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Birmingham is home to one of the largest urban parks in the nation and is a regional destination for outdoor enthusiasts.

This statement could soon be true, thanks to the hard work and amazing cooperation among individuals in the private and public sectors who want to see Red Mountain Park become a reality.

The Birmingham region is not necessarily known as a haven for outdoor activities. We do not have a major river flowing through downtown like Chattanooga. We don’t have as many outdoor activities as we have the potential for. In the past, we have also not been known for wonderful examples of regional cooperation to make great projects happen.

However, Red Mountain Park is an extraordinary project that has inspired regional cooperation, and one that will truly transform our communities.

Last year, U.S. Steel, a large national company with deep roots in Birmingham, and the Freshwater Land Trust, a small local nonprofit organization, announced a project called Red Mountain Park. U.S. Steel has offered the Land Trust 1,108 acres of historic land in southwestern Jefferson County – entirely within the city limits of Birmingham.

This land was once home to iron ore mines that helped put Birmingham on the map at the turn of the 20th century. Now, it can put us on the map again, but this time at the top of a national list of cities with the most open space per capita, beating out Minneapolis and Seattle.

The deal itself is pretty amazing. The Red Mountain Park property was independently appraised for $16.5 million. U.S. Steel is offering it to the Land Trust under a two-year purchase option for $7 million, a $9.5 million discount. In addition, U.S. Steel has pledged an additional $1 million toward the development of park amenities, which could include athletic fields, hiking and biking trails, a 20-acre lake and historical preservation sites. The total $10.5 million donation is U.S. Steel’s largest philanthropic donation in the company’s 100-year history.

You may be familiar with New York’s Central Park. Red Mountain Park is larger than that. It’s also larger than San Francisco’s National Golden Gate Bridge Park.

Park amenities haven’t been planned yet, but the area is big enough to do any number of things. It could attract visitors from across the country because of its historical significance and its potential to host national athletic events, such as triathlons, cycling or soccer tournaments.

After the deal was announced last year, the Freshwater Land Trust organized the Red Mountain Park Steering Committee. This group of private, public, civic and government leaders has worked hard to help the Land Trust meet the two-year option deadline. It is working to raise the money necessary to purchase the property.

The group has hired a nationally known landscape architect firm, Wallace Roberts and Todd from Philadelphia, to develop the park’s master plan. It also drafted a bill that was passed in the state Legislature this year which lays out the park’s future ownership and management.

In March, Rep. Merika Coleman, D-Midfield, and I introduced the bill in the House of Representatives, while Sens. Rodger Smitherman, D-Birmingham, and Jabo Waggoner, R-Vestavia Hills, sponsored a similar bill in the Senate. This bill creates a 15-member state commission that would own and manage Red Mountain Park.

The public is tired of initiatives that ask for public money that is not used effectively and efficiently. Thus, it was important the project be revenue neutral for the state, because a unique coalition of public and private community leaders was committed to seek private and federal funds for the project. This is an effort that shows you can have an effective public-private partnership without having to raise taxes to be successful.

We’re No. 1. Well, at least we can be.

Three major park projects that would catapult Birmingham to the head of the class in park land are within our reach. All it takes, of course, is money.

Government, business and civic groups must make sure this rare opportunity doesn’t slip through our fingers.

The projects are the Railroad Reservation Park, a 20-acre linear leisure and recreation spot bridging downtown to Southside and a major catalyst for downtown revitalization; the proposed 1,108-acre Red Mountain Park, which will be one of the largest urban parks in the country; and the Ruffner Mountain Nature Center, which at 1,011 acres is already one of the biggest city parks but could add another 500 to 700 acres.

Combined, these parks would push Birmingham past Minneapolis into the top spot of cities for park land per 1,000 residents – 17.9 acres compared to 14.3.

Birmingham-area leaders should think of these as must-do projects – not because of the pride of being No. 1, but because they really are needed.

Consider the Railroad Park, which will include a lake, amphitheater, walking trails and other entertainment and recreation amenities. Many lofts and condominiums already are planned near the park. These projects are bringing hundreds of people to live and work downtown.

The Red Mountain Park will be larger than New York City’s Central Park. It will include ball fields and 18 miles of trails that can link with existing trails to form a 64-mile network for bikers and walkers. The park could help transform southwestern Birmingham.

