Mayor lauds business community’s recovery
The newly built Hoo’s Q barbecue restaurant was built on the lot that previously housed Mike & Ed’s barbecue, which was destroyed in the April 27, 2011, tornado.Dusty Compton | Tuscaloosa News
Published: Saturday, April 27, 2013 at 3:30 a.m.
Last Modified: Friday, April 26, 2013 at 11:11 p.m.
TUSCALOOSA | Customers inside the new Krispy Kreme on McFarland Boulevard can stand along a glass wall and watch doughnuts being made at a rate of up to 270 dozen an hour.
Or they could glance outside, where a different type of progress is occurring.
Across McFarland, construction workers are finishing the $100 million Lofts of City Center, a new project that mixes student housing with some small shops and restaurants. It stands where the former Wood Square Shopping Center once stood. Up the street stands the new Mattress King, and a few doors down is a new CVS pharmacy.
It’s all part of the rebuilding that has occurred during the past two years in the city’s tornado recovery zone.
There are other newly built businesses, including restaurants, a bank, gym and an oil change shop — all near 15th Street and McFarland, a major commercial artery for Tuscaloosa and an area some called ground zero after the April 27, 2011, tornado that in just six minutes altered the face of Tuscaloosa forever.
Two years later, there has been much progress, but scars remain.
Behind the Krispy Kreme and the new Full Moon Bar-B-Que are blocks of empty lots. A badly damaged and boarded-up gas station remains at the intersection of 15th and McFarland. Up 15th Street, just west of Forest Lake, a former medical clinic has yet to be torn down. All are reminders of the worst tragedy ever to hit Tuscaloosa.
The tornado destroyed 12 percent of the city, killed dozens, injured hundreds and left hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage.
In the weeks after the storm, ruins and debris marked the tornado’s path. A major clean-up got started almost immediately. Then in the weeks after the tornado, new construction began.
“I am very pleased where we are right now. In the last year, we have made extraordinary progress, and in the next two to three years, it will be amplified even further,” said Mayor Walt Maddox. “There were more than 360 businesses that were impacted (by the tornado), and a third of them did not conform with federal, state and local (building) codes.”
That posed a major challenge for rebuilding. Many of the heavily damaged buildings were more than 40 years old. They were grandfathered in when building codes changed and had not been required to upgrade. But when more than 50 percent of a building is destroyed, it cannot be restored to the way it was. By law, it has to be rebuilt to meet existing building codes.
Many affected business owners did not understand that. Maddox said one thing the city learned from the disaster was the need to have an ombudsman to help the business community to rebuild.
“We should have done a better job of communicating with them early on,” he said. “I believe that the things that could have been done differently, we are now doing and that is putting someone in charge of dealing with the business community.”
Last year, the city hired Brendan Moore as its development ombudsman to work with the businesses, particularly those building in the tornado recovery zone.
Some businesses locating in the recovery zone are new to the area, such as the Which Wich restaurant. Moore said that in the coming months there will be more, including more that are new to the market.
As for rebuilding in the recovery zone, the city of Tuscaloosa issued 333 commercial building permits between the tornado and mid-March 2013, Moore said. Those permits represent about $142 million worth of new construction.
But some destroyed businesses relocated outside the tornado zone. Big Lots and Hobby Lobby, two of the larger retailers lost in the storm, reopened in Northport, and Tuesday Morning plans to do the same later this year. All three were tenants in Wood Square Shopping Center, which was destroyed in the tornado.
La Rocca Nursing Home on 38th Street was damaged beyond repair. It is building a new facility at Capstone Village outside the tornado recovery zone.
Other businesses rebuilt but under new names. After the tornado destroyed the franchised Mike & Ed’s barbecue restaurant on 15th Street, its owner rebuilt as an independent barbecue restaurant, Hoo’s Q, which is planned to open today.
And some destroyed businesses, including restaurants like Milo’s, Chuck E. Cheese and Steak-Out, have not returned.
Officials at their corporate offices could not be reached for comment.
Other businesses, such as Spiller Furniture, which lost its store in Alberta, had other stores in the Tuscaloosa area to serve customers.
In looking at the business progress, Maddox said it is where he expected it to be two years later. But the progress has not yet peaked or plateaued, he said.
“The trajectory will be significant in what we will see in the years to come,” he said.
“I think you will see more good things coming in the area of McFarland and 15th Street in the next 12-15 months. There is more opportunity. I think you will see investors and developers coming into the area,” he said.
Alberta, whose business and residential areas took a heavy hit in the tornado, might take longer to fully redevelop.
Much of its infrastructure was destroyed or in need of major repair. Maddox said redevelopment there will be spurred once the state transportation department rebuilds the University Boulevard bridge over Kicker Road, which should be completed within the next two years.
“We have overcome so much and we are really poised with coming infrastructure improvements” to see that area redevelop commercially and residentially, he said.
“The future is extremely bright because we took the time to improve our infrastructure and do it right,” Maddox said. “We took the time to build it back and build it right and to do it with improved infrastructure that will help our community to be better and prosper for years to come.”
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