Mobile City officials said Tuesday that the arena project is on budget, despite the reallocation of funds to expedite certain portions of the project.
Mayor Sandy Stimpson chief of staff James Barber addressed a resolution to transfer $150,000 from the Capital Project Reserves to the Project Civic Center Parking Facility and to transfer $150,000 from Capital Project Civic Center Marketing to Capital Project Civic Center Parking Facility. The resolution was introduced for its first reading during the council's regular meeting.
Barber said the funds are not being transferred to increase the project's cost, but rather to expand the original scope of the parking deck project. He said the projects added to the parking deck project portion would have originally been completed in the construction portion for the new arena.
"We're on budget as far as the parking deck goes," Barber explained. "But these are on change orders to add to the original scope of the project. We're going to do some sidewalks to make some of the sidewalks contiguous with the existing sidewalks from Claiborne Street. There's an access road that came in from Canal Street that needed to connect to the garage."
"That was not in the original contract," he continued. "It would have been in the construction contract, but in order to move it up on the timeline and get the core moved in, we went ahead and added it to the parking deck contract."
Barber said there will also be camera systems installed for security, as well as an alarm system and fire suppression system.
"So, I reiterate that the parking deck itself, the arena, everything is on budget," he added. "We're just moving some of these items forward that were not in the original scope and may have been added to the construction contract."
The $38 million budget for the building of the parking deck was not included in the $300 million overall budget projection for the new arena.
The arena is expected to be completed in early 2027.
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