Ruffner Mountain’s expansion will make the nature park more visitor- and family-friendly with new visitors centers, a lake, an after-school program for children and more forest land to explore – all within the city’s boundaries.

The difficult part in making all three projects a reality will be raising the tens of millions of dollars needed to buy the land and construct the parks.

The first phase of the Railroad Park will cost $10 million, with the rest of project costing as much a $50 million more. So far, only the first $10 million has been dedicated.

U.S. Steel is selling the land for the Red Mountain Park at a discounted price of $7 million and throwing in $1 million to help develop it. But tens of millions of dollars more will be needed.

Ruffner Mountain’s expansion is expected to cost at least $11 million.

Coming up with that kind of money will require the city, the county (they both have pledged money for the Railroad and Red Mountain parks) and state governments working together with businesses and nonprofit groups.

They must come up with a game plan for raising the money. Private donations should play a large part. But taxpayer financing should also have a role because of the obvious return on the dollar.

What must not happen is for area leaders to miss out on this opportunity. If the chance to acquire this vast park land is lost, Birmingham and its citizens will regret it for generations to come.

The city of Birmingham and nonprofit groups are working on a series of plans that could put the area among the nation’s leaders in urban parks.

To this point, the Birmingham area’s primary distinction in green space has been a few parks designed by the Olmsted Brothers, the famed New York park designers, although Birmingham area cities soon abandoned the rest of the company’s outline for parks. Jefferson County has never even had a county park or a parks and recreation department.

But now plans are in the works for more acres and park facilities than the Birmingham area has been able to acquire for most of its history.

Eastern Birmingham’s Ruffner Mountain Nature Center, already 1,011 acres, is planning to add 500 to 700 acres in an expansion estimated to cost at least $11 million.

The Freshwater Land Trust is working to buy 1,108 acres on Red Mountain that would cost $7 million just to purchase and probably tens of millions more to develop.

Birmingham city leaders are planning a 20-acre Railroad Reservation Park for downtown that will cost as much as $50 million on top of the $10 million already dedicated to the project.

“Historically, we have been behind,” said U.S. Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Vestavia Hills. “Alabama ranks near the bottom of states with public land that is designed for protection of wildlife or open space. Jefferson County recreation and park space is considered a critical need because we have a shortage.”

Both Ruffner Mountain and Red Mountain would become among the nation’s largest urban parks, surpassing such well-known parks as New York’s Central Park or San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. The planned additions and expansions would push Birmingham to No. 1 in national ranking of green space per resident in large cities. According to numbers from the Trust for Public Land, Birmingham would have 17.9 acres of public green space per 1,000 residents, ahead of top-ranked Minneapolis with 14.3 acres per 1,000 residents.

“We have an opportunity that is not going to come along again, to do something for our city, for our quality of life,” said Birmingham’s Pat Byington, a member of the Alabama Environmental Management Commission.

An opportunity and a challenge. Money hasn’t been lined up to complete any of the parks, and their supporters are knocking at many of the same doors for funding and volunteers.

“I think we need to manage these in a way that we’re not saturating donors,” said Wendy Jackson, executive director of the land trust that is raising money for the Red Mountain Park.

Her group’s project got the first start in the public eye and began with a tremendous advantage. U.S. Steel offered about $16.5 million worth of land if the community could put up $7 million toward the purchase. The land trust has received a promise of that much from the Jefferson County Commission.

Jackson said her staff also is talking to private donors and federal highway programs designed to fund parks. The group would need probably tens of millions more to build sports facilities, turn logging roads into trails and make other improvements on the land, which runs from Bessemer to Homewood.

Bachus said he is trying to earmark money in the U.S. Department of Interior budget for the park. “U.S. Steel has been willing to donate land,” Bachus said. “That is almost a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that we need to act on.”

Birmingham’s downtown park also has had a big boost, with the city putting up $7.5 million and the county $2.5 million. But Birmingham estimates it will need as much as an additional $50 million for the Railroad Reservation Park, which it hopes will transform downtown along a route that runs from 14th to 18th Street South and from First Avenue South to Morris Avenue.

