Will Africatown be a Safe Zone in Future Decades? De-Coding the UDC, still – Concerns about Mobile’s Zoning Code Rewrite Linger

Why Should Africatown be a Safe Zone and How Do We Get There?

Zoning has been a hot-button issue for years in Africatown with most advocates clearly wanting Africatown’s future to be a Safe Zone and not a HazMat Zone. Sadly, the way the City of Mobile has failed to capture the spirit of residential concerns in its proposed Unified Development Code (UDC) is disappointing to many.

The World Monuments Fund recently included the Africatown community on its 2022 World Monuments Watch, a selection of “25 of the world’s most significant heritage sites in need of immediate attention.”

With its contributions to World Heritage just now becoming widely recognized and its vulnerable, low-income, and predominantly African-American population, its current development patterns warrant much scrutiny.

Africatown deserves surety that it will change from a HazMat Zone to become a Safe Zone in future decades.

MEJAC along with Africatown residents and stakeholders were yet again present to provide Public Comment about the UDC Version 6 (the February 2022 version) to the Mobile Planning Commission earlier this month on March, 10, 2022.

The Public Comment opportunities during City Council and Planning Commission deliberations of the UDC adoption process have proven the best opportunities to share zoning concerns from Africatown residents, stakeholders, and advocates who have been tragically left out of the loop with the City of Mobile concerning the development of their community, despite their having provided tens of thousands of words of Public Commentary previously in the process. Continue reading

1490 Telegraph Road Rezoning UPDATE and Future Meeting Info

There have been many updates to the 1490 Telegraph Road Rezoning Application in the City of Mobile’s Africatown Planning Area that MEJAC wrote about in October.

October 19, 2021 – The Mobile City Council Rezoning Application Public Hearing. The Application was held over to allow for the swearing-in for the District 2 Councilor-elect William Carroll who had been elected to replace former Councilor Levon Manzie, who tragically passed away unexpectedly on September 19, 2021.

November 12, 2021 – Councilor Carroll hosted a Neighborhood Meeting Meeting at the Robert Hope Community Center in the hear of Plateau Africatown. Applicant Marty Norden of Norden Realty offered to place dozens of volunteer use restrictions on both his Rezoning Application and the deed for the property. Continue reading

1490 Telegraph Road Rezoning, R-1 to I-2, Information

As MEJAC has documented elsewhere, the Rezoning Application for 1490 Telegraph Road is coming at a time when there is heightened interest in zoning activity in the Africatown community.

On Tuesday, October 19 at 10:30am, the Mobile City Council will conduct a Public Hearing for the proposed re-zoning of 1490 Telegraph Road in the Africatown Planning Area from Residential-1 to Industrial-2, from the City’s most restrictive to the City’s most permissive zoning designation.

MEJAC and partner agencies are requesting that the Mobile City Council deny the rezoning for the following reasons: Continue reading

Africatown Zoning Activity is Heating Up – Important Upcoming Dates

Environmental Justice Champions! Three urgent zoning considerations have many Africatown advocates concerned! Read on for detailed information about how YOU can make a difference!


Tuesday, October 19 at 10:30am: The Mobile City Council will conduct a Public Hearing for the proposed zoning code rewrite known as the Unified Development Code (UDC).

For background info about MEJAC’s remaining concerns with the UDC, click here (https://www.mejacoalition.org/2021/05/17/decodingtheudccont/).

To submit Verbal Public Comment:
Go to Mobile City Council Chambers, Government Plaza, 205 Government Street
Mobile, Alabama 36601 on Tuesday, October 19, 2021 by 10:30am, and sign up to speak RE: Ordinance 64-26 Unified Development Code (UDC). You will be given 3 minutes to speak.

To submit Written Public Comment via Email:
Write your Public Comment to all Mobile City Councilors and send, by 4pm on Monday, October 18 to:
City Clerk Lisa Lambert (cityclerk@cityofmobile.org)


Tuesday, October 19 at 10:30am: The Mobile City Council will conduct a Public Hearing for the proposed re-zoning of 1490 Telegraph Road in the Africatown Planning Area from Residential-1 to Industrial-2, from the City’s most restrictive to the City’s most permissive zoning designation.

For background info about MEJAC’s concerns with the 1490 Telegraph Road Rezoning Application ZON-001743-2021, click here (https://www.mejacoalition.org/2021/10/15/northtelegraphrezoning/).

To submit Verbal Public Comment:
Go to Mobile City Council Chambers, Government Plaza, 205 Government Street
Mobile, Alabama 36601 on Tuesday, October 19, 2021 by 10:30am, and sign up to speak RE: Rezoning Application ZON-001743-2021. You will be given 3 minutes to speak.

To submit Written Public Comment via Email:
Write your Public Comment, addressed to all Mobile City Council members, and send, by 4pm on Monday, October 18 to:
District 3 Council member CJ Smalls (council3@cityofmobile.org)
– due to the untimely passing of District 2 Council member Levon Manzie


Thursday, October 21 at 2pm: The City of Mobile Planning Commission will conduct a virtual Public Hearing for the proposed re-zoning of 1250 Woodland Avenue in the Africatown Planning Area from Residential-1 to Industrial-2, from the City’s most restrictive to the City’s most permissive zoning designation.

