Birmingham City Council approves city money for BJCC expansion
The Birmingham City Council, at it regular meeting for Tuesday, March 30, voted 6-3 to approve a funding agreement in which the city -- along with some other funding partners -- will help the BJCC undertake a major renovation of Legacy Arena and its existing convention and meeting space and build a much-debated open-air stadium.
The vote was 6-3, with the no votes coming from councilors Lashunda Scales, Sheila Tyson and Darrell O'Quinn.
The cost of the BJCC expansion is said to be around $300 million, with the 45,000-seat stadium -- which can be reconfigured to hold 55,000 -- costing about $175 million.
The city will financially support the project in the amount of $3 million per year for 30 years using occupational taxes -- or other taxes the city might choose to use in a given year to honor its obligation in the deal.
And Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin again promised that all tax revenues accrued by the city from the BJCC expansion will go solely to neighborhood revitalization.
According to the text of a separate resolution the council passed related to the allocation of monies to the neighborhoods, those funds can be used for “increased public safety, resurfacing streets and sidewalks removing dilapidated houses, housing development, and other priorities deemed important by the Mayor and City Council.”
Woodfin first outlined his plan to the council at a committee meeting on January 31. He said that the city could expect nearly $10 million per year in additional tax revenue from the expansion.
Last week, the Alabama Legislature passed a three-percent car rental tax in Jefferson County to help pay the debt service on the expansion, which will be paid for by selling bonds.
The funding partners are the city, the county, the BJCC and UAB, whose football team will play at the new facility.
The discussion of the agreement and the stadium itself was often emotional, and the meeting lasted from 9:30 a.m. until shortly after 3 p.m. -- one of the longest council meetings in recent memory.
Numerous citizens took their turn to speak on the issue, and virtually all of them were in opposition to stadium or to the means proposed to fund it.
Robert Walker, a Wahouma neighborhood officer, said building the stadium “doesn’t benefit us anything.”
“The neighborhoods have been waiting for a long time for some attention and you should give it to them,” he told the council members.
“This is a terrible deal,” said Carlos Chavers, referring to the city’s commitment to pay $90 million over 30 years. “I’m not against the stadium but I’m against the deal.”
Central Park neighborhood President Susan Palmer said she had presented a petition to the mayor and council expressing opposition to the deal.
Palmer said the money should go to the needs of the neighborhood, including schools and public safety.
“Families are moving out of Birmingham because they’re scared” of crime, she said.
Former UAB football player Tim Alexander expressed support for the project, particularly the new stadium, saying that it is “about bringing resources to our city.”
“As we talk about BJCC, about this stadium, its not just about UAB -- It’s about the Magic City,” Alexander said.
Councilor Lashunda Scales was strongly opposed to the deal with the BJCC and echoed some of the concerns voiced by the residents who spoke.
“The frustration you hear today is that of 2018 there is still a tale of two cities,” Scales said. “You have a black mayor and mainly black council and black people are still begging for essential city services.”
That frustration is “not just about black and white,” she said. “It’s about haves and have nots.”
She reiterated her support for Legion Field, the city’s existing stadium.
Councilor Darrell O’Quinn said that he supports Woodfin and was “trying to get on board” with the agreement.
“I am not opposed to the stadium if it offers the potential to be a source of revenue” for the neighborhoods, he said.
But he said that he was not confident that the agreement as written, even after changes made the last few days, was sound, and that he had not had time to properly review the latest version.
“I make decisions based on information, and I have not gotten to the point that I see that the citizens of birmingham have a clear benefit from this project,” O’Quinn said.
Councilor Steven Hoyt said that he had been opposed to the funding agreement but now supported it after some changes were made over last few days with the cooperation of Woodfin and his staff.
Those changes addressed such issues as cost overruns and minority participation, according to Hoyt.
Hoyt assured one citizen speaker that he has “done his due diligence” in reviewing the documents
“We have not sat up here and rubber stamped anything,” he said.
Councilor John Hilliard, a project support, said the mayor and law department “responded back to every single question we had.”
He said that Birmingham needs to improve the BJCC in order to compete with the amenities available in such cities as Memphis, Nashville and Charlotte.
“We’re being left out of the marketplace while we sit here talking,” he said.
The revenue from the project can help the city take care of other important priorities in the neighborhoods, according to Hilliard.
“I am looking for the money to make a difference in my community,” he said.
In response to some citizen comments, Woodfin said he agreed that Birmingham voters had been lied to at times in the past regarding how the tax revenue from some city projects would be used.
But Woodfin said that he was the first mayor to specifically designate that such revenue be used solely for the neighborhoods.
The city will create a separate fund specifically for that purpose, he said,
City Council President Valerie Abbott said that the city will only be putting in $3 million per year over 30 years.
She said this amount is “fairly normal” for the amount of incentives that the city normally doles out for developments each year.
Woodfin said that the city was not “rushing through” this agreement. “That’s simply not true,” he said.
“This is the right thing to do because it has a full benefit for our entire city,” he said, in part due to the need for more money to provide essential services to residents.