Mod Mobilian |  Notes on Mobile Businesses

Notes on Mobile Businesses

Mobile Businesses

  • The Mitchell Company is a real estate development company based in Mobile
  • International Shipholding Inc. moved its new corporate headquarters from New Orleans to the RSA Battle House Tower in Mobile in 2007. 
    • The company was founded as Central Gulf Steamship Corporation by Niels F. Johnsen and his sons, Niels W. and Erik F. Johnsen. Incorporated in 1947, the new company was backed by a group of New Orleans businessmen and professional leaders. It immediately purchased and began operations with one World War II Liberty ship, renamed the Green Wave in honor of Tulane University, alma mater of the two younger Johnsens. Erik F. Johnsen plans to retire as chairman, and his son, Erik L. Johnsen, will be named president. Erik L. Johnsen’s cousin, Niels Johnsen, will become chairman and chief executive. Brothers Niels W. Johnsen and CEO Erik F. Johnsen and their families collectively own about 37% of International Shipholding.
    • During the 1960s, ISC became the number one U.S.-flag carrier between the United States and the Middle East and inaugurated its practice of becoming a niche operator.
    • Most of the company’s sales come from the chartering of vessels such as car and truck carriers, ships with strengthened hulls for use in polar regions, and coal and sulfur carriers. In addition, the company uses lighter-aboard-ship (LASH) vessels to provide scheduled ocean freight transportation services between the US and ports in Europe and the Middle East. International Shipholding’s fleet includes about 40 oceangoing vessels and some 850 LASH barges. ISC is the only significant operator of the LASH transportation system, which it pioneered in 1969; the company owns 13 such LASH vessels, in addition to four LASH feeder vessels and 1,865 LASH barges. The LASH transportation system uses specially designed barges of uniform size which were loaded with cargo, towed to a centralized fleeting area, loaded aboard a large oceangoing LASH vessel by the vessel’s 500-ton capacity shipboard crane, and then transported overseas, where the process was reversed. In its transoceanic liner services, ISC used the LASH system to gather cargo in ocean ports as well as on rivers and island chains and in harbors too shallow for traditional vessels. ISC’s 400-ton capacity LASH barges were ideally suited to transport larger unit size items such as project cargo, forest products, natural rubber and steel that could not be transported efficiently to and from such areas in container ships.
    • In 1989 ISC purchased Waterman Marine Corporation, which operated the Waterman Steamship Corporation, for $34 million
    • Its CG Railway Inc. subsidiary is a rail-on-barge service connecting Mexico to the Gulf Coast. 
      • CG’s railway terminal was launched at Choctaw Point in 2000, and was relocated to New Orleans in 2005 when it was displaced by construction of Mobile’s $300 million container terminal. The docks negotiated with CG on a replacement facility, but International Shipholding announced in 2005 it would move the terminal to New Orleans, and accepted an incentives package that included $15 million in infrastructure improvements. New Orleans had the added appeal of seven rail interchanges, where Mobile has five. In August 2005, with work about three-quarters finished on the New Orleans facility, Katrina struck, altering the channel depth in Louisiana’s Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet and forcing CG into another move. International Shipholding took an $8 million hit for leaving the terminal, which is owned by the Port of New Orleans. The state of Alabama and the Alabama State Port Authority agreed to build a new $26 million terminal for the service as part of the incentives deal for ISC to move to Mobile. The service will have double the capacity it had at Choctaw Point, thanks to a redesigned terminal and double-decked vessels. The CG Railway connects the rails of southern Mexico with those of North America via a pair of double-decker ships that together will make about 85 trips annually between southern Mexico and Mobile. The CG terminal is one of the few, if not only, double-decker rail terminals in the nation, though there are such systems in place in Europe. – PR
    • International Shipholding has 15 wholly owned subsidiaries and a stake in three joint ventures.
    • The company is traded publicly on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol ISH
    • International Shipholding rebuffed a merger offer from privately held New York shipper Liberty Shipping Group LLC, but the company continues to pursue a potential deal, according to an Aug. 8 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Liberty holds 373,300 shares of International Shipholding stock, more than 5 percent of the shares outstanding — a $7 million stake According to the filing, Liberty President and Chief Executive Officer Philip Shapiro met with Niels M. Johnsen, International Shipholding’s chief executive officer and chairman of the board, “on or about” June 10 and broached the idea of a combination or merger. International Shipholding informed Liberty at the end of July that it was not interested in a deal, the filing shows. In a Tuesday article in Tradewinds.no, Liberty was characterized as stalking International Shipholding. The article went on to describe two old-line shipping families as getting ready for a Wall Street battle over company control. The Johnsen family holds about 36 percent of International Shipholding. – PR 8/20/08
  • Cooper/T. Smith Stevedoring Inc. was started by Angus Cooper in 1905. The New Orleans-based T. Smith and Cooper companies merged in 1983. Cooper/T. Smith now has operations in thirty-eight US ports, and has foreign operations in Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia, Canada and Mexico. Cooper Stevedoring, a Cooper/T.Smith subsidiary, now operates in 30 ports on three U.S. coasts, as well as in Mexico and South America. Services have expanded to include docking, mooring, warehousing and barge fleeting services. Cooper/T. Smith also owns American Equity Underwriters Insurance Co. and the recently purchased marine and timberlands division of Kimberly Clark, which is headed by Angus Cooper III.
  • Ryan-Walsh Stevedoring: The Walsh family side of the company was established in 1867 as a Gulf Coast stevedore operating primarily in Mobile and Pensacola. The Ryan side had been a wholly owned subsidiary of Waterman Steamship Co. After being spun off from Waterman, Ryan acquired Walsh Stevedoring in 1974. Ryan-Walsh was bought by Pittsbugh-based Dravo Corp. in 1981. (Dravo sold its asphaltic concrete operation located in Mobile and Loxley in 1992.) Executives took back control of Ryan-Walsh in a leveraged buyout in 1988. Ryan-Walsh then acquired stevedore companies in Houston, Norfolk, Wilmington, N.C., and Charleston, S.C. Ryan-Walsh was bought by Seattle-based SSA in 1995. SSA competes with the global giants: Hutchison International Terminals of Hong Kong, P&O of London, and International Terminals of Manila.
  • Bender Shipbuilding & Repair is a privately-held shipbuilding and repair company in Mobile.
    • Theodore Jackson Bender, founded it in 1919 as a small welding and machine shop on St. Louis Street.  It moved to the west bank of the Mobile River in 1952. – PR 1/23/00
    • In 1965, Bender built the first of more than 1,000 fishing vessels it would produce by the end of the century. In the early 1960s and again from the early ’90s to today, Bender produced a variety of supply boats, anchor-handling tugs and other vessels for the offshore oil and gas industry. Prior to 1980, it was named Bender Welding & Machine Co., Inc.  Bender has built ammunition boxes during World War II, provided steel for construction of Ladd Memorial Stadium in 1948, manufactured 1,200 buoys for the development of the Intracoastal Waterway system in the 1950s, built push boats for U.S. rivers and canals, and patrol boats for the Colombian government.
    • Bender performs both ship construction and repair. It is affiliated by common ownership with Tampa Bay Shipbuilding & Repair Co., Inc., the successor to Tampa Shipyards, Inc., and was the U.S. investor in Austal USA until September 2006, when it was bought out by Austal. In 2004, it opened Astilleros Bender in Tampico, Mexico as a wholly owned subsidiary of Bender.
    • Second-tier yards such as Bender are the next level beneath the nation’s four major shipbuilders – Litton Industries’ Ingalls and Avondale operations in Pascagoula and New Orleans, for example – which build major combat vessels for the Navy.
    • Bender’s work force is not unionized. After a series of accidental deaths and serious injuries in the shipyard during the 1970s and ”80s, the company dramatically improved its safety record in the 1990s
