By Prioleau Alexander

Editor’s note: This column appeared recently in the Huntsville Real-Time News  coordinated by Doug Martinson. I think it’s important for people in Birmingham to know what ‘s going on with our Alabama neighbor to the North.

Residents of Huntsville, Alabama don’t understand how much they have—and as a result, how much they have to lose.

As a native of Charleston, SC, I grew up in a city far more like Huntsville today than the place I call home.

While travel magazines conduct polls every year to declare Charleston the number one tourist destination in the world (yes, I said “world”), one should note the importance of the world “visitors.” To natives, the city is an unrecognizable disgrace.

Charleston was “discovered” in 1989 after Hurricane Hugo crushed it… oddly enough, because insurance money came into the economy. Those magnificent homes in the historic district weren’t trophy homes then—they were much closer to an inherited family curse. No one had the money to maintain them, and the city was the world’s greatest example of blue-blood locals “too poor to paint, but too proud to white-wash.”

Once the homes were spruced up a bit, they became desirable to out-of-town money. You could sell a small condo in Manhattan, and buy a trophy home in Charleston. All the locals said, “You’ll pay me how much? Sold!”

No one said ever thought, “Where will I go now?”

Today? The historic district is a place of wall-to-wall tourists, restaurants, bars, fudge shops, t-shirt stores, parking meters, traffic jams, and recently arrived multi-millionaires from the Northeast—who move to Charleston with far more than money. They bring their politics and big-city attitudes, with “wonderful” ideas of how to improve the lives of us uneducated Southerners. You know—like they did it in New York.

Outside Charleston, you’ll find a region that defines urban sprawl hell. Strip malls run for 10 miles in every direction. Hundreds of thousands of people fill soulless developments, where they’ve never met their neighbor. The areas most people consider to be “Charleston”—the Peninsula, West Ashely, James Island, Mt. Pleasant and the islands offer a total of zero livable homes under $700,000.

Not downtown. Not swanky. A two-bedroom/two bath home ranch. To put it in Huntsville perspective, image standing downtown… and envision the cheapest home within 20 minutes selling for $700,000.

Don’t cry for me—us native Charlestonians have no one to blame but ourselves. We opened Pandora’s Box of quick money, and got what we deserve.

On the other hand, there’s Huntsville.

Huntsville today is in what I would consider the sweetest of sweet spots. Big enough. Prosperous enough. Beautiful sporting facilities. A proper downtown with a vibrant and fun culture. Gorgeous parks. Traffic flows. People speak on the street. Untold numbers of real neighborhoods alive with friendships. Access to water and raw nature. Sidewalk cafes. Breweries. The Rocket City Trash Pandas. Von Braun Civic Center. Museums. A reasonably sized airport. A city that takes pride in itself.

Huntsville should have a raucous celebration every year where residents gather to simply thank the current and pasts Mayors and City Council members for the miracles they’ve worked. You simply don’t understand what they’ve done here—and hopefully never will.

What now for Huntsville?

Stop. For the love of everything holy, stop before it’s too late.

You need to be rabid in your protection of what you have. Be obnoxiously disruptive when the developers arrive with their bulldozers. Fund an organization to file endless lawsuits. Force relocating business behemoths to build least 20 miles away. Become curmudgeons who hate change.

Consider this: The Charleston region is now home to Volvo, Mercedes, and Boeing. What? Who thought, “You know what Charleston needs? To be the new Detroit.”

The same tired lies were used by Charleston politicians every step of the way, chief among them being, “Think about how many good well-paying jobs it will create!”

Here’s how many existing residents got those jobs: Zero.

Do you think Boeing thought, “We need a guy with a PhD in aeronautical wing design. But he has to be from Charleston!”

Of course not. All of those jobs were filled by experienced professionals who moved here. The two-decade building boom has been worked by craftsmen who moved here. The hospitality industry is staffed by people who moved here. Sure, the booming growth has been good for the tax base, and allowed politicians to build monuments to themselves, but the growth itself has been a massive net negative. Nothing gets better for residents when economic grow equals nothing more than population growth.

What does a conservative guy like me have to say about land owners property rights? That’s a tough one—but if there’s a political body that can get ahead of it legally, it’s yours. Zone the living hell out of everything. Prohibit new construction above three stories within 10 miles of downtown. Get your lawyers to crafted scaled impact fees, allowing you to make your city financially prohibitive to the industries you don’t want.

The only thing standing between Huntsville residents and this coming quality of life apocalypse is your mayor and city council—believe me, concerned citizens can’t stop venture-capitalist-funded developers who want to pave the Big Spring International Park and put up an Obama Presidential Library knock off. The only people who can do that is your elected representatives, who need to start their zoning blitzkrieg today.

Y’all have an amazing, beautiful city. I’d say priceless, but priceless is a word only you can define for yourself.

If Charleston wasn’t the home of my entire family, and friends I’ve known since kindergarten, I’d move here. Yesterday.

But, dear reader, what will you do when someone knocks on your door and offers you double what your home is currently appraised for? Triple?

I can tell you what we said in Charleston. I can tell you what every single one of us wishes we’d said.

Because in the end, the question shouldn’t be phrased as, “Should I sell?”

The question should always be, “If I sell, where will I go?”

Prioleau Alexander is a non-fiction humorist and the author of four books. More of his writings can be explored at TypingForBeerMoney.com.

David Sher is the founder and publisher of ComebackTown.  He’s past Chairman of the Birmingham Regional Chamber of Commerce (BBA), Operation New Birmingham (REV Birmingham), and the City Action Partnership (CAP).

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