COLUMN: Unanswered Questions Piling Up About Northport's University Beach Development

*This is an opinion column*

NORTHPORT, AL — Nearly a decade ago I was sitting at my cluttered desk in Birmingham waiting for the live stream to begin for a highly anticipated economic development announcement in Muscle Shoals.

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In February 2015, I was working as the online editor for the Birmingham Business Journal and had been inundated with emails about the mystery project for months. I'll never forget having a couple of colleagues standing around behind me when Bryan K. Robinson announced his intentions to build a $3.5 billion — yes, billion — theme park on 1,400 acres in north Alabama.

We immediately burst into laughter upon hearing the numbers and cackled that there was no way in hell it would ever get off the ground.

How's the old phrase go?

If it sounds too good to be true then it's probably not.

By and by, it should come as little surprise that the project went belly up and Robinson was eventually slapped with a 10-year prison sentence and ordered to pay $7 million in restitution.

Fast-forward to 2024 and I had a similar feeling in my belly when I stood in the drizzling rain outside of a Dollar General reading a public notice about University Beach buried deep in the newspaper.

For those wondering where my coverage has been in the interim, I've made it a staunch point to let the dust settle inside Northport City Hall following the chaos and political shakeup that came in the wake of the City Council entering a public-private partnership for the controversial resort project.

In my professionally qualified view, it was only fair.

As I penned in a past column, one of former Council President Jeff Hogg's final acts before his abrupt resignation was to lead the charge for the city to impulsively enter a binding agreement with developers from Texas on a project that is supposedly expected to bring in $350 million in private investment to what amounts to an empty pasture off of Harper Road.

Regardless of how the project turns out, it would ultimately be Hogg's political undoing.

But following Hogg's decision to step down, I decided to let the figurative guns cool and allow city leaders to get a handle on the power vacuum created by his untimely exit from local politics.

Hogg stepping down came not that long after a similar surprise resignation late in 2022 by former mayor Bobby Herndon, who later told me on the record that he could no longer work with the council with its elected leadership at the time.

Nevertheless, I'm here to shed light on new questions and concerns regarding the contentious project, which has still yet to see a single shovel of dirt moved.

With little to no real transparency from City Hall regarding University Beach, the rumor mill has churned out plenty of topics for water cooler conversations, ranging from a secret plot to build a casino on the property to speculation that Hogg is still pulling the strings from the shadows.

Fortunately — depending on how you look at it — there will be a town hall event hosted by District 5 Councilman Anwar Aiken on July 24 from 5:30 p.m. until 6:30 p.m. at Northport Intermediate School that will offer another public forum for residents to voice their concerns and possibly receive updates on the status of the project.

Aiken was selected by the decidedly pro-resort Council to fill out the remainder of Hogg's unexpired term and it remains unclear exactly where he stands on the issue at present. But to his credit, he's stuck his chin out and met in person with members of the community to hear their concerns and weathered the barbs that've come with it.

Aiken did not respond to a request for comment for this column but said during his interview with the City Council in March: "I don't understand the project. I didn't understand when it happened, I don't know anything and the people don't know anything."

Ahead of the meeting next week, I sat down and, through extensive reporting, formed my own list of questions that have yet to be answered in the hope that those in the community will show up in force to the upcoming Town Hall next week prepared with information to ask the right questions of city leaders.

Questions & Concerns

An interesting yet little-discussed aspect of the project at this stage can be found in the mandated creation of a Cooperative Improvement District (CID).

According to the project agreement, the creation of the CID also includes a provision that will see a board of directors created to govern it. Consisting of four members serving staggered terms, little is known at this point about the makeup of the board or its potential members — members who will be elected by the Northport City Council.

While the creation of the special tax district was approved by the Council with the project agreement, city leaders say they have yet to formally elect its members.

Multiple sources speaking independently of one another to Patch on the condition of anonymity insist that Hogg is actively working to recruit potential members for the University Beach Board of Directors.

These same sources claim that he's dangled incentives to prospective members such as discounts on housing and entertainment, along with large cash payouts once the development opens.

