DECATUR, Ala. — This morning, city leaders, officials and community gathered to share in the economic progress of Decatur during the State of the City. Jabob Lander, Council President shared how you can tell a city's identity by just looking at their bank account. "You know, every city, every community should have an identity, and when they ask us, 'what are you known for', we ought to be able to answer that."
Decatur’s economic progress in the past year paints a story of city’s journey to finding its identity and with many new and exciting things happening in the city, a new sense of identity is being found. We've always been big on recreation and community," Mayor Tab Bowling shares. "It goes back to that leadership and making those things happen and we like to come together and have fun."
Rewind 50 years and Decatur was the topic of recreation. "So, about 50 years ago, we were known for recreation," Ladner shares. "Our mayor flew to Germany to figure out how to build the first wave pool in the United States, that's vision. We were the first community to have these kinds of multiple rec centers all throughout the community to serve different parts of the community, that is now an outdated model, but then it was visionary. No one else was doing that and then we didn't do anything for several decades and everybody caught up to us and they passed us."
Decatur will soon get back to what they were previously known for as they revealed two projects that highlight the recreational experience.
35 million approved for parks and recreation.
35 million was approved by the city to improve and enhance current parks in the area including Wilson Morgan Park. "We are replacing the aqua dome recreation center as well as ball fields," Bowling shares. "Our new recreation center will be a rec center to include a natatorium, offices and then a master plan for the Wilson Morgan Park. In addition to that, we'll have new softball fields with artificial surfaces out by Austin high school and then we will come back and make some improvements to Point Mallard to include pickleball, which is a new sport, I say new sport, it's a sport that everyone is really enjoying."
New riverfront development officially approved.
The city approved a new riverfront development near Ingalls Harbor that will be similar to the one in Guntersville and build by the same developer. "So, we approved the incentive package in an agreement with Mr. Lawler, Ingles Harbor LLC this week, including a land deal we did in a special called meeting yesterday," councilman Kyle Dukes Pike shares. "I believe the next step for him is going to be TVA approval. From there we'll see a development plan and after the development plan, think we'll will approve that. It's got to go through the planning commission as well, but once we approve that, we should be seeing construction."
An update to the bridge study
Decatur will conduct a bridge study to address traffic concerns many residents have at the intersection near 6th street. Mayor Bowling says in order for this study to be successful, the city must prove it can address and correct the problems. " We're going to be looking at where the primary route is recommended as a result of the study and then what are the alternate routes that are to be considered," Bowling shares. "The main thing is, is that we have to be able to prove that we can fix the problems. We have a couple of problems. We have problem at the "Y" and then we have a problem at the Wilson Street intersection. Whenever you come into the city, those things have to be fixed."
