Red Mountain Park is ready to go at last, after three years of money and hopes raised and lost and raised again.
U.S. Steel Corp. sold the ridgetop land for $4 million down and another $3 million due at the end of February, officials said, during closing on the 1,108 acres Wednesday.
U.S. Steel is holding the mortgage on the land and charging no interest, said Steve Jones, chairman of the Red Mountain Park and Greenway Commission that bought the land. “We’re basically able to close, because they hold the note,” Jones said.
The closing was held quietly and everyone was asked to keep it secret, until word leaked out this weekend to the Birmingham News. Jones said the group was planning to announce the long-awaited purchase at an event on the land in a few weeks.
“We’re trying to put together a public event so we can invite some folks,” Jones said.
U.S. Steel has been working with area nonprofits for three years toward a deal that would make its former mining land one of the largest urban parks in the nation. It will stretch 4.5 miles from Homewood close to the Bessemer line, with multiple entrances that will invite communities on all sides to connect on top of the mountain that has been known as a barrier between rich and poor.
In 2004, U.S. Steel first formally offered the 1,108 acres at a cut rate of $7 million, when it was appraised at about $16.5 million. The corporation offered an additional $1 million in money to begin the fund to build the park.
It is estimated it could cost as much as $30 million to $40 million over many years to complete park construction, depending on what amenities the public chooses. Under discussion have been multiple trails, ballfields, an interpretive trail showing the mining history, a pond and other things. Leaders have agreed to begin simply, with one large loop trail, so that it doesn’t take years to get the public into the park.
Leaders say, they are ready to just cut loose the thousands of volunteers who have signed up to pull weeds, whack through old trails and do other work on the land. None of that was possible until the Red Mountain commission, a state entity, owned the land.
Jones said the ability to work on the land and actually offer jobs to eager volunteers will be a huge boost for the thousands of loyal members of the Friends of Red Mountain group.
“It’s hard to get people fired up about something you don’t have any control over, you can’t go on, you know, you can’t go on the property,” he said.
The deal to buy the park began with a county land trust, now called the Freshwater Land Trust, when Jones was chairing that group’s board. Wendy Jackson, the executive director of the land trust, said the funding was the most extreme rollercoaster she has experienced in her years of nonprofit land purchases.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had too much money appropriated or pledged to have it disappear and come back,” she said.
At first, the money seemed to be pouring in for an obviously popular idea. The Freshwater Land Trust quickly got promises of more than $1.4 million from Congress and $7 million from Jefferson County.
The Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham began raising funds for the park. The Friends of Red Mountain Park, formed from volunteers who walked in off the street and asked to help, started a Web page and raised $10,000.
But as quickly as the group found the money, it began to melt away. Congress cut all ear-marked allocations for this year, wiping out the federal money. Earlier this year Jefferson County reneged on its pledge. This summer the county agreed to a lowered donation of $4.5 million, after the County Commission realized it had a signed contract with the land trust.
When U.S. Steel’s deadline fell in December 2006, the group didn’t have the cash. No one could say much more than that the Red Mountain group still intended to buy the land. A U.S. Steel official said his company wasn’t in any rush to enforce the deadline and had faith in the park boosters to buy the land later.
The group is hoping to get some money from some of the once-pledged federal sources in the new budget year as well as money from the Community Foundation’s drive to raise money from a variety of sources, including local corporations. With all that, officials say they expect to be able to pay the rest of the $7 million purchase price in February.
EMAIL: kbouma@bhamnews.com
