By Michael Dumas

In the last several months, Mobile area residents and visitors alike could see physical work beginning on the landmark Mobile River Bridge, entering the construction phase of a project that has started and stopped several times over nearly 30 years. In early August the anticipated approval was announced for a federal loan considered paramount for the largest transportation project in Alabama history to become a reality. The Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) loan will finance up to 49 percent of the project, which will allow for actual work to begin on the 215-foot-tall cable-stayed bridge, beginning near I-10 and Virginia Street in Mobile.

Once those efforts begin in earnest, they will validate the diligent, decades-long advocacy of dozens of public leaders and private citizens. This effort dates to the late 1990s, when the Mobile Chamber created the Build the Bridge Coalition under the leadership of then-President and CEO Win Hallett.

The Coalition was necessitated by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s mid-1990s finding of severe volume overload on the existing I-10 stretch through Mobile and Baldwin counties, specifically the Bayway and the Wallace Tunnel. Originally designed to carry an average of 35,000 vehicles per day, these routes routinely saw double that volume, topping 100,000 on holidays. The resulting gridlock throughout the summer and on weekends historically overloaded neighboring communities, such as the Eastern Shore, where U.S. 98 regularly grinds to a halt around the I-10 interchange.

This challenge prompted direct intervention by the Mobile Chamber. And at the coalition’s inception, Hallett had one man in mind to lead it. Enter Mike Lee, president and CEO of Mobile-based Page & Jones, a maritime logistics firm in operation since 1892. As early as 1997, at Hallett’s urging, Lee began meeting with maritime executives – from shipbuilders to stevedores – working to develop a broad coalition of support.

“No good deed goes unpunished,” joked Lee in a recent interview with the Chamber. “They said that since I’d helped so much with all those maritime companies, would I like to head the Bridge Coalition?”

By accepting the role, Lee began what continues to be a near 40-year arc of advocacy and collaboration benefitting a variety of major developments in Gulf Coastal infrastructure and entrepreneurship – including cruise ships, global steel and aerospace investment and much else.

Lee’s coalition-building began in those direct meetings, where he listened to and helped resolve the concerns of operators working alongside Page & Jones around the Port of Mobile. As a veteran businessman, he leveraged compromise and the broad resources of the Chamber to unite business leaders, state and federal officials and key decision-makers to solve the regional transportation crisis.

Over three decades, the bridge proposal evolved through design changes, regulatory hurdles and shifts in local, state and federal administrations. Throughout it all, the Build the Bridge Coalition remained the project’s most consistent anchor. Lee credits Hallett’s vision in leading local delegations through the Mobile Chamber’s Leaders Exchange to cities like Savannah, Georgia, and St. Louis, Missouri, to study how those communities successfully delivered major bridge projects.

The St. Louis trip was especially influential, as it focused on the 4,620-foot-long, cable-stayed Clark Bridge that opened in 1994 and is often referred to as the “Super Bridge.” That structure spans the Mississippi River, connecting Alton, Illinois, to West Alton, Missouri.

“They’d spent 20 years getting their bridge,” Lee said. “It was an interstate bridge, and they told us that one of the things they found useful was that they formed a Build a Bridge Coalition.”

The Mobile Chamber’s Coalition was led by Lee, Hallett and Ginny Russell, who served as the Chamber’s Vice President of Community and Government Affairs. It was Russell who helped coordinate advocacy efforts, communications and organization of all necessary support. The structure was further strengthened by civic leaders, municipal planners, the Mobile Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) and, eventually, the Eastern Shore MPO.

“What a chamber really does is identify where the opportunities are and then try to bring the interested parties together to work to affect the outcome,” Win Hallett said.

Once in motion, Lee says the Coalition knew it needed broad support to succeed.

“I started meeting with associated contractors and road builders, realtor associations, universities like South Alabama, hospital systems, the Port Authority and every single county commissioner and every single mayor in the whole region,” he said. “Once everyone had signed off on supporting the Coalition, then we took those groups with us to Washington, where we met with the highway department, congressional delegations and everybody else.

“All so they could see these are people who carry a huge number of votes.”

The bridge’s path forward adapted to changing political administrations, from early support under Mobile Mayor Mike Dow to Mayor Sandy Stimpson’s pivotal role in keeping the infrastructure plan updated and on schedule as chairman of the MPO.

At its inception, planners proposed as many as 13 sites for the bridge, ranging from Dauphin Island to the Cochrane-Africatown USA Bridge. Through constructive dialogue with local shipyards, those choices were narrowed to three options near the city center (labeled A, B, and C). According to Lee, when ground is broken later this year, the final design will utilize the ‘B Prime’ route, which is reflected in current architectural renderings.

While funding is always a challenge for projects of this scale, organizers point out how the projected cost has ballooned over three decades due to inflation and rising material costs post-pandemic.

Lee notes that delay carries a heavy price tag: “When I started working on this before 2000, the first estimates were $680 million. Now it’s over $3 billion. That is what 27 years of waiting will do.”

The first major funding component came via the Biden Administration in 2024 when a $550 million grant was awarded through the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bridge Investment Program. As for the rest, in conjunction with the recent TIFIA loan announcement, the plan to use tolls to repay the bridge’s construction debt was also unveiled. The new plan is designed to ensure affordable costs for those frequently choosing to use the new bridge, as well as the restriped Bayway, which will be expanding to three lanes in each direction.

Commuters using ALGO Passes to cross between the western and eastern shores of Mobile Bay will pay $3 each way. Meanwhile, existing toll-free alternatives, including the Wallace Tunnel, Bankhead Tunnel, Causeway and Cochrane-Africatown USA Bridge, will remain free and fully available to motorists.

After nearly 30 years, the Mobile Chamber’s Build the Bridge Coalition has brought this massive project to the edge of groundbreaking. Along the way, it established a highly successful blueprint for regional collaboration. Elected chairman of the Chamber’s Board of Directors in 2002, Lee later chaired the Cruise Task Force, helping realize Mayor Dow’s vision of bringing a cruise terminal to the Port City in 2004.

“Growing up, all I heard about Mobile was its ‘perpetual potential,” Lee said. “And then we made it over the hump at some point, and it seems like we’ve had success after success after success.”

This collaborative approach has since helped Mobile secure Carnival Cruise Line and successfully navigate industrial shifts, such as pivoting after losing the KC-46 tanker contract to land Airbus’s largest North American assembly plant, which now employs thousands at the Brookley Aeroplex.

“When it comes to economic development, international trade and all-around support for the port, we’ve built some really strong coalitions,” Lee said. “The groups we are able to pull together so fast – that are so effective and so experienced – it’s hard to match that anywhere in the state.”