile Bay area, while only 2 multifamily projects announced, none in construction and 2 more thats been in the works in for years now. While again my observation in Huntsville Forum, several 1000 units of multifamily construction is the hot topic for Huntsville forum, I don't recall seeing any talks of a project outside of retail. It's similar to Bham's, 1000 of new multifamily in and around downtown Bham and Amazon are the hot topics for construction talks outside of Protective Stadium but that seems to be it outside of retail projects. Maybe it's a bias I have as my information is exclusively from the forums of Huntsville and Bham and AL.com . While Mobile I have multiple areas for information rather than just the forum for Mobile.


*I'm basing this information from the observations of past two months*