Neal Embry
Mayor Ashley Curry, left, presents the Flag Day proclamation to Roy Brook, who displays the U.S. flag around the Birmingham area.
The next step in the Cahaba Heights athletic fields portion of the Community Spaces plan was taken at the June 10 Vestavia Hills City Council meeting, as the council unanimously approved the bid for the construction work.
Ken Upchurch with TCU Consulting Services told the council that bids came in lower than expected, allowing some alternate plans to be included. Ultimately, the low bid went to Stone Building LLC, whose base bid was $5,614,000. The company’s bid package included alternate bids for batting cages, lower-level parking, artificial turf and a dog park, which were all approved for a total cost of roughly $6.4 million, which is within the constraints of the city’s budget for the project, City Manager Jeff Downes said.
The new fields will be for the entire community, not just baseball, and they should address the drainage and facility issues which exist at the current fields.
Other designs include a graded slope which will include a walking trail that will not require handrails. Concessions will be on the ground floor, included in a two-story fieldhouse. A recently-approved land swap between the city and the Vestavia Hills Board of Education transferred the property on which the fields will be built to the city.
The council also approved two separate annexations, one 90-day and one overnight, of property adjacent to the Vestavia Hills Elementary Dolly Ridge campus, which is owned by the Thompson family, which is in discussions with the board of education to sell the property to the school, to be used for overflow parking at the school, which will join the system in the 2019-20 school year.
An agreement between the city and PREMA Corporation was also approved. Downes said the agreement “supplements” ongoing efforts to find businesses that are not paying business license fees or not paying the correct fees. PREMA will review licenses and ensure that each business is categorized and paying correctly.
In a unanimous “no” vote, except for George Pierce, who was absent from the meeting, the council upheld the prior ruling of the planning and zoning commission to reject the construction of a 9.5-foot tall privacy fence at 1320 Willoughby Road. The existing ordinance allows fences to be built up to eight feet high, thus the homeowners needed a conditional use permit. According to the minutes of the commission’s meeting, the fence was previously constructed without a permit and when Lowe’s built the fence, they used the wrong materials.
The homeowners stated the fence was needed to block out floodlights from their neighbor’s property. The commission, and the council, found that the request did not meet several of the 10 conditions required to approve the permit.
The Exceptional Foundation’s executive director, Tricia Kirk, addressed the council, explaining that the foundation, which provides care for those with special needs, helps more residents from Vestavia Hills than from any other city except for Birmingham. The organization is “stretched at the seams,” she said. Kirk asked the council to budget an additional $7,500 to help the organization in next year’s budget.
In his report, Downes said state Rep. Jim Carns, R-Vestavia Hills, donated $10,000 to the city to be used to construct sidewalks in Cahaba Heights.
The request from Overton Investments to rezone property at 3038 Massey Road from VH RC-1 (condominium residential district) to VH R-9 (planned residential district) was placed on first read, signaling it will be discussed at an upcoming meeting. The developer, Charles Kessler, wants to take the burned 15- condominium unit and turn it into eight townhomes.
