Improve the arts and transportation, Hoover residents tell city leaders
Advancing the arts, improving transportation and investing in older neighborhoods were some of the initiatives Hoover residents focused on tonight at the second of four town hall meetings addressing the city’s future.
About 40 people showed up at the Hoover Municipal Center for the second “Future Hoover” meeting, which was initiated by Mayor Frank Brocato to allow residents to share their vision for the city and give feedback on work being done by the city now.
Numerous people talked about the need to expand cultural offerings in the city, particularly regarding the arts.
Billy Pennington, a longtime Bluff Park resident and member of the advisory board for Aldridge Gardens, said he feels very strongly about the cultural life of Hoover and believes that cultural opportunities are limited.
The Hoover Public Library has a nice theater, but it has only 250 seats and events there frequently sell out quickly, Pennington said.
There is a need for a good public art gallery in the city, he said. Aldridge Gardens has a small art gallery, but it frequently is closed to the public because the building is being rented for private events to bring revenue to the gardens, Pennington said.
He recommended the city consider buying the Birmingham First Seventh-day Adventist Church next door to Aldridge Gardens and convert it into an arts facility.
Also, there are numerous arts groups in Hoover, but communication between them is disjointed and needs improvement, Pennington said.
Councilman Curt Posey said a group of arts supporters are exploring the creation of a city arts commission to better support the arts and find funding for an arts facility. One idea being considered is purchasing Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church in Bluff Park and converting the 25,000-square-foot building into an arts facility. The sanctuary could possibly be converted into a theater that seats 400 to 500 people, and the other wings of the building could house artist studios, a gallery, meeting rooms and classrooms, Posey has said.
Brocato said he would like to see, somewhere in the city, a performing arts center where people could come and see a Broadway play or attend concerts. “Everything doesn’t have to go in downtown Birmingham,” the mayor said.
Hoover has the restaurants and other amenities that would complement a performing arts center very well, he said. However, a top-notch performing arts center likely will cost about $50 million, he said.
Vicki Pocopanni of the Russet Woods neighborhood asked if the new 155,000-square-foot Finley Center at the Hoover Metropolitan Complex could be used for performing arts.
City Administrator Allan Rice said the acoustics of the Finley Center are not really designed for a good performing arts center.
Bluff Park resident Becky White said she would love for Bluff Park to be the home for a fine arts center. She also recommended the city think modestly and consider creating an arts center in stages before jumping immediately to build a large fine arts center.
Riverchase resident Arnold Singer said he frequently attends theater events in the Birmingham area and cautioned against building a large fine arts center. Such a facility would be competing against the Alys Stephens Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Wright Center at Samford University, and those facilities sometimes have a tough time filling their seats, he said.
Transportation also was a topic of discussion tonight.
Eileen Lewis, a resident of the Monte D’Oro community, said it’s important for Hoover to think about ways to decrease residents’ dependence on automobiles to get around town. She encouraged city leaders to think about ways to improve pedestrian traffic corridors and consider light rail as an option to get from downtown Birmingham to central Hoover or the part of Hoover along U.S. 280.
Martin Weinberg, the city’s representative on the Birmingham-Jefferson County Transit Authority, said the biggest problem with expanding transit options in Alabama is that the state provides no funding for transit. The cost for light rail is about $100 million per mile, he said.
White, who is a transportation planner, said the city would do better to consider expanding bus rapid transit. The Birmingham area doesn’t have the development density needed to support light rail, so bus rapid transit options are much more economically feasible, she said.
Several residents tonight encouraged city officials to invest in older neighborhoods in the city. One resident of Monte D’Oro said people in her community love their older neighborhood and want to see it continue to thrive. Some of the areas near their neighborhood along Lorna Road are cool, but others are not so cool, she said.
Brocato said city officials are paying attention to areas where properties are falling into disrepair and trying to develop ways to revitalize those areas. They also are evaluating a new method for residents to report property maintenance issues so the city can better address them, Rice said.
Councilman Gene Smith said he would like to see some changes made to the property maintenance code so that the city doesn’t have to wait for a resident to report a problem before the city addresses it. Police officers and public works and building inspection personnel are on the streets every day and should be able to report code violations as well, Smith said.
The city about a decade ago passed an ordinance limiting the number of people who can live in rental properties, but the state Legislature subsequently passed a law that prevented municipalities from interfering in tenant-landlord relations, basically nullifying Hoover’s ordinance, Smith said.
Another issue that came up tonight was the creating of new shopping centers. Pocopanni questioned why the city keeps adding shopping centers when there are empty spaces in existing shopping centers such as The Grove.
Smith said the developer of The Grove shopping center allows its current tenants to decide whether new tenants can come into the center, and some existing tenants have vetoed additions there, limiting the center’s growth.
Pocopanni said the city should focus its efforts on making sure the Riverchase Galleria stays healthy. Rice said that the Galleria is about 99 percent full. He noted some vacancies at the Patton Creek shopping center but said the vacancies there are more related to the cost of rent. In a free enterprise system of competition, there are certain things over which the city has no control, Rice said.
Other issues residents brought up tonight included:
- A need for more neighborhoods designed specifically for people ages 55 and up
- A need for a stronger police presence at the Walmart on U.S. 280 and at Georgetown Park near Monte D’Oro
- A problem of people using residential neighborhoods as cut-throughs to lessen travel times
The first Future Hoover meeting was held on Oct. 17 at Hunter Street Baptist Church. Read more about that meeting here.
Two more meetings are planned for Nov. 21 at the Health Sciences Building at Jefferson State Community College’s Shelby-Hoover campus and for Nov. 28 at Greystone Elementary School.
After that, the city plans to conduct an online survey for about six weeks and then present findings, Rice said.