Mobile City finance panel hears construction progress and plans for $250 million bond to fund Civic Center Arena

The Finance Committee of the Mobile City Council received updates Thursday on the construction and financing plans for Mobile City’s Civic Center Arena, including a construction progress report, a timeline for bids and contract awards, and staff’s plan to seek a bond issue expected to be about $250 million.

Committee members heard that demolition, parking-deck work and arena deconstruction are on a modified schedule and that staff expect to present a bond-authorizing resolution in early February to begin the financing process.

Barber, the chief of staff, told the committee that construction work is advancing: “we're on time,” and that level 4 of the parking deck had been poured and contractors were forming level 5 of a six-level deck. Barber said crews were completing CMU walls for stairs and elevators, that the arena’s dome was being taken down on the south side, and that crews were lowering and storing the mosaics from the expo hall so they can be reinstalled in the new arena.

Barber said the pedestrian access between the core (arena) building and the parking deck was not included in the original core or parking-deck bids and will likely be bid separately as a concrete footpath on the southern elevation; he characterized that work as a “nominal cost” likely coverable within savings from value engineering on the parking deck.

Barber also reported an asbestos discovery during demolition that briefly extended the demo schedule but said the project remained on track for…