Uh ok...

So there is a heaping load of craziness in the Greater Birmingham area to keep me looking at the region with a blank stare.

For starters, the jackal for mayor, William Bell, has proposed cutting city employee salaries by 10%, closing 5 public libraries, community and recreation centers, and killing funding to non-profits to "close the financial gap".  Meanwhile, he along with the City Council has given the A'OK to the entertainment district near the Birmingham-Jefferson County Convention Complex (BJCC) anchored by a Westin hotel.  The kicker is the Birmingham City Council is basically alright with funding the entertainment district via the tourism tax money (aside from the 2-member oversight board consisting of Birmingham's mayor and a member of the BJCC board to issue the bids and planning process).  Of course, the City Council would be up in arms about the cuts in services and salaries, but not for the reasons one would initially believe.  It's about the fact that it essentially cuts their slush fund they have sitting around and ability to do what they want with it.  IMHO, this is a huge clusterfuck screwing over everybody except the elected officials and their appoint staffers who are practically immune to this since they will always find a way to pay those overpaid fools a salary as long as they are in power.  Meanwhile, the average city employees are going to have a chunk taken out their asses along with that jackal proposing to leave a number of areas of Birmingham without a public library or community center for months.  It just shows that idiot shouldn't have been elected as mayor in January or allowed to wreak havoc on the populous.

Then on to the ongoing saga known as the Jefferson County occupational tax and its now-defunct predecessor.  Apparently, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled last week that Jefferson County must refund taxpayers $37.5 million of their money from the now-defunct Jefferson County occupational tax which levy 0.5% of each check.  However, the Ala. Supreme Court also ruled that Jeffco could get back that money via usage of its current occupational tax statute and to give those greedy ass bastard lawyers who sued to remove the tax $13 million.  HUH?  In other words, they want to tax the taxpayers after they were just told their former tax was illegal.  Just another bizarre lesson in Alabama's warped legal code that makes no sense at all.  This is main reason why I don't care for the lawyers or Jeffco Commission for this bullshit that has basically destroyed the reputation of Jefferson County worldwide in the media.  It's like the greedy just can't stop on either side of the foolishness.

UPDATE: After being ridiculed by City Councilors, citizen, and other groups, the jackal suspended the vote on the extension of the tourism tax and its allocation towards the entertainment district and hotel on Tuesday.  Now the BJCC board and the full Birmingham City Council will make to discuss the contract details.

Wait a minute! Did the jackal admit Birmingham can't fund the BJCC expansion?

Yeah, I think the jackal did.  He is so damn stupid like the 54% of the 30% of eligible votes within the City of Birmingham that did vote on January 19th.  Meanwhile, myself and the other 46% knew otherwise that it couldn't because the city of Birmingham is treading on broke aside from its capital expenditures which wouldn't be enough to fund the expansion of the BJCC.  It's like DUH!, but of course some assholes wanted to vet or didn't personally like Patrick Cooper so now jackal is backpedaling in the mayor's chair about what he said on the campaign trail.  ANYWAYS! 

Birmingham needs to be taking care of basic daily operations and getting the books straight rather than trying to fund something that requires something like capital.  That is clearly something the city is lacking at the moment and the jackal and the City Council knows this...

Populous meets with perspective users of the BJCC multipurpose facility expansion

Yesterday, Populous, formerly known as HOK Stadiums along with the local team of architectural firms met with 18 potential users of the dome, including officials from the Southeastern Conference (SEC), PapaJohns.com Bowl, and Birmingham Convention & Visitors Bureau about what amenities they desire in the multipurpose facility expansion.  A 30-minute presentation was shown then, Dennis Wellner of Populous spent an hour soliciting suggestions and answering questions from board members of the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex and Councilmen Jonathan Austin and Jay Roberson of the Birmingham City Council at the BJCC.  Also in attendance was Birmingham mayoral candidates Patrick Cooper and William Bell.  However, Cooper left before the Populous presentation began and Bell stayed about 30 minutes into it.  INTERESTING, Cooper and Bell are dedicated to be there to show face, but I wonder if somebody tipped off Bell that Cooper was going to be there since he is a private citizen so that he could one-up on him and be there as well...

The City of Birmingham will not own the Civic Center expansion. The Civic Center Authority does and will. The Civic Center Authority will issue the bonds.  The City of Birmingham will contribute 60% of the money needed for debt service on the expansion. The BJCC Authority will contribute 40% of the money needed for debt service.


The BJCC expansion is not a stadium or a DOME. The expansion is a 1.2 million square foot multi purpose facility. It will be designed so that it can be re-configured for many different events. It will not have a dome roof, but a flat roof that can possibly be used in some environmentally friendly way for power generation or to channel rainwater for reuse.