    • President Tom Bender was a central figure in a high-profile Louisiana trial involving allegations that his company made kickbacks to two associates of former governor Edwin Edwards. Prosecutors tried to prove that New Orleans lawyer William Broadhurst and Shreveport businessman Gus Mijalis arranged for Bender Shipbuilding to secretly pay them for their help in landing a $50 million contract for Bender to build two riverboat casinos in 1993. Bender testified but was not a defendant in the case. Bender Shipbuilding won the contracts even though it was not the low bidder. On the day the $50 million contract was signed, Bender agreed to pay a 3-percent sales commission to Republic Corporate Services, a company owned by Mijalis’ nephew. Bender testified that Mijalis assured him that he was not receiving any of the money. But Mijalis did get money from his nephew’s company, and that company also made payments to Broadhurst. After the FBI discovered the payments, Republic Corporate Services stopped receiving payments and Bender Shipbuilding in turn sliced bills to the casino companies by the same 3 percent. – PR 9/27/97
    • In 2007, Bender employed more than 1,000 people on a mile of waterfront on the west bank of the river and 2,000 feet on the east bank.
    • In 2007, Bender Shipbuilding was accused by the New Orleans-based Alliance of Guest Workers for Dignity, of bringing 32 Mexican welders to its Mobile shipyard for jobs that didn’t exist, then subjecting them to discriminatory welding tests and firing them. The workers then filed an EEOC complaint. – PR 12/23/07
    • In 2009 Bender went bankrupt and was purchased by Signal International.
  • Steiner Shipyard, with origins as a family shipyard dating back to the 1920s, is a well-regarded entity in the local maritime markets. Steiner is perhaps best known for its endeavors in the fishing vessel markets, as it has built hundreds of boats over the years.
  • C&G Boatworks, owned by the Graham family, was founded in Bayou La Batre in 1996, opened a dry dock on Blakeley Island along the Mobile River in 1998 and moved there permanently in 2004. C&G bought its Mobile River property from the Murray family estate. It was awarded a Navy contract worth up to $44 million in June 2007. C&G employs 360 people and plans to add as many as 150 new jobs in the next three years – PR 6/24/2007, 3/20/08
  • Stauter Boat Works: Lawrence Stauter started his boat works in 1946. Stauter set up shop right on the Causeway and charged $25 for his skiffs. Stauter literally grew up in the lower Delta, on Conway Creek, in a house on stilts. The Stauters, German Catholics, were part of a small Delta community that in pre-Causeway days traveled by boat to Mobile for church services and shopping. Stauter’s father supported the family by fishing, hunting and trapping in the Delta. Word got around that Stauter-built boats – usually painted in a simple green and white pattern – leaked far less often than most wooden boats. In 1979, after Hurricane Frederic demolished Stauter’s home and business, he retired and turned over his business to two younger relatives, Gene and Joseph Lami, who reopened in West Mobile. Stauter died in 1999. – PR1/12/99
  • Negus Boat Works was started by Rone, Don, and Ed Negus
  • Mitternight Boiler Works in Satsuma
  • Gulf Coast Marine Supply is a general supply house founded in 1935 by Marvin Mostellar Sr. In the early years it catered to the ships trading in the Port of Mobile but it became more industrially oriented.
  • Mobile Rosin Oil Company, established in 1924, uses rosin from pine trees to serve a number of industries including rubber, paper, paint, preservatives, construction and lubricants. Rosin oil was initially used in the manufacture of axle greases. But the rubber industry quickly became, and remains, its largest user because rosin oil is an excellent tackifier and processing aid in rubber manufacturing.
  • Masland Carpets is a major carpet manufacturer headquartered in Saraland. It was founded in Pennsylvania in 1866. The distribution center in Saraland, where all rug designs are manufactured, has 333 employees. It was acquired by Chattanooga-based The Dixie Group in 1993. In 1968, the company moved its broadloom carpet weaving operation to Atmore, following five years later with the distribution warehouse and rug-making facility in an industrial park in Saraland. In the early 1990s, Masland moved its marketing staff from Atlanta and its corporate headquarters from Carlisle, Pa., to Saraland.
  • Gulf Lumbar Company manufactures Southern Pine lumber. In 1939, with WWII approaching, Ben May bought a lumber concentration yard. In 1952 the management of Gulf Lumber was taken over by the Stimpson brothers, Billy, Ben and Gordon. In 1973, after the death of Ben May, they acquired the company from his estate. Billy, Ben and Gordon officially transferred ownership to the younger members of the family in 1992. Gulf Lumber Company has 3 primary areas of operation: a Sawmill, a Treating Plant and an import company known as Gulf Trading, LLC. Today, independent logging crews haul more than 400 loads of logs per week to the Mobile plant. Gulf Lumber Company, one of the largest sawmills in Alabama, annually produces 105 million board feet of yellow pine products, shipping primarily into Midwestern and Northeastern markets.
  • Buchanan Lumber Mobile is a family owned business in Mobile since 1965.   Buchanan has two operations in Mobile and Chickasaw that encompass both a lumber manufacturing/processing facility as well as providing various services related to the lumber and import/export shipping industry.
  • Mobile Paperboard’s mill on Mobile Street was built in 1918, destroyed by fire in 1923, and was back in operation a year later in 1924. Under several different ownerships for its first 66 years, the mill was acquired by The Newark Group in 1984. Mobile Paperboard receives approximately 700 tons of recycled paper from the Metro Mobile Recycling Center.
  • Hargrove & Associates engineering firm, founded in Mobile in 1995 by Ralph Hargrove, ranked 453 on Inc. Magazine’s fastest growing private companies list based on 2006 revenue of $15.9 million, a 642 percent increase over 2005. The company, which employs 185 and also has offices in Atlanta and Savannah, Ga., designs and builds large industrial projects such as refineries, chemical plants and paper mills.
  • Thompson Engineering Testing Inc. was established by Vester Thompson Jr. in 1953. He sold the company to its employees in 1996.
  • Volkert & Associates Engineering
    • Poor engineering of the U.S. 98 rerouting, designed by the Alabama Department of Transportation and Volkert Engineering, contributed to runoff problems, according to interviews with transportation officials.
  • Gulf States Engineering: Started in 1998 by Robert O. Edens, Gulf States Engineering serves industrial, commercial and government clients throughout the U.S. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Timothy Morris PE bought into the firm in 2001 as the fifth employee, and since that time the company has grown to include 40 employees in the Mobile office and 10 employees in the Gulfport office.
  • Cox Nuclear Pharmacy, founded by Billy Cox, joined two other companies in January to form Triad Isotopes, one of the largest independent nuclear pharmacy companies in the country, in a deal estimated at more than $100 million. – PR 11/18/07
  • CentraLite was formed in 1997 by Jim Busby, after he left QMS.  CentraLite designs and manufactures home lighting control systems. Former Mayor Mike Dow joined as Executive Vice-President of Sales and Marketing in 2005.
    • CentraLite’s ownership was shown as Jim Busby, 1.4 million shares; Jim Busby Jr., 866,500 shares; Karen Swanson, 500 shares; Richard Palesano, 26,000 shares; Tom Hendrich, 23,000+ shares; and Mike Dow, 31,250 shares. – MBT 2/15/05
  • Big 10 Tire Company was founded in Pensacola in 1954; it’s headquarters are in Mobile on Government Blvd.  It has over 100 retail tire locations. It is owned by Jim Wilson and Associates of Montgomery, which also owns the Birmingham Galleria.
  • Molyneux and Demouy
  • Marshall Biscuit Co. is a Saraland company that makes frozen biscuits sold in supermarkets. The Marshall Biscuit Company was founded in 1924 by John Marshall.  It began with the “Electric Maid Bake Shop”, a coffee shop in downtown Mobile.  Soon after, Marshall’s biscuits were being shelved at local grocery stores like Delchamps and Greer’s.  The Marshall family owned Marshall’s Biscuits until 1985 when Robbie Outlaw bought the business.   The company pioneered frozen to oven biscuits in a baking tin. In 2005 it purchased another venerable Mobile name — China Doll, which packages then sells rice and beans to retailers throughout the region. In 2007 Lancaster Colony Corp., an Ohio-based consumer products company and maker of Sister Schubert rolls, purchased Marshall Biscuit Co. The company said Marshall’s sales in 2006 were about $11 million. Lancaster turned its eyes to lower Alabama in 2000 when it bought the Sister Schubert’s plant in Luverne from Patricia Barnes (formerly Schubert). The Lancaster Colony deal reportedly does not include China Doll. – PR
  • Leroy Hill Coffee Company:  In 1968 Leroy Hill purchased the Mobile operation of the Belford Coffee Company 1980’s The company expanded into the entire Southeast. Leroy Hill Coffee Company has 22 locations with branches in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi. In 1999, Hill renamed “Hill & Brooks Coffee” as the “Leroy Hill Coffee Company”
