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Living in Mobile, AL
Located at the junction of the Mobile River and Mobile Bay
on the northern Gulf of Mexico, the city is the only seaport in Alabama. The
Port of Mobile has always played a key role in the economic health of the city
beginning with the city as a key trading center between the French and Native
Americans down to its current role as the 11th largest port in the United
States.
As one of the Gulf Coast's cultural centers, Mobile houses several art museums,
a symphony orchestra, a professional opera, a professional ballet company, and a
large concentration of historic architecture. Mobile is known for having the
oldest organized Carnival/Mardi Gras celebrations in the United States, as well
as the oldest Carnival mystic society, dating to 1830. People from Mobile are
known as Mobilians.
Mobile is home to an array of cultural influences with its French, British,
Spanish, African, Creole and Catholic heritage distinguishing it from all other
cities in the state of Alabama. The annual Carnival celebration is perhaps the
best illustration of this. Carnival in Mobile has evolved over the course of 300
years from a sedate French Catholic tradition into a mainstream multi-week
celebration across the spectrum of cultures.
Since 1985 the government of Mobile has consisted of a mayor and a seven member
city council. The mayor is elected at-large and the council members are elected
from each of the seven city council districts. A supermajority of five votes is
required to conduct council business. This form of city government was chosen by
the voters after the previous form of government, which used three city
commissioners who were elected at-large, was ruled to substantially dilute the
African American vote in the 1975 case Bolden v. City of Mobile. Municipal
elections are held every four years.
The current mayor, Sam Jones, was elected in September of 2005 and is the first
African American mayor of Mobile. As of January 2006, the city council is
composed of Fredrick Richardson, Jr. from District 1, William Carroll from
District 2, Clinton Johnson from District 3, John C. Williams from District 4,
Reggie Copeland, Sr. from District 5, Connie Hudson from District 6, and Gina
Gregory from District 7. Reggie Copeland, Sr. is currently serving as Council
President with Fredrick Richardson, Jr. serving as Council Vice President.
In January of 2008, the city hired EDSA, an urban design firm, to create a new
comprehensive master plan for the downtown area and surrounding neighborhoods.
The planning area is bordered on the east by the Mobile River, to the south by
Interstate 10 and Duval Street, to the west by Houston Street and to the north
by Three Mile Creek and the neighborhoods north of Martin Luther King Avenue.
Public schools in Mobile are operated by the Mobile County Public School System.
The Mobile County Public School System has an enrollment of over 65,000
students, employs approximately 8,500 public school employees, and had a budget
in 2005-2006 of $617,162,616. The State of Alabama operates the Alabama School
of Mathematics and Science on Dauphin Street in Mobile, which boards advanced
Alabama high school students. It was founded in 1989 to identify, challenge, and
educate future leaders.
Mobile also has a large number of private schools, most of them being parochial
in nature. Many of these belong to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Mobile. The
private Catholic institutions include McGill-Toolen Catholic High School (1896),
Corpus Christi School, Little Flower Catholic School (1934), Most Pure Heart of
Mary Catholic School (1900), Saint Dominic School (1961), Saint Ignatius School
(1952), Saint Mary Catholic School (1867), Saint Pius X Catholic School (1957),
and Saint Vincent DePaul Catholic School (1976). The private Protestant
institutions include St. Paul's Episcopal School (1947), Mobile Christian School
(1961), St. Lukes Episcopal School (1961), Faith Academy (1967), and the Cottage
Hill Baptist School System (1970), which operates Cottage Hill Baptist School
and Cottage Hill Christian Academy. UMS-Wright Preparatory School (1893) is an
independent, non-religious, co-educational preparatory school.
Aerospace, retail, services, construction, medicine, and manufacturing are
Mobile's major industries. After experiencing economic decline for several
decades, Mobile's economy began to rebound in the late 1980s. Between 1993 and
2003 13,983 new jobs were created as 87 new companies were founded and 399
existing companies were expanded. 1,700 new jobs were created from February 2003
to February 2004.
Mobile's Alabama State Docks is currently undergoing the largest expansion in
its history by expanding its container processing and storage facility and
increasing container storage at the docks by over 1,000%. As of 2005, the Port
of Mobile was the 11th largest by cargo volume in the United States.
In 2005 Austal USA, based in Mobile, expanded their production facility for US
defense and commercial aluminum shipbuilding. In 2007 German steel manufacturer
ThyssenKrupp announced plans for a $3.7 billion steel mill. The new plant is
currently under construction in northern Mobile County. Company officials state
that 2,700 permanent jobs will be added to the local economy.
On 29 February 2008, the United States Air Force announced that a partnership
between Northrop Grumman and EADS had won the contract to produce the new KC-45
aerial refueling tanker. The contract is considered to be worth up to $40
billion with 179 planes to be delivered over the next ten to fifteen years. The
production of these aircraft will be at Mobile's Brookley Complex.
For more information on the Mobile housing market click here!