More info about 1250 Woodland Avenure Rezoning Application ZON-001817-2021 will be posted shortly.

To submit a Verbal Public Comment:
Sign up to speak at the virtual Public Hearing RE: Rezoning Application ZON-001817-2021 by sending your request to speak via email, by 2pm on Wednesday, October 20 to:
planning@cityofmobile.org

To submit Written Public Comment via Email:
Write your Public Comment RE: Rezoning Application ZON-001817-2021 and send, by 2pm on Wednesday, October 20 to:
planning@cityofmobile.org


 

There are Many Reasons Why Africatown Advocates Oppose Tolling on I-10

Click on the flyer image to enlarge.

The Mobile Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) proposed a Draft Amendment to the Envision 2045 Long Range Transportation Plan (LRTP) which would allow for selective tolling along I-10 to fund a bridge across the Mobile River.

The Mobile MPO sets the agenda for spending all federal surface transportation dollars in urban Mobile County. Together with the Eastern Shore MPO, the combined MPO allocations account for the vast majority of federal surface transportation spending in urban South Alabama.

In response to the proposed Draft Amendment, several local, regional, and national groups have joined to produce a fact sheet about the risks to Africatown of tolling of any nature on I-10 to pay for a new bridge over the Mobile River, even a truck-only toll bridge.

So what does the plan for a truck-only I-10 toll bridge mean for the Africatown community?

• Major Truck Traffic
• Toxic Air Pollution
• Health and Safety Risks
• Limited Access to Historic Sites
• Environmental Racism

Check out the fact sheet for more details on each of these points and share widely to anyone who might be interested!

The Mobile MPO will meet in-person on June 2, 2021 at 10am at the South Alabama Regional Planning Commission Board Room at the GM&O Building to conduct a regular business meeting with the pro-tolling Draft Amendment to its LRTP included on its agenda.

Thank you, Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, CHESS – Clean Healthy Educated Safe & Sustainable, Mobile County Training School Alumni Association, Mobile Alabama NAACP, Union of Concerned Scientists, and the HBCU-CBO Gulf Coast Equity Consortium.


Also, Ramsey Sprague, MEJAC President and Chair of the Mobile AL NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Committee, submitted the following Public Comment to the Mobile MPO regarding the Draft Amendment. The comments were encouraged by Mobile MPO staff to be submitted with annotations “(x/10)” due to the 1,000 character limit given for the Mobile MPO electronic Public Comment portal:

“(1/10) My name is Ramsey Sprague. I am the President of the Mobile Environmental Justice Action Coalition and the Chair of the Environmental and Climate Justice Committee of the Mobile NAACP. I live at [Mobile, Alabama].

These comments harken to fairly recent transportation decisions that have had profoundly negative impacts in the Africatown community.

These comments are also a reminder to the Mobile MPO of the May 2, 2019 Public Comment submitted by numerous community organizations representing Africatown community groups, historic churches, as well as regional advocacy organizations when the last I-10 Toll Bridge was proposed, because community conditions described in that letter have not changed. [Those comments are available to read here (https://www.mejacoalition.org/2019/05/07/i10bridgecomment/)]

(2/10) The entities who signed that Public Comment include (Africatown~C.H.E.S.S.), Yorktown Missionary Baptist Church, Union Missionary Baptist Church, the Center for Fair Housing, the Mobile County Training High School Alumni Association, the Mobile AL NAACP, the Sierra Club’s Mobile Bay Group, and the Mobile Environmental Justice Action Coalition.

We stand united against any proposed tolling along the I-10 corridor until engaged Africatown stakeholders can review a commitment to a contractual Community Benefits Agreement that requires a portion of toll revenue be reinvested into communities directly impacted by inevitable toll aversion routes like Africatown Blvd, whether the toll applies to all vehicles or just to heavy trucks.

Cogent and sound rationales for our concerns as well as direction with respect to what we wanted to see in a potential transportation plan that we could support were provided.

We provided a list of what we wished to see that read as follows:

(3/10) • Timed traffic lights at the intersections of Africatown Blvd with both Magazine St and Robert’s Cutoff Rd;
• Responsive pedestrian cross walks at the intersections of Africatown Blvd with both Magazine St and Robert’s Cutoff Rd;
• The speed limit on Africatown Blvd lowered to 35 mph;
• A speed caution light at the crest of the Africatown Bridge warning of the traffic light at the bridge’s base;
• A rumble strip on the bridge’s descent to encourage westbound bridge traffic to slow in its approach to historic Africatown;
• Installation of appropriate air quality monitors along the traffic corridor;
• A long-term traffic study that documents existing and future Hazardous Cargo traffic flow along Africatown Blvd;
• A commitment in the form of a contractual Community Benefits Agreement requiring a portion of toll revenue be reinvested into the communities directly impacted by potential I-10 Toll Bridge and Tunnel traffic flows and toll avoidance routes like Africatown.