    • In 1994 Hill was charged with orchestrating bogus bids so he could buy 80 acres of state land adjoining his 3,500-acre ranch in Grand Bay for $48,400, even though timber on the property was valued at $183,803. He had two employees submit lower bids. Roberts Brothers associate broker Walter “Bud” Jones wrote a letter to the land’s owner, the state Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation, describing the 80 acres as “swamp”. A federal court jury convicted Hill of mail fraud, and he served more than a year in prison. Then Alabama Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ also brought a civil lawsuit against Hill and Jones.
    • In 1995, The widow of deceased coffee merchant Raymond E. Brooks sued the Leroy Hill, accusing him of cheating the terminally ill Brooks out of his share of the company they founded.
    • In 2005 Paul Stewart and his coffee company, Coffee Pro Inc., won a $2.5 million verdict against Leroy Hill Coffee Co., which is owned by his estranged father-in-law, Leroy Hill, and two employees. The defendants were accused of slandering Coffee Pro by criticizing its product and ethics and by describing one of the company’s salespeople as a coffee thief and a homosexual.  Hill, had originally been a defendant, but was dismissed the case, in a ruling that the plaintiffs had not presented evidence that he personally defamed anyone. Stewart started Coffee Pro in 1997.
  • Haas-Davis Meat Company was started in 1865 by George Augustus Haas and his half-brother Fank Hemley. Haas soon bought out Hemley. The company was located on Bay Shore Avenue in Crichton and meats were sold from horse-drawn wagons.  were produced Mobile until 1971. Mobilian David Campbell revived the company in 1997. He hired Frank Robert Haas as a consultant. – PR 5/27/97
  • Carrington Foods and Miss Sally’s Stuffed Crabs began production in 1971.
  • Azalea Seafood Gumbo Shoppe was started by Pat Lodds, and subsequently sold to Jim Hartman (1981) then to Mike Rathle, John Addison, and Bill Sibley (1991). It supplies ready-to-eat gumbo to approximately 1,000 supermarkets and 300 restaurants in the Southeast, with annual revenues in 2000 of more than $1 million.  Case Study by John Gamble, U.S.A. Mitchell College of Business, in Thompson-Strickland, Strategic Management: Concepts and Cases, 13th ed, 2003.
  • Naman’s Market:  George Naman of Pascagoula married Helen Zoghby of Mobile and ran Naman’s store across from the Cathedral from the 1930’s to the 1950’s. While his brother Michael enjoyed the jewelry business, George continued the food business with his daughter Elizabeth’s help. George’s other children, Emile and Mimi, ran Naman’s Department Store on Dauphin Street. In 1947, George’s sons, Tony and Alex, along with their sister Mabel, opened the first food store was located at the 459 South Broad Street (Texas and Broad). In 1951, they opened their next food store at Broad and Savannah. In 1955, the construction was complete on their newest and largest store, Naman’s Supermarket, located at 563 South Broad Street, which remained in operation until 2004. In 2006, Alec and Thomas Naman opened Naman’s Midtown Market.
  • Autry Greer & Sons, Inc. runs Greer’s Food Tiger grocery stores, Greer’s Markets, and Tiger Discount Liquors.  Founded in 1916, it is still owned and run by the Greer family.  It has 34 stores throughout the Southeast and is based in Prichard. The late Mac Greer popularized the Greer’s grocery store chain’s signature phrase, “I gua-ran-tee it!” in years of television advertising. Greer’s chain has converted five of its stores to a Greer’s Market format meant to appeal to more upscale shoppers: Fairhope, Robertsdale; Perdido Bay, Fla.; Hurley, Miss, and Dauphin Island Parkway at Bayley’s Corner
  • Manning’s Marketplace: The Manning family has converted its eight Manning’s Marketplace stores into Food For Less supermarkets that promise goods on a cost-plus-10-percent basis
  • Pollman’s Bake Shop opened on Royal Street in 1918. Fred Pollman Sr., who was born in New Orleans, came to Mobile to work for Smith’s Bakery, and decided to go into business on his own, setting up shop at Warren and Augusta streets. Fred Pollman III, one of Charles Pollman’s sons, now runs the business. In 1937 Pollman’s opened a location off Broad Street. Pollman’s also operates stores at 31 N. Royal St. in downtown and at 4464 Old Shell Road in Spring Hill. – PR 8/20/08
  • Bayou La Batre Seafood Companies (2005): Jubilee Foods, Sea Pearl Seafood Co., Graham Fisheries Inc., Deep Sea Foods
  • Wintzell’s Oyster House: J. Oliver Wintzell opened his restaurant at 605 Dauphin St. in 1938 as a six-stool oyster bar.  SouthernPointe owner Bob Donlon bought Wintzell’s in 2000. – PR 2/4/07
    • The restaurant’s walls are covered with Wintzell’s folksy sayings as well as photographs of hundreds of celebrities, sports heroes, politicians and local fishermen who have eaten there.
    • The company has four restaurants in Mobile County ( Airport Blvd., Dauphin St., and Saraland), one in Fairhope, an one in Hattiesburg, Miss. Wintzell’s will open its sixth restaurant in August at the Eastern Shore Centre on Alabama 181 in Spanish Fort.  – PR 6/8/08
    • Wintzell’s first franchise location opened on Lake Guntersville in June 2008. The company plans to market the franchises in the Southeast and Florida Panhandle. – PR 6/8/08
  • Wings Sports Grilles was created by Bob Baumhower, who now has about 10 franchised restaurants regionally.
  • “The Nuthouse in Mobile was originally H.M. Thames Pecan, the “Nuthouse” on Broad Street, and the “Nuthouse Too” on Mc Gregor Avenue. Three family generations of Mobilians worked there (Merrill Thames, Dan Miller and Valery Wiseman) until it was sold to Three George Candy owner Scott Gonzales. The Nuthouse had a colorful beginning in Laurel Mississippi. Sank Taylor made enough money showing silent black and white movies in a tent he set up in a farmer’s field to buy a farm for himself in the early 1920s.   In Mobile his niece Norma Thames was looking for a way to supplement her husband’s salary. She struck a deal with her Uncle Sank to truck his pecans to Mobile and to process and market them in a small frame building on Houston Street.  Four women shelled them by hand. Norma bought pecans from Mobile and Baldwin County farmers and, when the local crop was slim, she drove a truck on Saturday mornings to locations in neighboring states, where she rented a vacant store front, engaged a day worker for the heavy lifting and bought pecans. In 1937 Merrill Thames joined his young wife in the pecan business. Taylor Pecan Company became H M Thames Pecan Company which set up shop in a building at 750 Dauphin Street. A family friend, Dutch Jernigan, brought home a different business directory each night for the Thames family to scan at the dining room table in search of bakers and confectioners with F-3 ratings … “small business with good credit” for addition to their mailing list….which grew and grew.  The family now included a young daughter, Teko Thames Wiseman, who learned to read searching Dunn & Bradstreet business directories for F-3’s.Thames Pecan prices included free shipping and Railway Express offered the best freight rates to the Mid West so prospective customers from those states were favored.  At one time the business provided jobs for 100 seasonal employees working in shifts before automation replaced many of them.  And they engaged buyers from Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Georgia when crops were scarce in Alabama. In order to supply customers year round the Thames eventually rented freezer space at the Alabama State Docks.  When volume of sales rendered this arrangement too cumbersome they built and moved to what was known by family as “The Nut House” plus a separate large capacity commercial freezer at the NW corner of Broad Street and New Jersey Streets, where it remains today. Old family receipes continue, from Aunt Lelia’s fruitcake to pecans whole, raw, roasted, sweet and salty. The mailing list includes customers around the nation including the late movie star Catherine Hepburn.” – Robin Delaney, CoastalAlabama.tv
  • Toomeys Mardi Gras
  • Goldstein’s Jewlery was founded in 1879 by Julius Goldstein and purchased by the Frank family in the 1950s. It is now owned by Richard Frank Jr. Goldstein’s was originally located on Dauphin Street downtown, moving to Royal Street around 1905. Goldstein’s was the first of Mobile’s jewelry stores to “move west,” setting up shop in Bel Air Mall in 1967. In 1974, Goldstein’s built a second location in the mall, where it stayed until 2002 before moving to its current Hillcrest Road location. – PR 9/27/07
  • Shoe Station was founded in Mobile by Terry Barkin. It has 3 locations in Mobile and13 locations around the southeast.
  • Standard Equipment Co. Inc., distributor of industrial, construction and marine supplies, was founded in 1906 by Richard A. Christian, and is today owned by E. Burnley Davis Sr. and Robert D. Wilkins. Standard was originally located at Commerce and St. Anthony streets, but for nearly 50 years has operated at Beauregard and Water streets near the state docks. – PR 9/27/07