Planned features include an amphitheater that will allow it to tap into funding for the arts or the humanities, said Renee Kemp-Rotan, manager of the park project. And it will be looking for private donors. Other features will include a walking trail, a lake and paddleboats.

The idea of raising money for Ruffner Mountain’s planned expansion – about $2.6 million of the $11 million needed has been raised so far – is daunting, said Kathy Stiles Freeland, executive director of the nature center.

But, she said, she has learned after decades of experience at The Nature Conservancy and at Ruffner that naysayers always follow any big plan. “I’ve been hearing that for 30 years: Somebody else is having a capital campaign, so that’s spooky,” Freeland said. “You just have to keep on doing it. The money’s there, we just have to have the commitment.”

Leaders of environmental groups in the area sit down annually and talk about their fund-raising plans so that they don’t all rush the same donor at the same time. Freeland said it would be a good idea for the planners of the area parks to do the same thing.

Complementary spaces:
However, she and others agree that the parks are complementary, not competing. They are far apart geographically and so different as to barely fit under the category of park.

Red Mountain plans sports facilities and mountain biking, while the more pristine Ruffner plans nature trails and scenic overlooks, space for weddings or events and two new visitors centers. The Railroad Reservation Park will have urban amenities and no nature preserve.

“A quality of life in a city has to do with a range of open space available, not just one topology,” Kemp-Rotan said.

Jackson said she strongly believes in each of the projects and hopes they can be anchors in a greenway project that could link much of the county with green space or, in urban areas, walkways.

Deserve regional support:
The plans all deserve regional support because they would benefit the community’s health, attractiveness to businesses and desirability to young professionals, Jackson said.

“They’re not just benefiting that one neighborhood where they’re located,” she said.

Businesses are now looking at green space as a quality of life issue when they consider locating in a city, Bachus said. “I guarantee you, if you build these parks people are going to want to live in Birmingham,” he said.

The crowds at Birmingham Botanical Gardens, Oak Mountain State Park and other areas show that area residents are hungering to get beyond their back yards, Bachus said.

“The majority of Americans consider themselves environmentalists, and people love being outdoors,” Jackson said. “People are birding, they’re fishing, they’re rappelling, they’re riding mountain bikes. There’s a huge demand.”

EMAIL: kbouma@bhamnews.com

Several Alabama parks and conservation projects are threatened by a recent congressional decision to wipe out this year’s earmarked funding, including at least $10 million to preserve Alabama land, leaving the future of that money unclear.

A post-election decision by Congress to eliminate appropriations by individual Congress members leaves some of the state’s conservationists scrambling for funds that they believed were in the bag.

Most urgently in Jefferson County, Red Mountain Park planners had been promised $1.4 million in earmarked funds – about one-fifth of the $7 million needed to buy the land on the crest of the mountain. So far, leaders haven’t said what they would do since a December land buy deadline passed.

It’s common in Alabama, like other states, to rely on the federal government for big projects, including saving rivers, preserving national forests and buying state parks.

But in recent years, more of those funds have become earmarked, or placed in the budget by one member of Congress instead of administrators writing their own budgets.

During the past 10 years, earmarked projects have more than doubled, so that items such as bridges, highways and national wildlife refuges have become purchases allowed by individual lawmakers.

The 2002 Cahaba River National Wildlife Refuge in Bibb County, both its purchase and expansion, came through earmarked funds. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service objected mildly at the time, saying Congress was circumventing budgetary processes intended to ensure that agencies have enough money to maintain land before they buy it.

But as earmarks exploded, the only way to win federal money was to join the earmarkers, proponents argue.

Alabama’s Forever Wild land preservation program could often quadruple its money with federal matching funds, sometimes in earmarks such as the Forest Legacy program.

That program, which buys forest land across the nation, began as an earmark program, said Dan Dumont, director of the Alabama Forest Resources Center. But Dumont argues it has outgrown everything that generally distinguishes an earmark project. The money is no longer handed out at the caprice of a lawmaker, without oversight of a government agency or a requirement to compete with other projects.

nstead, Forest Legacy now has rules as stringent as other regularly budgeted projects, he said. The land proposals are ranked on the basis of ecological significance and must be sponsored by a federal, state or land trust organization.

