What will Mobile’s new Africatown Welcome Center look like? The answer to that multimillion-dollar question came a step closer Thursday evening, as the city held the first in a series of open meetings to gather public input on the project.

Among points of interest: A representative of Mott MacDonald, the lead company on the design contract, said the company hopes construction will begin before year’s end.

Broadly speaking, the city’s approach seems to parallel the series of public meetings it held to shape the design of its planned Brookley by the Bay Park. In that case, the first meeting gathered a wish list of features people wanted in the park, the second outlined two options and the third presented a master vision that combined elements of the two. This was later released as a master plan.

At this meeting on the Africatown project, representatives of Mott MacDonald introduced some conceptual points of discussion: Should the building be designed to blend into and reflect its landscape, or to stand out for maximum impact as a landmark? Should its geometry mimic the rooflines of the homes lined along nearby neighborhood streets, or might its lines curve to evoke the hull of the Clotilda? How will it balance the capacity to accommodate the hoped-for volume of tourists, while also offering intimate, meditative spaces for individuals seeking a spiritual connection with history?

Mobile Councilman William Carroll encouraged those present to take a long-term view.

“To me, architecture is extremely precious,” Carroll said. “I deal with buildings every day, I design and build them, houses, residential structures, commercial buildings. But the one thing about architecture is that it’s one of the few things that last a long time. … As we go through this process and we think about what we’d like this building to be like, what we’d like it to look like, think about not just now and today but think about a hundred years from now. How you, at this point in time, would like to see us remembered based on our architecture. Based on our culture. Based on what we know. And based on the fact that we want to project that into the future, so that when people see it a hundred years from now, they’ll look at it and instantly realize there’s a story to be told.”

Africatown has been without a Welcome Center since Hurricane Katrina damaged the old one in 2005. That lack of a point of entry for visitors has become more and more conspicuous as events have made Africatown the subject of greater national and international interest. The wreckage of the slave ship Clotilda was confirmed found in 2019, and the award-winning documentary “Descendant,” released in 2022, broadened awareness that the survivors of the ship’s final voyage founded a unique community near Mobile.

A smaller Heritage House museum is expected to open this summer after delays. But the Welcome Center, with the city contributing to a budget of about $6 million, will be bigger and will be built specifically to introduce visitors to the community. The city says it will “serve as a central hub for future historical and cultural tourism sites that will help share the story of Africatown.”

In the time years that Africatown has been without a welcome center, the Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery have risen not just as monuments giving suppressed history its due but as destinations for cultural tourism. To many of Africatown’s supporters, they serve as an example that Mobile has the opportunity to emulate.

Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson touched on that hope as he spoke early in Thursday night’s gathering at the Robert Hope Community Center.

“This is our shot, our chance to get it right,” said Stimpson. “If you think of the millions of people that come to Montgomery, looking at the EJI, every single one of those people will want to come to Africatown. And what are they going to see when they get here? The first thing that almost every one of them will go to is the welcome center.”

Stimpson said he felt “some embarrassment … that we haven’t already gotten this done.”

Much of the project’s funding comes through the RESTORE Act, which allocated penalties and fines collected from companies involved in the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster. Hundreds of millions of dollars in major projects were funded, but the process has proven unexpectedly complex as state and local governments have worked to meet requirements set by the federal agencies overseeing the money.

“The initial money came several years ago through RESTORE funding,” said Stimpson. “When that money was received, there was so much excitement about this project going forward. … Nobody realized how long every single RESTORE project would take to get done.”

Local officials have voiced concern about how the slow pacing has affected other projects, including $10 million going to expand Mobile’s Three Mile Creek Greenway and $30 million to revamp a harbor in Bayou La Batre. In recent weeks, as the Mobile County Commission moved to formally accept the money for the Bayou La Batre project, county officials fretted that inflation raised real concern about whether the money would go as far as planned.

Stimpson said that keeping within the anticipated $6 million budget was a priority, but the goal was to build a world-class facility.

On Thursday, attendees were presented with a series of renderings and asked to use stickers to mark features they found promising, or to attach notes. Andrew Marasca, project manager for Mott MacDonald, said he anticipated having a second meeting in about six weeks, at which the firm would present three distinct design concepts.

“We’re going to give you another opportunity to take a look at those concepts and let us know which design you like the best,” he said. “It doesn’t mean that we will go strictly with that design. There might be elements of the other two that you like and would like us to incorporate into the final design.”

A third meeting will show the process partway through the final design process “where you could take a look and just make sure we’re on the right track,” Marasca said. A final, virtual meeting will then show the final design.

During his introductory remarks, Carroll described Thursday’s meeting as “one of the most pleasing things I’ve seen happen in Africatown in a while.”

For more information on the project, email [email protected]. For regular updates on the process, text MOBILEAFRICATOWNWC to 91896.