"[R]espectfully, I'm flattered that I am still thought of but can I just be a citizen now? My family has taken enough," Hogg told Patch in a text message when asked about the aforementioned accusations.

To his credit, Hogg responded to numerous direct questions from Patch but offered mixed responses, saying he was involved in discussions regarding the tax district, but insisted other council members were, too.

"[I] couldn't tell you if a board was formed or who the council chose," he said. "I don't even look at council meetings or minutes any longer. I just want to be a citizen."

For the better part of an hour, Hogg refused to provide a direct answer to the accusations but when asked simply if the sources were wrong in saying he was currently working to recruit board members for the tax district, he said: "They are misinformed on me. I am not. You will have to ask the council what they are doing. I don't know."

This is where the red flags start twisting in the wind.

The University Beach Board of Directors will oversee the city's agreed-upon terms of providing developers with half of the proceeds from its city sales and lodging taxes for the property up to $61,058,171 or if the timeline established in the agreement is reached.

This also doesn't include the $20 million already committed by the city for the project — a commitment that far exceeds the funds spent thus far by developers, who acquired the land for $5.4 million and had to borrow $4.47 million from Texas-based PBREI, LLC to get it. It should be pointed out here that the developers must secure $63 million in investment for Phase I of the project to meet the terms of the public-private partnership.

Little else is known about the limited liability corporation that agreed to the loan apart from records filed with the U.S. Small Business Administration that show PBREI received $60,400 from the federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) in April 2020 to protect six jobs in Arlington.

Not exactly JPMorgan Chase, right?

City Administrator Glenda Webb told Patch on Thursday when asked about Hogg's alleged involvement with recruiting for the University Beach Board of Directors: "To my knowledge Council has taken no action to form a district as there has been no agenda items to that effect. As we are currently subject to litigation regarding this issue, I will ask [City Attorney Ron Davis] to respond any further."

If worries over how the tax district will be governed don't raise concerns, then the track record of completed projects of the developers — or, better yet, lack thereof — likely will.

Indeed, Patch reported earlier this year when citizens voiced these concerns, with many placing the focus on the Sapphire Bay development in Rowlett, Texas.

The development remains unfinished and is currently the subject of a federal investigation following a large fire that destroyed an apartment complex that had yet to open to tenants.

It remains unclear if Northport officials ever engaged with their counterparts in Rowlett to gather intelligence about the developers they are now in league with. And while developer Kent Donahue's partner on the project sang his praises ahead of the presentation and vote, very little is known about Donahue's involvement with projects apart from Sapphire Bay and University Beach.

ALSO READ: 'It's Not A Water Park': Developer Discusses Proposed $350M Lagoon Concept For Northport

Another concerning factoid can be found in one specific requirement in the project agreement, which requires the developer to build a destination resort hotel with at least 130 rooms.

Considering its proposed number of rooms, this hotel would be the third largest in Tuscaloosa County in terms of occupancy behind the Embassy Suites in downtown Tuscaloosa, which has 154 rooms and Hotel Capstone with 149.

Never mind that, despite its odd name, it will be the farthest full-service hotel from the UA campus — roughly a 15-minute drive and a river away from Bryant-Denny Stadium.

When considering its mandated occupancy requirements and potential rates, it should also be pointed out that the farther away from the University of Alabama campus a hotel is, the lower the rates are likely to be unless the draw to the hotel is that attractive.

Not to mention this is at a time when every high-end hotel is working to combat decline every month when the Crimson Tide football team isn't drawing thousands to the city for home games.

Indeed, one can only surmise that even during football season and colder months like October and November, such a large hotel at University Beach is unlikely to edge out competing hotels during high-traffic tourism months when it will be too cold for patrons to enjoy the amenities that separate such a hotel from its contemporaries.

Compound this with the fact that the resort's busiest season will most certainly be over the summer months — when school is out and out-of-town families have the time to travel to such destinations. Otherwise, during the rest of the year, it's highly unlikely that residents in the surrounding community will have any interest in staying at a massive on-site hotel when they take their kids to the water park.

