After Topgolf shanked on minority- and women-owned participation in construction, Birmingham terminated tax i – AL.com

Topgolf, the national chain of high-tech driving range and entertainment venues, was coming to Birmingham. In December 2016, the company, along with St. Louis-based ARCO Murray Construction Inc., signed an inclusion agreement with the City of Birmingham with a goal of 30 percent participation by minority- and women-owned firms in the construction of the huge facility on land lying just east of the Birmingham-Jefferson County Convention Center.

As an incentive, the city, in a separate project agreement, promised Top Golf a minimum annual payment of $228,000, or 30 percent of sales tax revenue, up to a cap of $1.5 million, to meet the goal.

Apparently, Topgolf and ARCO Murray shanked.

In a letter to Topgolf dated May 28, 2019, and obtained by AL.com, Birmingham mayor Randall Woodfin revealed Topgolf and Arco Murray, based on its own documentation, had spent $601,919.99 with minority- and women-owned firms to complete the $24.6 million project$17.1 million of which was building costs, while $7.5 was listed as other related costs.

That calculated to be 3.52 percent of construction costs spent with minority firms, and 2.5 percent of total project costs, the letter outlined.

Topgolf and ARCO Murray did not come close to meeting those goals, Woodfin wrote.

As a result, the city terminated its project agreement with Topgolf and ARCO Murray and did not pay the incentive.

my administration, the mayor continued, has determined that Topgolf and ARCO Murray have failed to demonstrate any substantial level of effort to comply with the expectations represented by Top Golf in its project agreement with the City of Birmingham. Therefore, we are terminating the agreement.

AL.com reached out to Topgolf for comment and is awaiting a reply.

Our city has been relatively aggressive in identifying and providing incentives to businesses that are a good fit for Birmingham, says Clinton Woods, Birmingham District 1 City Councilor. "But in doing so it is imperative that we ensure that those businesses hold up their end of the bargain and in the instances where they dont, we must hold them accountable. Going forward I am very optimistic that Topgolf will continue to be a major attraction in our city.

On Tuesday, nearly a year later, the Birmingham City Council passed the mayors proposal to re-allocate the $228,000 slated for Topgolf in the citys FY20 budget as part of a $1 million investment in the second component of the Bham Strong stimulus package to support workers who have lost their jobs, while solving public health problems created by COVID-19, according to a presentation made to the councils Budget and Finance Committee on Monday afternoon.

The remainder of the $1 million is funded with $499,000 from the Office of Innovation and Economic Opportunity, along with $215,000 previously budgeted for a similar incentive agreement with the restaurant Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen, which expired because the payout reached its cap amount; and $58,000 allocated for tax incentives to be paid to Brat Brot, which were deemed unachievable based on sales.

The initial arm of Bham Strong is a $2.4 million small business fund created to provide emergency low-interest loans to Birmingham businesses to help them weather the impact of the citys shelter-in-place ordinance created last month to help stem the spread of the novel coronavirus. As of late Monday, the virus has infected 597 people in Jefferson County and resulted in 15 deaths, according to the Alabama Department of Public Health.

The second component is the Birmingham Strong Service Corps. It provides paid volunteer opportunities to laid-off Birmingham workers to help fill needs bourn of the COVID-19 crisis. Among them: working call centers that check on residents of Birminghams 14 public housing communities, scanning for citizens that may be suffering symptoms of the virus (city says it has made 8,476 calls); providing rides to testing centers for residents without access to the facilities (in vehicles specially designed to protect the driver and passenger); and helping to feed Birmingham children who are out of school and the homeless.

Related: Bham Strong now accepting job applications

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated and thus pulled back the veil on a wide variety of pre-existing disparities in our community, said District 5 City Councilor Darrell OQuinn. If convenient access to quality transportation, food, healthcare, education, etc. were difficult before, imagine how much more of a challenge those things are now with formalized social distancing as a result of Coronavirus.

Nearly 100 unemployed workers have already been redeployed to paid opportunities that support community needs, according to the Bham Strong presentation. These pilot projects are having a community impact while putting people back to work.

Every dollar will go in the pockets of Birmingham residents, reads the item on the councils Tuesday agenda, either as payment for service, food or other necessities.

This story will be updated.

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After Topgolf shanked on minority- and women-owned participation in construction, Birmingham terminated tax i - AL.com