The 165-170 thousand square foot interior free space is large enough for a regulation football, basketball or soccer playing surface. It can also be use for trade shows, exhibitions, conventions. In addition to the flat floor space the facility will house about an additional 50,000 square feet of meeting rooms. It will be fully integrated into the existing HVAC, electrical, data and AV systems. The physical connection between the existing complex and the expansion will be seamless.


The facility is not, and has never, been planned around an NFL team or any other professional sports franchise. The primary concern for this facility is to provide the overall complex additional free floor space. If such a facility can be value engineered (this is what Popolous has been hired to do) so that 65,000 seats can be placed around the free floor space then it has even more flexibility for more events.


The existing civic center complex has not run down and crumbled into the dirt. More than $50 million has been spent on upgrading the arena, concert hall, meeting rooms, parking and installation of a skywalk system that connects the entire complex together. If you have visited the BJCC lately you would be able to see these improvements.

In 2009 the BJCC has hosted 5 of the top 10 touring acts in the United States! Despite 911 and the current recession, the BJCC has operated in the black seven of the last eight years. The facility hosts close to 2 million visitors every year.

If more people including the media would realize this they would waste their time calling it a "dome" when it is a just a large multipurpose facility then they would just STFU.  Birmingham needs more exhibition space for larger events including concerts, conventions, and sports.  However, this region suffers from "C.A.V.E.-dwellers Syndrome" (Citizens against virtually anything), and they wouldn't say anything about this if it was located in Hoover or Shelby County because it continue to make Birmingham look bad in contrast to the suburban areas.  Small-minded idiots. 

The lead architectural and design team has been revealed for the expansion at the BJCC has

Populous, formerly known as HOK, is the lead firm working on the expansion of the Birmingham-Jefferson County Convention Center (BJCC) which includes an $540 million multipurpose facility, announced their design team on the project.  The team includes a number of local black-owned design, contracting, and engineering firms including:

Designers

>> Charles Williams & Associates
>> Cohen Carnaggio Reynolds
>> Dorsey Architects & Associates
>> Formworks Architects
>> Giattina Aycock Architecture Studio
>> Hoskins Architecture
>> Margret D. Jones Interiors
>> NHB Group
>> TRI Architecture
>> Williams-Blackstock Architects

Engineers, consultants
>> Auditoria
>> BBG&S Engineering Consultants
>> BNI Structural Engineers
>> Code Consultants Inc.
>> CRS Engineering Inc.
>> Henderson Engineers
>> Hyde Engineering
>> Jackson Renfro and Associates
>> LBYD Civil and Structural Engineers
>> Lerch Bates
>> Macknally Ross Land Design
>> Saber Company
>> Schoel Consulting Engineers
>> MBA Structural Engineers
>> MW/Davis and Dumas & Associates
>> Robert A. Johnson & Associates
>> RWDI
>> S2O Consultants Inc.
>> TALA Professional Services
>> WJHW Audiovisual

Alabama State Representative Mary Moore (D-Birmingham) said that she is satisfied with the 30% participation of minority firms in the project after giving the BJCC massive criticism for their lack of minority businesses involved in the inital plans of the project. 

The cost breakdown of the project is that Populous and 8 other national firms will handle 50 percent of the work, with the remaining half done by local firms, he said. The architects will split a fee amounting to about 8 percent of the $400 million cost of building the facility itself.

Also Birmingham mayor Larry Langford released a "progress report" saying all the things he's done while in office for the past 2 years.  Including the paving of downtwon streets, jumpstarting the expansion at the BJCC, the Fair Park project, neighborhood clean-ups, demolition of abandoned buildings, and the enforcement of penalties against absentee landowners of overgrown lots, etc. 

In other words, he's trying to cover his ass on the eve of his federal corruption and tax evasion trial in at the federal court house in Tuscaloosa. 

Nice progress and it's good to see this is moving forward.  I'm looking forward to this project coming together.  It would major accomplishment for Birmingham to finally have a major and modern convention and event facility that can handle major events.  I just wish the stupid ass Birmingham News stop calling the project a "dome" when it doesn't even have a domed-roof.  They need to stop appeasing the lowest commond denominator of "CAVE" dwellers, Citizens Against Virtually Everything.  That was quoted by Langford and I'm going to use it. 

One poster on the al.com site summed it up best:

Funny about you saying how the Silverdome was built 35 miles outside the city center. No offense, but if this dome just happened to be located in, say, Hoover, then you wouldn't hear but a third of the criticism given period.


It seems as though some people have a vested interest in seeing the Magic City fail. They criticize and dogpile on Birmingham from the comfort of their homes over-the-mountain and outside the county. These are the same people who should really stick to talking about what they know -- the Alabama and Auburn scores.

And there it is.