Granted, those who support the concept will likely argue that the city's other big wish-list project — a massive youth sports tournament facility adjacent to Kentuck Park and positioned downwind of a sewage treatment plant — is intended to work in tandem with the water park to offer a place to stay and additional amenities for those coming into town for baseball and softball tournaments.

I just hope our valued visitors don't mind the smell on a hot summer day.

But I digress.

The entire development may not be financially anchored by a resort hotel but one can't help but wonder if any of this was considered before the rush to enter such a partnership.

Over the last eight years, Hogg championed the merits and potential economic benefits of a water park for the city but our past reporting showed that it was actually the developers who first approached city leaders with their interest.

Things seemed to have moved quickly from there and came to a head in February when the public was given a week's notice printed in the Tuscaloosa News before the Council voted 4-1 to enter the agreement. The timing and fast-moving dynamics of the project saw many residents begin asking questions of their own about the city's due diligence checking the backgrounds of the out-of-state developers.

This reporter attended the presentation to the Council by developer Kent Donahue and noted that few, if any, questions were asked relating to the credibility of the financial information provided.

As a matter of speculation, some in the community began to wonder if city leaders simply took the developers at their word and impulsively jumped at the chance without doing anything resembling background research.

At this point and as someone who grew up in Northport and chose to live here when I moved back to launch Tuscaloosa Patch, I'm left questioning how much investigative work was carried out before the vote to move forward so quickly on the single-largest economic development project in the city's history — one that, if constructed, would forever change the entire landscape of the surrounding community for better or worse.

Transparency

When it comes to an overarching criticism of how the city has handled such a massive and costly project, look no further than the poor degree of transparency provided to the taxpayers.

The city has benefited at every turn from hiding behind litigation over the project and the people are no more informed on the status of it than they were when it was forced down their throats earlier this year.

Northport resident Tuffy Holland in June filed a civil lawsuit against the City of Northport in Tuscaloosa County Circuit Court seeking to enforce the right to inspect public records after the city allegedly declined to provide certain documents relating to the financials and economic impact of the project.

The city responded to Holland's lawsuit on Thursday, saying that it honored his request despite receiving an additional 10 public records requests following the public hearing on the project in February — an unusually high number for the city's legal department, the court document stated.

The response to the complaint says Holland's request was granted in March.

Still, questions persist regarding the city's response, particularly relating to Holland's request for an economic and fiscal impact analysis of the project. This is where it seems to become a matter of interpretation.

While the city argues that it has complied with state open records laws and cites Holland's requests for specific documents, this reporter has yet to see any of them, much less on the city's website where they should be readily available to the public.

Indeed, the only document relating to University Beach that can be easily found on the city's website on its public notices landing page is the extraordinarily vague PowerPoint presentation given by Donahue earlier this year.

This could mean several things considering the legally bound confidentiality cited by city leaders regarding the massive project. But the most concerning hypothetical is that the city simply doesn't have any such economic impact studies provided by the developers — a notion Holland contends in his lawsuit.

In over a decade of journalism across three states, I can't remember a single project of this scale other than DreamVision in Muscle Shoals where there wasn't a single feasibility study offered to the public before the governing body voted to move forward on it.

Regardless of what side you may be on, this is arguably the most troubling uncertainty that's surfaced in the last few months and the radio silence from City Hall signals the possibility that the figure of $350 million in capital investment could very well be a number pulled out of thin air for the sole sake of getting city leaders in bed with the developers.

As I've written more times than I can count, my sincere hope is that I'm wrong in my longstanding criticism of such a massive project with so little meat on the bone.

This isn't Mercedes-Benz U.S. International committing to Tuscaloosa in the 1990s but the scale of the proposed development and the economic incentives package offered to University Beach by Northport is on par with its scope.

If I'm flat wrong, then the city will benefit, the development will be a shining gem for the entire metro and I hope with my entire being that's the case.

But if I'm even partly right, University Beach could end up a financial albatross that dangles around our necks for years to come.

Have a news tip or suggestion on how I can improve Tuscaloosa Patch? Maybe you're interested in having your business become one of the latest sponsors for Tuscaloosa Patch? Email all inquiries to me at ryan.phillips@patch.com