zen509

Because it would be too un-Birmingham to break the trend of being 20 years behind everyone else.

Hmmm...hopefully his announcements will be more exciting than Ruben Club 205.

The Bham News is calling BS as well. http://www.al.com/opinion/birminghamnews/i....xml&coll=2

I believe we all support it; however, I believe we're all a little skeptical.

I would almost be willing to bet my entire life's savings that this proposal is complete garbage.

Wow, an Aloft hotel? That's the new brand by Starwood Hotels. I don't even think the first Aloft Hotel has opened yet. It looks like a pretty cool concept, like a limited service W Hotel. That's really cool. I'm definitely more excited about that than a Ruben Studdard night club.

Where on the BIA website did you read this? I read this, verbatim, on the wikipedia article but I can not find it on the website.

No, the Applebees will be in 5 Ponts West. The robbers that hang out in the southside, live on the west side.

This was my suggestion that I emailed to Larry Langford. Perhaps it made too much sense for Birmingham/JeffCo leaders to consider. What is wrong with scrapping the current arena and building a state of the art 20-25,000 seat arena? This would be comparable in size to Philips Arena in Atlanta (21,000 seats),FedEx Forum in Memphis, the RBC Center in Raleigh (20,000 seats) and the Gaylord Entertainment Center in Nashville (20,000 seats). All of these venues serve as a home to either an NBA, NHL or Arena One Football Team. An arena this size would be large enough to host SEC or C-USA Tournaments,major conventions and concerts. In my opinion, there's little advantage to building a 40,000 seat arena as opposed to an arena this size (hence: this is why it hasn't been done anywhere else in the country). Surely this would knock a significant amount of money off the price of construction and it would provide the city with a first class state of the art venue, that it desperately needs. The city could also take the money they saved on the arena and invest into upgrading Legion Field.

From everything I've read, this will be a huge project. I certainly hope Mobile gets it.

I agree with this completely. As others on here have stated, one of the problems with Birmingham's night life is that it's too spread out (Lake View, Five Points, Pepper Place). Due to the lack of public transportation in the city, it'd make things a lot nicer if everything was concentrated in one area. I would really like to see the 20th St. corridor be developed as a commerical and entertainment district.

I'm losing track of these projects. Of all the big projects that have been announced (the parks, the 20th St. redevelopment, the redevelopment at the Fed Reserve site, etc.) which one's do you guys think will actually come to fruition?

I don't know, would an entertainment district attract enough business to justify it being built? People staying at the Sheraton for a convention would go to these places but who else? Unfortunately, people don't go to the North Side. Well, if it ever is built hopefully they will include a Dave and Busters. Speaking of which, the ideal spot for a Dave and Busters would be the former Galleria 10. This would be a huge draw.