Former Mobile Businesses

  • Waterman Steamship Company: In 1926 John B. Waterman started the Waterman Steamship Corp.
    • John B. Waterman founded the company in 1919 with only $2,000 capital and a ship, the Eastern Sun, leased from the United States government. With T. M. Stevens, W.D. Bellingrath and C.W. Hempstead, Waterman organized the Waterman Steamship Corp. The Eastern Sun was authorized to take on the British trade, traveling from the Gulf of Mexico to Liverpool and Manchester.
    • Ryan Stevedoring Company was organized in 1924 as a wholly-owned subsidiary, for the business of loading and discharging vessels.
    • In 1926, Waterman organized and became president of the Mobile, Miami and Gulf Steamship Company, which became the Waterman Line. This enabled the company to expand its operations from Mobile and other gulf ports to Tampa, Key West, Miami, Puerto Rico and the West Indies.
    • Waterman, in 1930, purchased from the government the Mobile Oceanic Line, including fourteen ships that were soon refitted and improved for freight and passenger service. The Pan-Atlantic Steamship Corporation, with four vessels, was acquired in 1933.  From 1935 to 1937 the management of fifteen vessels of the Anchor Line of Glasgow was taken over
    • An affiliate, Gulf Shipbuilding Corp., built Navy and cargo ships.
    • By 1930 its fleet included 14 ships varying in size from 7,500 to 9,200 deadweight tons. At the beginning of World War II, Waterman owned and operated 38 American flag vessels, as well as three Canadian and five Anchor Line ships, and 12 chartered vessels. By World War II, the company owned more than 125 ships.
    • The company also ran Waterman Airlines , led by the founder’s son, Caroll B. Waterman. In 1945 Waterman bought TACA Central American Airlines (it was sold in 1961)
    • Under the leadership of E.A. “Ed” Roberts, who became president in 1936, Waterman became the largest privately owned steamship line in the nation, operating a fleet of 125 ships.
    • The Waterman company erected one of downtown Mobile’s landmark structures, the Waterman Building. The Waterman Globe, a huge model of the Earth, was commissioned by the company for the building and now is on display at the University of South Alabama.
    • In January 1955 Malcolm P. McLean sold his trucking company for $25 million, moved to New York and bought Pan-Atlantic Steamship Company, a subsidiary of Waterman, for $7 million. Waterman Steamship had acquired Pan-Atlantic Steamship, with four vessels, in 1933 to conduct coastwise operations while the parent company focused on overseas routes. In May 1955, McLean Industries purchased the entire stock of Waterman Steamship Corporation from the stockholders in a leveraged buyout. Six of the Waterman vessels were converted to container ships at the Mobile Ship Repair Co in Alabama and in 1957 the first of these ships, the Gateway City, entered service. Pan-Atlantic became Sea-Land Service in 1960.  McLean sold Waterman and Sea-Land sold to R.J. Reynolds in 1969 for $530 million in cash and stock. McLean made a $160 million personally and got a seat on the R. J. Reynolds’ board.
    • The first leveraged buy out in U.S. history may have been the purchase by McLean Industries of Waterman Steamship. Under the terms of that transaction, McLean borrowed $42 million and raised an additional $7 million through issue of preferred stock. When the deal closed, $20 million of Waterman cash and assets were used to retire $20 million of the loan debt. The newly elected board of Waterman then voted to pay an immediate dividend of $25 million to McLean Industries.
    • In 1989 International Shipholding Corporation purchased Waterman Marine Corporation, which operated the Waterman Steamship Corporation, for $34 million. ISC moved to Mobile in 2007, and with it Waterman came back to its birthplace
  • Alabama Dry Dock & Shipbuilding Co., Kelly-Atkinson Construction Co., Henderson Shipbuilding Inc. and U.S. Steel Corp (in Chickasaw) were shipbuilders in Mobile during World War I (1917).
  • The Alabama Drydock and Shipbuilding Company (ADDSCO) was one of the largest marine production facilities in the U.S. during the twentieth century. ADDSCO was primarily a repair yard, in continuous operation since 1917.  Although the shipbuilding industry collapsed with the end of the World War I, ADDSCO continued profitable ship-repair operations
    • During and after World War II, ADDSCO was the largest employer in southern Alabama. In the second year of the war, ADDSCO had 20,000 plus workers, of whom about 6,000 were African-American. Over four years, ADDSCO built over 100 T-2 oil carriers and 20 plus Liberty ships, and repaired and converted other vessels. 
    • By 1964, ADDSCO was down to 2,300 workers and was concentrating not on shipbuilding, but repairs. Racial equality was an ongoing problem following the war, addressed repeatedly by both management and union actions until the 1960s.
    • In 1992, ADDSCO was acquired by Atlantic Marine Holdings, a privately held company. Atlantic Marine Holdings also owned two shipyards in Jacksonville. ADDSCO was split it into two entities – a ship construction yard, called Alabama Shipyard, and a repair yard, called Atlantic Marine-Mobile. They jointly occupied the 650-acre site on Pinto Island.
    • It was sold again in 2006 an investment firm headed by former U.S. Navy Secretary John F. Lehman and the combined yard is now known as Atlantic Marine Alabama. Lehman promised new investment in the business, which is the second-largest landholder along Mobile’s industrial waterfront. Since its 1992 founding, J.F. Lehman has acquired 13 maritime, defense and aerospace companies through $1.2 billion in transactions.
    • Atlantic Marine sold an 87-acre parcel to the Port Authority and 102 acres on Blakely Island to Austal USA in May 2007 for $5 million. Atlantic Marine is now selling its last available piece — 35 acres on the northeast side of Pinto Island — so it can focus on its core operations. Atlantic does the bulk of its work on 250 of the 450 acres it will own once the latest sale is complete.  – PR 6/24/07
    • Atlantic Marine is committed to up to $10 million in upgrades, including removing dilapidated buildings, upgrading piers and bulkheads, performing a safety audit and building a training facility. Atlantic Marine has more than 600 permanent, full-time workers, not counting temporary employees and hopes to add 300 to 500 more within two years – PR 6/24/07
  • The Mobile Shipyard owned by the Collins family was located on Mon Luis Island and built wood vessels until 1954. They built everything from pleasure boats to fishing vessels used to trawl for fish, shrimp and oysters. They built a 50-foot schooner to aid the Confederate Army as a blockade runner against the Yankees in Mobile Bay during the Civil War.
  • Taylor Lowenstein Naval Stores Co.
  • The Mobile Portland Cement and Coal Company was chartered in 1908 in Maine with its headquarters in the Van Antwerp building in Mobile. It had an authorized capital of $6 million and total authorized bond issue of $3 million. The capitalization is believed to have reached $1 million. It planned to build the world’s largest coal and cement plant on the old St. Stephens Bluff.  It was organized by Chicagoans John Randolph Markley and Isaiah B. Miller, who were convicted in 1913 of mail fraud involving timber and coal companies totalling $25 million in which they acted as promoters and then later abandoned the companies after securing the investor’s funds. Markley also operated a steel steamship between Mobile and Mexico. Officers included Albert Sidney Lyons, Pat. J. Lyons, Edward L. Russell, and others.
  • The Star Fish & Oyster Company was started by Sebastian Gonzales, and continued by his four sons.  It closed in the 1980s due to changes in federal fishing regulations.
  • Karl Graf arrived ca 1888 from Baden Baden, Germany and began a dairy business at Sage Ave and Dauphin.
  • Gulf, Mobile and Ohio Railroad:
    • In 1848 the businessmen of Mobile organized the Mobile and Ohio Railroad with plans to build to the Ohio River at Cairo, IL. The endeavor quickly ran out of funds and was taken over by investors in Jackson, TN.
    • Progress of this line was hampered by the Civil War and the depression of 1873, and the line did not reach the Ohio River until 1883, crossing the river to North Cairo, Illinois. The St. Louis and Cairo was purchased in 1886 and widened, thus creating a 650 mile system from St. Louis to Mobile.
    • In 1940 the Gulf, Mobile & Northern merged with the bankrupt Mobile & Ohio creating the Gulf, Mobile and Ohio Railroad, a system of almost 2000 miles that connected St. Louis with the ports of Mobile and New Orleans. In 1947 the GM&O acquired ownership of the Alton Railroad, creating a 3000 mile North-South rail system.
    • In 1972, GM&O merged with Illinois Central to form Illinois Gulf Central. At the time, there were 19,000 employees nationwide, 5,000 of them in Mobile. In 1985, there were about 5,000 nationwide.
    • Sources: GM&O Historial Society. The Gulf, Mobile, and Ohio book by James Lemly.
  • The Alabama, Tennessee and Northern Railroad was a short line railroad within the state of Alabama. It was founded in 1897 by John Cochrane as the Carrollton Short Line Railway to link the city of Carrollton with the Mobile & Ohio Railroad at Reform. Through mergers, acquisitions and the building of track, the railroad eventually reached the port of Mobile. In 1948, the railroad was purchased by the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway (the “Frisco”), who operated it as a separate entity until 1971, when it was absorbed into the parent company.
  • The New Orleans & Mobile Railroad became CSX Transportation
  • Morrison’s/Ruby Tuesday’s:
