A mural tribute to Major League Baseball legend and Mobile native Hank Aaron was covered up earlier this month, after the city of Mobile learned that the property owner, who commissioned the mural, did not receive the proper permission to paint the mural.

“I learned a long time ago to separate myself from my work emotionally,” E. Allen Warren, the artist, said. “The people of Mobile are out one really great mural.”

Warren was painting the mural on the front of a forthcoming self-storage facility, All Season Storage, on St. Louis Street in downtown Mobile. Warren said he had only two more hours of work on the mural when he received a call from the principal of the facility, Mike Birnbrey, that the city had ordered work to stop on the mural.

Warren says he asked Birnbrey to leave the mural up and to try to work with the city. But Birnbrey wanted to open the facility as quickly as possible. After Warren refused to paint over the mural, Birnbrey had his contractors cover the artwork with white paint.

Brinbrey says he wasn’t aware that he needed to obtain any permits from the city for the artwork. He considered applying for a zoning variance in order to leave the mural up but didn’t want to delay the opening of the storage facility, which he says will be in early October.