Tag Archives: Birmingham

Council committee to consider Fire Station No. 22 sale

IMG_3168. JCMcdavid/FlickrToday’s Birmingham City Council Budget and Finance committee meeting is possibly going to be a little more crowded than usual.

The committee meeting takes place at 4 p.m. on the 3rd floor Birmingham City Hall in its administrative wing. Among the items on today’s agenda is a contract to sell the former Fire Station No. 22 to a developer who wants to replace the Spanish Revival structure with a Walgreens. The Birmingham News reports that the property is currently being offered by the city for $200,000.

The fact that the contract has not been approved as of yet by the City Council may partially explain why the presentation made to the city’s Design Review Committee was conceptual on April 29.

Citizens upset with the decision have turned to FacebookTwitter and blog posts in hopes that City Councilors would listen to “constructive alternatives” to the current proposal. The committee’s recommendation will be considered by the full council, which must still make a decision on the matter.

Photo: IMG_3168. JCMcdavid/Flickr

Time to visit the Real Housewives of Birmingham

Real Housewives of Birmingham cover - May 2010The current issue of Real Housewives of Birmingham has been unveiled. You’ve got to click the link we just shared to check it out, since it’s an online only publication.

Its creators describe the site on its Twitter profile as a “Birmingham, AL webazine for the housewives and workwives of the metro area.”

The publication includes features and a monthly events calendar.

Last night they sent out a tweet suggesting that they wanted to collect 500 hits before Mother’s Day this weekend. It sounds like a realistic goal – and a great excuse to head on over to the site and check it out.

Screenshot from realhousewivesbham.com.

Π is nice

Terminal bday logoToday, The Terminal turns Pi (or 3.14). I’d be using the symbol but our font of choice is being finicky. There are so many things going on this evening that my game plan is to head over to The Bottletree by 4 p.m. (probably sooner) and hang out for a while. Hopefully you’ve got a moment to stop by and say hello.

On a related topic, there has never been a reader’s poll for The Terminal, though it was becoming obvious that we needed to conduct one. Thankfully, the folks at the Reynolds Journalism Institute would like for our readers to participate in this user survey specific to the site. The results submitted by our visitors will be supplied to us and included in an overall study of online local news sites.

I’d ask that you be as honest as humanly possible as it’s part of a plan to determine how best to serve the folks traveling along with us and how this site can best serve you. I’ve got some other thoughts about it and the whole local media ecosystem over on my Birmingham today.

Anyone interested in photowalking?

Birmingham Skyline, Southern Pixel/FlickrThere seems to be a renewed interest in capturing snapshots of Birmingham’s daily activities. Scott Schablow has recently tweeted about wanting to reorganize a lunchtime photowalking group (contact him directly if you’re interested) while the Magic City Flickr Group started sharing their photo of the day via the popular microblogging network.

We’re even using the photos submitted via Flickr to our Terminal Flickr Group as part of our Late Arrivals post at the end of the day (we’re adding another way to submit photos to the site tomorrow). There are several photo blogs in metro Birmingham as well – so why not add the names and URLs of those sites to the comments section…

Photo: Birmingham Skyline. Southernpixel/Flickr

Late arrivals

Mirrors

Arrest announced: Prosecutors announced early this morning that they were filing capital murder charges against 27 year old Joacquas Haywood of Irondale related to the disappearance of Nadia Kersh eighteen months ago. Kersh’s mother shared her thoughts on the development via the Internet this afternoon.

Cost cutting: The Birmingham News reports that the Birmingham Board of Education narrowly approved a plan submitted by new school superintendent Craig Witherspoon that eliminates 40 admin positions. The superintendent sounded confident as he spoke with Fox 6 after the special meeting concluded.

Star drops by: Today City Councilors got a surprise visit from actor Wesley Snipes during their weekly meeting. He informed the councilors and those watching that his next film would be made in Alabama. According to The New York Timeshe’s got a few that are in the works

Photo: Mirrors. Kevin Worley/Flickr

Metro Birmingham’s newest team is 1-1

Birmingham Steel logoIt makes sense for us to have a sports team in metro Birmingham named Steel.

The minor league basketball team is the fifth and newest member of the Continental Basketball League. They play their home games just up the road at Leeds High School.

They also just recorded their first home win (and their first win of the season) last night over the Wilmington Sea Dogs of North Carolina, 114-102.

Their first road game of the season is on Sunday in Savannah, GA.

On the agenda: Sloss and travel

There are really two items on this week’s Birmingham City Council agenda that may be of significant interest to you:

Item 24 allows Alabama Power the right to do the necessary work to power Sloss Furnaces‘ proposed (and long-awaited) visitors center. It’s currently on consent.

Item 36 is an interesting one on today’s agenda. It is a resolution to pay no more than $2,000 to the Neighborhoods USA Conference taking place in Little Rock, AR later this month.

Based on the late registration fee for the conference, this allocation would cover the costs of no more than 10 delegates’ attendance and would not include transportation to and from the conference. Birmingham historically sends the largest delegation to the conference (it normally includes a representative from each of the city’s 99 neighborhoods). Several of our previous mayors have tried to reduce the number of delegates attending so that the money spent on that trip could instead be used for neighborhood projects. Neighborhoods normally used their allocated funds to cover the registration costs of the trip.