    • The first Morrison cafeteria, a novel dining concept for the area, was opened by J. A. Morrison in 1920 in Mobile. In 1928, Morrison incorporated his growing concern in Louisiana, naming the enterprise Morrison’s Cafeterias Consolidated, Inc. 700,000 customers a year were eating at the company’s cafeterias by 1938. By 1950, the last year Morrison Cafeterias would be entirely devoted to operating cafeterias, there were 17 such establishments.
    • In 1951, Morrison Cafeterias diversified into noncommercial feeding by providing meals on the set of the film The Greatest Show on Earth. Catering contracts would constitute one of the primary business segments of the company for the next 40 years. In 1952, Morrison Cafeterias signed a catering agreement with Loyola University, paving the way for future education contracts.
    • In 1968, Morrison Cafeterias Consolidated, Inc. changed its name to Morrison Incorporated which completed several acquisitions in the 1960s and 1970s, adding a motel chain, a china and small wares facility, an insurance carrier specializing in coverage for strip mines, a distribution company, and a breading plant. With each acquisition, Morrison replaced existing management with Morrison personnel, attempting to meld the disparate organizations into one corporate body.
    • Late in the 1970s, the company began to flounder, as its widespread interests had created bureaucratic layers that led to lower profit margins. In 1980, the company selected a new chief executive, Ernest Eugene Bishop. Bishop had joined Morrison in 1947 at age 16, rising through the company’s ranks. Bishop divested all of the company’s nonrestaurant holdings, noting later that the company’s management “fell into the integration trap in the late 1960s and into the 1970s because it was in vogue.”
    • In 1982, the company acquired the 15-unit restaurant chain, Ruby Tuesday, Inc. Ruby Tuesday was founded in 1972 by five college students attending the University of Tennessee. This group of young entrepreneurs, led by Samuel E. (Sandy) Beall III, converted an old house on the University’s campus in Knoxville into a small, casual-style dining establishment. Bishop granted Beall and Ruby Tuesday’s management virtual autonomy in controlling their organization instead of replacing them with Morrison personnel. Furthermore, he named Beall president of Morrison’s newly created Specialty Restaurant Division. Within two years of the Ruby Tuesday purchase, the company added Silver Spoon Cafe and L&N Seafood Grill.
    • In 1987, Beall was named president and COO, and CEO in 1992. This year also featured the reorganization of Morrison’s businesses into three primary divisions, Morrison’s Family Dining Group, Casual Dining Group, and Hospitality Group. Morrison’s strategy to distance itself from its cafeteria image and identify itself as a specialty restaurant and contract-feeding operator led to a name change in 1992, when the former Morrison Incorporated became Morrison Restaurants Inc. The company restructured its operations again in 1994, combining its Hospitality Group with its Family Dining Group to create the Morrison Group, and renaming its Casual Dining Group the Ruby Tuesday Group, providing a clear indication of the company’s strategic priorities as it entered the mid-1990s. Several months after reorganizing the company into two operating groups, Morrison sold all of its education and business/industry food service accounts to Gardner Merchant Ltd., an international contract food services company, leaving Morrison with only its health care food service contracts. In 1996, Morrison’s Fresh Cooking — unable to withstand the loss in popularity of cafeterias in general — sold out to Picadilly.
    • In 1998 Ruby Tuesday moved its corporate headquarters to Maryville, Tennessee.
  • Delchamps was founded by Alfred and Ollie Delchamps in 1921 at the corner of Lawrence and Canal streets in Mobile, which he operated along with his brother, Oliver.
    • The company is credited with bringing the supermarket concept to Alabama in 1955. The chain was a fixture in the middle Gulf Coast areas, with more than a hundred stores at its 1990s peak in Alabama, Mississippi, Florida and Louisiana.
    • In 1997, the chain was purchased by Jackson, Mississippi-based Jitney Jungle, and by 1999 the combined chains went into bankruptcy. The next year some stores were sold off to Jacksonville-based Winn-Dixie; most of those locations have since closed in the wake of that chain’s own troubles. Nineteen other locations were sold to Birmingham-based Bruno’s Supermarkets.
  • Gayfers was founded by C.J. Gayfer on North Joachim Street in 1879. Gayfers eventually became known as the largest department store in the downtown area.  At the time of C.J. Gayfer’s death in 1915, his store had 150 employees, and did about a half million dollars annually in trade.- PR
    • Gayfer’s (for so the company styled itself until the 1970s, when it dropped the apostrophe) did business from several locations over the years including 103 Dauphin St., later renumbered to 169, where it was housed from 1880 to 1886, and the building next door, on the southeast corner of Dauphin and Conception streets. In 1898, a disastrous fire ravaged its stock. But the store recovered, and its new “Spira and Pincus Building” on the Conception Street corner was constructed with Rudolph Benz as architect at a cost of $12,000. It offered 10,000 square feet of commercial space, and had passenger and freight elevators. Gayfer’s address expanded from 169 through 173 Dauphin. When it burned in 1920, Gayfer’s next conducted business at 12 St. Emanuel St., a site which remained part of the company’s location for more than half a century. A 1950-51 renovation and extension of the downtown store cost $2 million and spread the stock throughout the block, taking in a former Woolworth’s on Dauphin Street. The Springdale store opened in 1960, and was soon followed by branches around the region in such places as Biloxi, Tallahassee, Jackson, Miss., Pensacola, Clearwater, Fla., Panama City, Fla., Dothan and Daphne, where the Jubilee store opened in 1981. The downtown store closed in 1985.
    • In the 1950s, Gayfers became affiliated with Ohio-based Mercantile Stores, a holding company (which also owned New Orleans’ Maison Blanche, founded by Isidore Newman).  Mercantile Stores and Gayfers were bought out by Little Rock-based Dillard’s in 1998. Many of the stores were sold off and had their names changes.
  • The Bank of Mobile was chartered in 1820, and closed in 1884
  • The Southern Bank of Alabama was founded by Henry A. Schroeder, who remained its president until its charter expired in 1880
  • Planters and Merchants Bank of Mobile
  • The First National Bank of Mobile, chartered 1865
  • Merchants National Bank of Mobile was incorporated in 1901 with offices at 56 St. Francis Street. In 1927, Merchants became a national bank and occupied the eighteen-story Merchants National Bank Building which was dedicated in 1929. It was led by Ernest Ladd and John McRae. Merchants National merged with First Alabama Bancshares, Inc. in 1983. The name Merchants National Bank of Mobile was changed to First Alabama Bank in 1985. A Bill to rescue Merchants was vetoed by Ronald Reagan in 1986.
  • Gulf Federal Bank was chartered in 1963 as Gulf Federal Savings and Loan Association and opened its doors in 1964. The institution has had a troubled past. Howard Leroy Davis, who managed Gulf Federal from 1963 to 1983, was convicted in 1986 of issuing $920,000 in unsecured loans to a friend in exchange for $100,000 in kickbacks, as well as other misuses of the association’s funds. Davis’ actions weakened Gulf Federal, and in 1987, federal regulators brokered a takeover, with Reginald Haston and seven other investors injecting $400,000 of their own money.  Federal regulators added $500,000 more, saying that was cheaper than liquidating the undercapitalized savings and loan. The bank was renamed Gulf Federal Bank and became a federal savings bank at that time.  Gulf Federal had about $17 million in deposits in mid-2006, representing less than 1 percent of the deposits in the Mobile market. The bank was among the 30 with the highest ratio of bad loans in a 2006 listing by SNL Financial. Woodlands Financials, a South Carolina investment group, purchased Gulf Federal Bank in 2007.
  • QMS (Quality Micro Systems) was founded in 1977 by James (Jim) Busby. Busby’s brother-in-law Mike Dow joined as EVP of sales and marketing and a member of the board of directors. Initially involved with controllers for printing bar codes and labels, it entered the laser printer business in the mid-1980s. QMS pioneered PostScript along with Apple and introduced the first auto switching printer and Kanji color printer. It was the first to sell a laser printer for under $2000 in 1985. In only six years, QMS grew from startup to $9 million in revenues and a $100 million market cap. It was listed on NASDAQ in 1983. In 1986, QMS became the first Mobile-headquartered company listed on the New York Stock Exchange. QMS employed 1500 people worldwide and had yearly revenues of over $300 million. In 1988, Dow left QMS to become Mayor of Mobile. Busby stepped down as chairman in 1997 after several years of decline. QMS was sold to Minolta in 1998 and changed its name to Minolta-QMS. In 2003, Minolta merged with Konica and the QMS name was dropped. The QMS headquarters was sold to the Mobile County School Board.
  • Saunders Engine & Equipment Co. Inc., a family business founded in 1959 that provides diesel engine services to commercial marine clients, has agreed to sell its Mobile operations to Houma, La.-based Marine Systems Inc – PR 7/10/2007
  • Three George’s Candy Store, which operates a store on Dauphin Street and a factory on Broad Street, filed for bankruptcy in February 2007. It dates to 1917 under the late George Pappas, and is owned by Scott Gonzalez – PR 2/17/2007