(4/10) Reviewing the LRTP literature, there are several outstanding concerns that must be addressed.

First, despite having previously submitted those clear and constructive comment, none of the signatory organizations were directly solicited to participate in any discussions related to the development of the LRTP Draft Amendment to test for consensus or feedback.

Toll aversion traffic was previously projected to cause an almost immediate and certainly alarming spike in traffic along Africatown Blvd to levels the community wouldn’t otherwise expect until the 2040s in a scenario where the I-10 Toll Bridge was not built.

While the type of traffic proposed to be tolled has shifted, there has been no satisfactory documentation to directly address potential toll aversion impacts to Africatown. With neither heavy trucks nor hazardous cargo proposed to be barred from the Africatown Bridge but otherwise tolled, clear communication around toll aversion impacts is necessary.

(5/10) Additionally, in reviewing Alabama Department of Environmental Management Clean Air Act permits in and around the City of Mobile’s Africatown Planning Area, we’ve found many, that were extremely deficient in terms of both enforceability as well as how facilities quantified how many tons of toxic pollutants they release into the Africatown neighborhood over the course of a year. These include Plains, Kimberly-Clarke, UOP, and Kemira. The need for clear consideration and monitoring of air quality impacts along the Africatown Blvd traffic corridor stands.

The demands of the Africatown community to see sound demonstration of how the I-10 Toll Bridge project improves their environmental and community conditions is a must.

(6/10) Pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure improvements along Africatown Blvd is great to read about in writing, however, the LRTP Amendment only describes pedestrian crosswalks and ignores community demands for rumble strips, warning lights, stop lights, and lowering the speed limit along Africatown Blvd.

The City of Mobile is currently investing millions of dollars into tourist infrastructure on Africatown Blvd. With homes and churches along the corridor, the current 45 mile per hour interstate speed limit is simply too fast, especially with what many residents describe as a lack of speed enforcement which results in traffic often flying past the beauty bust of Oluale Kossola aka Cudjo Lewis in excess of 80 miles per hour.

(7/10) Also, the City of Mobile changed the name of Bay Bridge Road to Africatown Blvd in 2016. In May 2019, the State of Alabama changed the name of the Cochrane-Africatown USA Bridge to simply the Africatown Bridge. And although ALDOT has yet to commence with the replacement of all physical and virtual signage, all new official state documents should reflect all the name changes. Not doing so, again, reflects a lack of community engagement.

Neglecting to clearly communicate to potentially impacted environmental justice communities of concern, especially after they have clearly expressed interest demonstrates a deprioritization of environmental justice perspectives in the consideration of this LRTP amendment.

(8/10) Speaking to the history of the Africatown community with regional transportation efforts, our agencies have scoured available public records at ALDOT for documentation related to how previous transportation leadership has or hasn’t listened to the community. As evidenced in the Federal Environmental Impact Statements (FEIS) for the I-165 elevated Interstate construction, the expansion of Africatown Blvd (then Bay Bridge Rd), and the Africatown Bridge reconstruction (then Cochrane-Africatown USA Bridge), each of the major infrastructural expansions through the Africatown community faced sound and reasonable community opposition only to have the vast majority of their concerns ignored. Resident advocacy groups even offered engineering alternatives that aligned with ALDOT alternatives only to have those also ignored.

(9/10) In the case of the Bay Bridge Rd expansion project, the community’s once-thriving downtown business strip was demolished. Whether or not compliance with federal laws requiring reconstruction and proximate relocation of businesses condemned by federal highway projects was adhered to or not is unknown, although it is plainly obvious that none of the condemned commercially zoned parcels in the City of Mobile were replaced in the city’s now-defined Africatown Planning Area.

We don’t know of that project’s Civil Rights Act compliance because its FEIS is missing from ALDOT’s Montgomery offices, and the vast majority of it was also mysteriously lost in ALDOT’s Mobile office except for the public participation and public comment sections. For what they are worth, these sections offer illuminating insight into how acutely aware the community has been of the threats it was facing then and still faces today at the hands of inconsiderate and derogatory regional planning decisions.

(10/10) In conclusions, the Mobile MPO must not repeat the past mistakes of previous transportation decision making bodies that rendered Africatown as simply a vocal minority to be ignored, particularly at a time when the City of Mobile is ostensibly committed to engineering Africatown into a heritage tourism powerhouse for South Alabama.

Africatown’s engaged community stakeholders should be invited to participate more fully as partners in planning the future of our region’s obvious transportation needs. Africatown Blvd, the Africatown Bridge, and I-165 offer a plethora of opportunities for use in service of mitigating the serious ongoing harm resulting from decades of disrespectful and derogatory infrastructural development on top of and through Africatown’s vulnerable neighborhoods and historical attraction.

Thank you for your careful consideration of these Public Comments regarding the Draft Amendment to the Envision 2045 LRTP. [Ramsey Sprague]”

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