Williamson High School is a step closer to having an on-campus football stadium.

The Mobile County Board of Commissioners on Monday approved a plan to proceed with the leasing of property next to the school from the City of Mobile for the eventual construction of the stadium. The plan is subject to possible restrictions on the use of property from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, though that seems to be only a small hurdle.

“We’ve reached a lease agreement with the City of Mobile to lease the land,” MCPSS director of communications Rena Philips said. “That is pretty common in this situation. The next hurdle is that HUD is involved, so we do have to get their approval, but we will go ahead as superintendent (Chresal) Threadgill stated and get started with the architectural plans and those things. Hopefully, as soon as HUD approves it, we can get started.”

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Williamson has traditionally played most of its football games at Ladd-Peebles Stadium, which is located just across the street from the school.

“Eventually, it is going to happen,” school board president Sherry McDade said of the new stadium. “We are working really, really hard to make sure the school, the alumni, the students, everyone will have an on-campus stadium. We voted a year ago that we wanted all of our inner-city schools to have stadiums and we wanted them on our campus so we could monitor them and make sure the feeder schools in the area could be a part as well.

“We ran into some hurdles, but we have overcome those. Each time an obstacle occurs, we come in and we clean it up. Right now, we are just waiting on information from HUD so we can use that parcel of land so we can break ground at Williamson and satisfy the people in the community, the administrative team and the players. … It’s going to happen sooner than we can all imagine.”

MCPSS is nearing completion on its new on-campus stadiums at Vigor, B.C. Rain, LeFlore and Davidson. Philips said Vigor and LeFlore would have grand openings in mid-May. Vigor is scheduled to play McGill-Toolen in a spring game on May 20. She said Davidson and B.C. Rain likely would have grand openings this summer, but all four would be ready for football this fall.

“It’s tremendously good for the schools because football funds all other sports,” commissioner Reginald Crenshaw said. “Now that every school except for Murphy – and we are working on that as well – will have a stadium on campus or near campus it will have a good economic impact on the school and the community. It’s something that has been coming. Also, we’ve agreed to put artificial turf on the existing stadiums that don’t yet have it.”

The Murphy campus is landlocked by surrounding neighborhoods in downtown Mobile. That has been the main issue with a possible stadium there.

“There has been some discussion about taking their old practice field,” Crenshaw said. “I just don’t think there is enough space there. We will just have to see what happens. The money is earmarked for it. We just have to find the space. We may have to find some land as close to the school as possible that the city owns or we own, but we are working on it.”

Philips said she didn’t know if Williamson and Murphy would play home games again at Ladd this year as they did in 2022.

“We are not sure yet, but we will have options with four new stadiums,” she said.

Mary G. Montgomery, Baker, Alma Bryant, Theodore, Blount and Citronelle already have on-campus stadiums.