Utilities

  • While most other states fund robust consumer protection agencies to monitor and supervise the way that utilities are regulated, no one in Alabama — not even the attorney general — is allowed to examine the way that the PSC regulates Mobile Gas and other utilities.

Alabama Power

  • Alabama Power Company is a member company of the Southern Company, one of the largest investor owned utilities in the United States.
    • Alabama Power’s 1997 KWH generation by source was 72% fossil fuel, 20% nuclear, and 8% hydro and other sources.
    • As a part of the Southern Company System, Alabama Power is directly connected to the Southern Company grid.
    • It generates and distributes electricity to most of the southern two thirds of Alabama. Its headquarters are in Birmingham.
    • The Alabama Power Company was founded by steamboat captain William Lay in 1906 in Gadsden. In 1912, Lay sold the company to Massachusetts engineer James Mitchell who had spent 17 years constructing an electric system in Brazil. Lay was backed by London financiers. Under Mitchell’s leadership the Coosa River Dam was constructed, going into operation in 1914. Birmingham attorney Tom Martin became president after Mitchell’s death in 1920. Tom Martin gradually acquired utility companies in the neighboring states of Mississippi and Georgia, creating holding companies in those states. In 1927 he merged Alabama Power with his Gulf Electric Power Company, bringing South Alabama into APC’s service area.
    • In 1947 the Securities and Exchange Commission approved the creation of The Southern Company, comprising Alabama Power, Georgia Power, Mississippi Power, and Gulf Power. The company had to sell South Carolina Power.
  • In 1885, the Electric Lighting Company of Mobile was organized by Colonel H.M. Byllesby of Chicago, who worked as a draftsman on Thomas Edison’s original electrical system. He designed the generating and distribution systems for the Electric Lighting Company of Mobile. It was financed with private capital. It provided incandescent and arc illumination
    • Byllesby went on to form electric companies around the country
    • The Electric Light and Power Company was formed in Mobile to provide electricity for streetcars as well as illumination. Its powerhouse was on the southeast corner of Royal and Canal Streets, and its first streetcar line was along Conti St.
    • In 1892, the Mobile Light and Railroad Company built a powerhouse at Water and Monroe Streets. It merged with the Electric Light and Power Company. These were then merged with Col. Byllesby’s Electric Lighting Company to form the Mobile Electric Company.
    • T.K. Jackson, a native of Chicago, was brought to Mobile by Byllesby and became president of Mobile Electric until it was bought by Alabama Power.
    • The Mobile Electric Company’s St. Louis St. powerhouse exploded in 1918
    • The Mobile Electric Company was purchased by the Alabama Power Company in 1925. Alabama Power formed the Gulf Electric Company to run its southern Alabama properties. In 1927, Gulf Electric assumed the Alabama Power name and Mobile became its division headquarters.
  • In 1999 the Environmental Protection Agency initiated an enforcement action against the company for violations of the Clean Air Act.
    • In 2006, Alabama Power announced that it would spend $2 billion upgrading pollution controls at its coal-burning plants as part of a settlement with the agency.
    • Legal claims against five coal-fired plants filed by the Southern Environmental Law Center were unsuccessful, but the SELC plans to appeal the decisions.
  • As a regulated monopoly protected from competition, Alabama Power is allowed to earn between 13 percent and 14.5 percent return on equity.
    • That range is exceptionally high, experts say. Critics have regularly questioned whether the PSC is overly generous with the utilities it is supposed to regulate. However, Alabama Power’s residential rate is currently about 11 percent below the national average, according to the company.
    • Alabama Power Co.’s residential rates have by more than one-third in the last five years. Nationally, the average residential electric rate climbed by about 16.3 percent. Since 1992, Alabama Power’s residential electric rate has increased by almost 38 percent, compared to a national average of 30.4 percent.
  • Alabama Power’s coal-fired Barry Plant in north Mobile County supplies electricity to the Mobile area. Southern Company began operating the plant in 1952. The Barry Plant is the largest polluter in southwest Alabama.
  • Alabama Power has been important in local economic and industrial development and recruiting.
  • Mobile Energy Services Company’s 61 megawatt energy facility is located within the Kimberly-Clark tissue mill, and is the exclusive steam supplier to the mill and provides a substantial portion of the mill’s electricity requirements. The powerhouse is fueled by a combination of coal, biomass and natural gas.