In 2004, the Mobile-Tensaw Delta won $3 million in Forest Legacy money after it was ranked as the most-deserving project in the nation. The land was considered on the basis of its environmental sensitivity, ease to manage, and strategic location within one of the nation’s largest wetland preservation projects.

“This is an ongoing, competitive program that shouldn’t be classified as an earmark, somebody’s pet boondoggle,” Dumont said.

Alabama’s Forest Legacy program lost $1.2 million that would have helped Forever Wild buy land near the Paint Rock River in north Alabama. The Nature Conservancy already has bought land along the free-flowing river in Jackson County, which is considered one of the most biologically important regions in Alabama.

It’s unclear whether the Forest Legacy money will be restored after Congress returns. It’s still not even clear how much money Congress took away.

Two of the nine appropriation bills already had become law before the last-minute decision to pull all earmarks, so those earmarks will remain in place. Local officials say they are not aware if those bills affect Alabama conservation projects.

In the other bills, some of the money may simply fall back to a department or agency that could dole it out as originally earmarked.

It’s also unclear what Congress intended the new rules to be. Most agree that Congress wanted the earmarks to revert to the previous year’s levels. But there’s no agreement on whether that means the money that was ultimately spent in 2006 or the money that appeared in the 2006 budget as passed by the House.

$8.5 million at risk:
The Nature Conservancy of Alabama, the state’s largest nonprofit land purchase organization, estimates that more than $8.5 million is at risk statewide, not including such local projects as Red Mountain Park.

That includes money that goes through the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, such as the Coastal and Estuarine Land Conservation Program. That was supposed to include $3 million to help preserve the Escatawpa River, and another $3 million for land in the ecologically unique Red Hills of Monroe County.

For a few projects nationwide, the change may actually be an improvement, said Pat Byington, southeastern coordinator for The Wilderness Society.

Since Congress removed all the 2007 earmarks but replaced them with 2006 numbers, the change could be an improvement, in the unlikely event a department or project actually got more money the previous year.

But that’s unlikely, since funding has dropped in recent years for most land preservation projects, Byington said.

“These conservation programs in general are grossly under-funded, and then they’ve been slashed tremendously in the last three to four years,” he said. “In the big picture, we’re losing ground environmentally, and we can lose even bigger if the budget doesn’t get straightened out.”

EMAIL: kbouma@bhamnews.com

Jefferson County Commission voted Tuesday to spend $7 million over five years to help purchase property for Red Mountain Park.

Commissioner Bettye Fine Collins voted against the purchase, saying that a hasty decision was being made.

The 4-1 vote, in a packed commission chamber, was met with sustained applause from supporters of the project.

The county will now enter into an agreement with the Black Warrior-Cahaba Rivers Land Trust to help it buy that property, beginning with an initial $2 million investment from the county’s general fund.

The property is north of Lakeshore Drive, running 4.5 miles from an eastern boundary along Montevallo Road to a western endpoint near the Bessemer city limit. It is owned by U.S. Steel Corp. and valued at $16.5 million. The company has given the land trust two years to buy the land for $7 million.

Wendy Jackson, executive director of the Land Trust, said private and corporate donors will now have an incentive to contribute.

“This fundraising campaign has been described as a pile of wood kindling waiting for a match to strike it and that’s what Jefferson County did today,” she said.

Commission President Larry Langford has said the purchase would include enough rail lines for a possible trolley system across the 1,108-acre tract of land and also connect a 64-mile network of walking, biking and hiking trails.

No mention of the trolley system was made during Tuesday’s meeting.

Commissioner Shelia Smoot said the county needed to acquire greenspace to help improve quality of life for residents.

“If we don’t bring in quality of life issues like parks, greenspace, greenways, walking trails, biking trails we are missing the boat,” she said.

Collins said the commission did not thoroughly discuss the project before taking a vote. She said her colleagues did not have a discussion of “the county’s financial ability to make this longterm commitment of $7 million tax dollars. I have seen no appraisal of this property by a certified appraiser. I have seen no evidence of an environmental study,” she said.

Langford said the project has been on the table for two years. He said the initial $2 million payment is not due until October 2006, and the county will spend $1 million per year afterward.

E-mail: bwright@bhamnews.com