Ensley’s long-abandoned Ramsay-McCormack building will be demolished and replaced by a four-story, multi-use building, Mayor Randall Woodfin told the Birmingham City Council on Wednesday. An assessment by commercial construction firm Stewart/Perry revealed numerous structural problems in the 10-story, city-owned office building, which has been vacant since 1986. Read more.
The city of Birmingham is working closely with Alabama health officials to determine when the city’s economy will reopen. At a press conference Tuesday, Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin offered updates on the city’s fight against the coronavirus. Woodfin said it’s important for residents to continue following the stay-at-home order as local and state officials take the next steps to address the economic crisis created by the COVID-19 pandemic. Woodfin was joined by Wesley Willeford, medical director of disease control with the Jefferson County Department of Health. Willeford said the number of new coronavirus cases is decreasing each day. He said that’s due to social distancing efforts and the work of the community, as residents limit interaction with each other. Read more.
The International World Games, scheduled for 2021 in Birmingham, will be held in 2022. The event, originally slated to occur July 15-25, 2021, will now be held July 7-17, 2022, the International World Games Association announced Thursday morning. The change is meant to avoid a clash with the Olympic Games, which was postponed to July 2021 as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The games were originally slated to take place this July in Tokyo. Read more.
On one side of First Avenue North, Bayles Restaurant and Catering serves everything from thick hamburgers to lentil soup for a steady stream of residents, workers and even police officers. Across the street, other people flow into the soup kitchen offered by Grace Episcopal Church. A few blocks down at Woodlawn United Methodist Church, volunteers load boxes with meat, dry goods and vegetables for a regular food distribution to needy families. You don’t have to look far to see both the success of redevelopment and the challenges that remain in Woodlawn. The Health Community Assessment Tool compiled by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development ranks Woodlawn among the top tier of Birmingham’s 99 neighborhoods in business retention and economic health. The community ranks near the bottom on public safety and blight. Neighborhood leaders say change is coming and Woodlawn has seen rebirth in recent years – thanks to nonprofits, public-private partnerships, and a community of residents who refuse to let their neighborhood die. “We just had to stand up,” said Donna Hall, a former officer in the Woodlawn Neighborhood Association. Read more.
The Birmingham City Council voted Tuesday to modernize its parking system, approving a three-year contract with ParkMobile, an application that allows users to pay for parking with their smartphones. The change, officials stressed, will add to, not replace, the coin-operated meter system used by the city. ParkMobile will charge a 45-cent processing fee for payments made through its app; 15 cents of that fee will go to the city. Read more.
MONTGOMERY — A state lawmaker wants to increase penalties for cities that violate the state’s law protecting Confederate monuments, but others are concerned about creating financial burdens for smaller cities and the lack of an appeal process. Sen. Gerald Allen, R-Cottondale, said he introduced the bill in order to preserve the state's history. "How can you tell the complete story by taking away, by whitewashing, by doing away with something that really you can learn something from it," Allen said. Allen’s Senate Bill 127 would increase penalties for violating the 2017 Alabama Memorial Preservation Act from a total of $25,000 to $10,000 a day. Read more.
For urban students interested in college, tuition can be a major barrier. So when it was announced recently that the Birmingham Promise would offer a full tuition scholarship to the University of Alabama at Birmingham, many praised the partnership as a way to give eligible Birmingham graduates a much-needed financial boost. But there’s just one problem: most students aren’t eligible to apply for the scholarship. Read more.
UPDATED - The Alabama Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the city of Birmingham had violated state law by covering a Confederate monument outside City Hall. The decision reverses a previous ruling by the Jefferson County Circuit Court and orders the city to pay $25,000 in penalties to the state of Alabama. The monument in question, in Birmingham’s Linn Park, was ordered covered in August 2017 by then-Mayor William Bell following deadly riots surrounding a Confederate monument in Charlottesville, Virginia. The monument, then-City Council President Johnathan Austin contended, “celebrate(s) racism, bigotry, hate and all those things that the South has been known for.” By covering the monument, Bell said he intended to “challenge” state law, specifically the just-passed Alabama Memorial Preservation Act of 2017, which prohibits local governments from moving or altering historically significant buildings or monuments that are more than 40 years old without permission from the state. The Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument was first placed in Linn Park by the Pelham chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1905. Read more.
Birmingham in October will be launching an early childhood program designed to increase interactive talk with children as a way to foster early brain development. The Birmingham Talks program will serve 2,500 children, birth to 3 years old, across Jefferson County over the next three years. The city of Birmingham is among five cities selected to replicate the Providence Talks program, which is supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies through its What Works Cities initiative. Read more.
The Birmingham Public Library’s central building will close Monday as construction begins on a long-awaited staircase. “I think we can all agree that today has been a long time coming,” Mayor Randall Woodfin said Tuesday during a press conference, drawing laughter from a crowd comprised mostly of BPL staffers and board members. “I thank each and every one of you for your patience. It’s been overwhelmingly tested.” The stairs will replace a pair of escalators that extend from the building’s lobby to the fourth floor. Both escalators have been defunct -- and roped off to prevent injuries -- since December 2014. Read more.