Mobile Gas/EnergySouth

  • Mobile Gas supplies natural gas to over 100,000 residential, commercial, and industrial customers.
    • It is regulated by the Alabama Public Service Commission.
    • Mobile Gas obtains approximately 51% of its gas supply from sources located in the Mobile Bay area, with the balance being obtained from interstate sources.
  • 1836 James H. Caldwell created the Mobile Gas Light and Coke Company to provide “natural gas” lighting for the downtown streets of Mobile. By 1838, it expanded into residential and commercial natural gas supply. 
  • 1906 Mobile Gas Light and Coke was reorganized as Mobile Gas Service Corporation.  The Company was incorporated in 1933. 
  • Mobile Gas was majority-owned by William Hearin, former publisher of the Mobile Press-Register, who was Chairman of the Board of Directors from 1983 to 2001.
  • EnergySouth incorporated in 1997, and the next year, Mobile Gas and Bay Gas Storage became its subsidiaries. In 2007 EnergySouth reincorporated in Delaware.

EnergySouth traded under the ENSI symbol on the Nasdaq.

  • Bay Gas Storage formed in 1991.
  • EnergySouth Midstream Inc. was created as a subsidiary of EnergySouth specializing in natural gas storage and trading, with Bay Gas Storage operating as a division of Midstream. The company has opened a new Midstream sales office in Houston
  • 2008 EnergySouth agrees to be acquired by San Diego-based Sempra Energy for $510 million and the assumption of $224 million in EnergySouth debt.- PR 7/29/08, 8/22/08
    • The Federal Trade Commission would make an anti-trust review, but said no approval from state or federal energy regulators is needed. Congress’ passage last year of the Energy Policy Act aimed to encourage consolidation in the energy industry by removing Securities and Exchange Commission requirements surrounding utilities mergers.
    • CEO Dean Liollio said the decision to sell came after the company, facing increasing capital needs for its storage business, hired financial advisers J.P. Morgan Securities and Berenson & Co., and decided the best option was a sale. When it bought 60 percent of Mississippi Hub LLC, EnergySouth financed the purchase with a line of credit good for up to $195 million. But that loan ran for just 364 days. JPMorgan Chase & Co., a lender to EnergySouth, talked to the board about the company’s options, including more debt, taking on partners in the gas storage business, selling more stock, or selling Mobile Gas.
    • EnergySouth shareholders will get to vote on the deal, possibly in September. Sempra said it expects the deal to close in the fourth quarter. The companies said that. The purchase price of $61.50 a share is a 23 percent premium over the $50.16 price at the time of the deal.
    • Sempra Energy (NYSE: SRE) was born in 1998 when the parent companies of San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Gas merged. 6.5 million gas customers running from the Mexican border into central California and 1.36 million electric customers, mainly around San Diego. The merger touched off an aggressive push into nonregulated businesses, including shares in utilities in Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Peru, liquefied natural gas terminals, gas storage, and most importantly, commodities trading accounting for 45 percent of the company’s profit. The nation’s largest natural gas utility, Sempra has revenues of $11.4 billion (compared to EnergySouth’s $135 million revenues) and was ranked No. 232 on the Fortune 500 list of the nation’s largest publicly held companies. – PR 7/9/08
  • Bay Gas Storage Company, Ltd., an EnergySouth subsidiary, provides natural gas storage services.
    • EnergySouth held 90. 9% interest in Bay Gas and Olin Corporation held a 9.1% limited partnership interest.
    • Bay Gas owns and operates three underground caverns used for natural gas storage located in McIntosh. Storage caverns are cut from naturally formed, underground salt domes through solution mining. A well is drilled, water is injected and salt brine — a mixture of water and salt — is extracted.
    • Bay Gas has plans to drill a fourth cavern with 5 billion cubic feet capacity scheduled to begin service in the fall of 2009. The project is the first phase of a planned expansion that will later include a fifth cavern also capable of storing 5 billion cubic feet of natural gas, raising the company’s total capacity at Bay Gas to 22 billion cubic feet. The company is spending $100 million to finish the third dome, to start a fourth and a fifth dome, and to build a 29-mile pipeline.
    • EnergySouth joined with New York-based Fortress Investment Group to buy Mississippi Hub LLC.’s natural gas storage dome near Magee, Miss. for $140 million in November 2007. EnergySouth owns 60 percent of the project, and Fortress owns 40 percent..
  • Bay Gas had a 20-year contract to store natural gas for Mobile Gas. Mobile Gas pays about twice as much for storage as commercial Bay Gas customers such as Tampa Electric Co. The profits of EnergySouth and Bay Gas Storage are not limited by the PSC’s jurisdiction. The cost of Bay Gas storage is borne by Mobile Gas customers, not by the utility. In 2005, the amount of gas withdrawn from storage by Mobile Gas represented 9 percent of Bay Gas’ total capacity, but Mobile Gas accounted for about 25 percent of the storage facility’s revenue of $16 million.
  • Federal Department of Energy surveys showed customers of Mobile Gas pay some of the highest rates in the nation for natural gas. – PR 2/18/2007, 1/17/08
    • Mobile Gas prices for residential customers averaged $22.42 per 1,000 cubic feet in October 2007, 54 percent higher than the nationwide average of $14.51. Commercial customers were charged $15.55, compared to a national average of $10.91.
    • Mobile Gas is the country’s second-most-expensive state-regulated utility for residential gas prices. Alabama had the third-highest gas prices in the nation in 2006.
    • The Mobile City Council asked the Alabama Public Service Commission to investigate natural gas rates. Reggie Copeland and William Carroll voted against the resolution. A Public Service Commission study released in January 2008 found no evidence that Mobile Gas Service Corp. was charging improper rates to customers, but it did not address the reasons for the state’s higher-than-average gas prices. The study did suggest changes that would make some financial transactions between Mobile Gas and EnergySouth, its parent company, more transparent. Commissioners and PSC personnel continued to blame high prices on limited volume and a need to maintain infrastructure. The Alabama Public Service Commission questioned the use of the federal survey results and said that PSC President Jim Sullivan did not believe the Mobile Gas rates were unfair or out of order, based on the PSC rules that the company operates under. Alabama’s PSC is one of the few in the nation that operates without supervision from outside authorities. All of the surrounding states with lower prices have state-funded consumer watchdog groups that scrutinize the decisions of their public service commissions. In Alabama, no one other than PSC officials can examine the operations records of the state’s monopoly utilities. – PR 2/18/2007, 1/17/08
    • The Alabama Attorney General’s Office is reviewing financial records at Mobile Gas Service Corp., an evaluation prompted in part by consumer complaints about the utility’s high natural gas rates. – PR 8/4/07
  • EnergySouth directors and executives owned more than one million of the company’s 7.9 million shares.
    • Major Shareholders (as of 12-06): Thomas Van Antwerp has voting rights on over 581,000 shares or 7% of outstanding shares (including Ann B. Hearin 105,000, Louise B. Hearin 64,000 , Luis Williams 12,000, Hearin-Chandler Foundation 175,000, Staples Family LLC 210,000). Other major beneficial owners include Royce and Associates, LLC, New York, 6%, and U.S. Trust Corporation, New York, 5.5%.
    • Directors: WALTER A. BELL Commissioner, Department of Insurance, State of Alabama; Vice Chairman, Gulf Federal Bank. JOHN S. DAVIS Vice Chairman of the Company; Member of Board, Infirmary Health System, Inc., Member of South Area Board of Directors AmSouth Bank. JOHN C. HOPE, III Chairman of the Board of the Company; Executive Vice President, Whitney National Bank; Member of Board, Infirmary Health System, Inc. WALTER L. HOVELL Vice Chairman of the Board of the Company; Retired President and Chief Executive Officer, Mobile Gas Service Corporation GAYLORD C. LYON President, Gaylord C. Lyon and Company, Inc., JUDY A. MARSTON Owner of Judy Marston & Associates, a business consulting firm S. FELTON MITCHELL President, S. Felton Mitchell, Jr., P.C., Sole Proprietor, S.Felton Mitchell, Jr., CPA, President, The Vibroplex Co., Inc., G. MONTGOMERY MITCHELL Retired Senior Vice President, Stone & Webster Management Consultants, Inc., Houston, Texas; Member of Board, Energy West, Inc., Great Falls, Montana HARRIS V. MORRISSETTE President, Marshall Biscuit Co., Inc.; Director, BankTrust; Director, Williamsburg Investment Trust, Cincinnati, Ohio; Chairman of the Board, Azalea Aviation, Inc. ROBERT H. ROUSE Partner: Helmsing, Leach, Herlong, Newman & Rouse P.C., THOMAS B. VAN ANTWERP Executive Director, Providence Hospital Foundation; Member of the Board, Merchants and Marine Bank, Pascagoula, Mississippi
  • MoBay Storage Hub Inc. plans to build 50 billion cubic feet of natural gas storage between Dauphin Island and Mobile County in an area where four major pipelines meet. – PR 9/30/07, 12/22/07, 2/8/08
    • Its Houston-based parent company is Falcon Gas Storage. The company signed a lease with the state on the land and said it plans to start construction in 2008 and complete the $250 million facility by 2009.
    • The MoBay project is a conversion of the company’s nearly depleted gas field in the Mississippi Sound. Since the project is a conversion rather than new, Falcon representatives have said it is an economical and environmentally friendly gas storage method.
    • The project would create the largest natural gas storage facility in the Gulf of Mexico. Among Gulf states, Louisiana waters have the largest amount of natural gas storage, with a total of 320 billion cubic feet. Alabama has the smallest, with 14.5 billion cubic feet. The MoBay proposal would increase the state’s natural gas storage to 54.5 billion cubic feet. The project would also create about 20 jobs with salaries of about $77,000, according to the company.
    • The Bayou La Batre Industrial Development Authority granted MoBay an abatement of state and county taxes, saving the company an estimated $7.5 million in ad valorem taxes and $8.7 million in sales and use taxes over the course of five years. MoBay, however, will pay full sales and use taxes to the city of Bayou La Batre. MoBay will continue to pay all education-related state and county taxes, estimated at more than $3.3 million per year once construction is complete, according to the agreement. The abatement of noneducational state and county taxes was limited to five years. The maximum allowed by state law is 10 years.

MAWSS

  • The Board of Water and Sewer Commissioners of the City of Mobile, doing business as the Mobile Area Water and Sewer System, provides water and sewer service to the Mobile metropolitan area.
  • The Portage on Bayou Chotage (Three Mile Creek) was the important early source of water supply for the City of Mobile. Some residences may have had individually dug wells on their properties. In 1819, a public well was installed at the intersection of Dauphin and Royal streets at what is now Bienville Square.
  • In 1832, the city constructed an aqueduct from a spring near the late residence of Judge Lipscomb at Spring Hill. In 1836, the City of Mobile leased the water works to Henry Hitchcock and he was given a franchise to provide water for a period of 20 years, but in 1837, the State legislature incorporated the Mobile Aqueduct Company and, as a result, Hitchcock in 1838 surrendered the water works and all appurtenances to the City of Mobile.
  • In 1840 the city of Mobile made a contract with Albert Stein, who received the exclusive right to supply the city with water, and the city the right to purchase his plant at a price to be fixed by arbitration. This was Mobile’s only public water system until 1886. Albert Stein died in 1874, but the water system continued to operate until 1898.
    • The pump site at Spring Hill fed a tank site was about 2 miles from town. From the elevated tank, a system of lines extended throughout the City.
    • Some of the lines consisted of cast-iron but the majority were bored-out heart pine logs.
  • Mobile’s first sewer was installed in Conti Street in 1868, at the time the old Gulf City Hotel, later known as the Southern Hotel, was erected at the southeast corner of Conti and Water streets. In 1889 the City granted a franchise to the Conti Street Sewer Company for construction of a sewer line in Conti Street. This line, with laterals into several side streets, served the immediate downtown area. About 10 years after the sewer was installed, the City acquired it in 1899, and it became a part of the general sewer system.
  • In 1886, the Bienville Water Supply Company was organized with Dr. George A. Ketchum as its president. This company constructed a pumping plant on Clear Creek off Moffat Road and a reservoir, still in use, on Moffat Road. A cast-iron pipe was installed into the heart of the City with necessary distribution lines into the business district and residential areas in 1887.
  • In 1898, because neither the Stein nor the Bienville companies were able to meet demand, after some litigation, the City acquired the properties and water-rights of the Stein interests, and decided to construct a public-owned supply. Bienville Water Supply sued the city and it was appealed to the US Supreme Court. In 1900, the City system was put into operation.
    • The pumping station was on Three Mile Creek at the east end of what is now Langan Park, and the reservoir, still in use, was atop Spring Hill near the small elevated tank. In 1901, the operation of the old Stein plant was discontinued. Most of the cast-iron distribution system of the old plant was removed and either re-laid or sold. By 1904, so many connections to the new City Works had been made that the supply in Three Mile Creek at the Spring Hill pumping station was insufficient to furnish the required water. An auxiliary pumping plant was installed on the site of the old Stein plant. This auxiliary plant was put into operation on October 2, 1905.
  • The Bienville and the City systems, after the abandonment of the Stein system, operated as virtually parallel, but separate systems until 1907, when the city acquired the Bienville holdings for $350,000. Since that time the two systems have been interconnected and operated as one.
  • During World War II supply became inadequate and the water sheds of Clear and Three Mile Creeks were becoming more urbanized and the quality of the supply was endangered. The source of supply recommended by the Mobile Water Works to the City and Planning Commissions was Big Creek, in the western part of Mobile County.
  • In 1952, so that money could be raised from issuance of bonds to update the existing water system, the Board of Water and Sewer Commissioners was created and entered into a contract with the City of Mobile the Board agreed to purchase the water and sanitary sewer systems on behalf of the city.
  • The Big Creek (Converse) Reservoir was placed in service in 1952 at a cost of about $7,000,000 including land, dams, pumphouse, reservoir and pipelines. Construction required two years.
    • Water is delivered from the 3,600-acre lake that collects water from a 103 square mile watershed and pumping station by pipes to two reservoirs where it is diverted either to domestic or industrial use. The reservoirs are at an elevation of 220 feet and industrial water is delivered by gravity to industry at an elevation of about 25 feet. The industrial water line extends from the filter plant northward about 7 miles to the industrial sites at Magazine Point. Pumps at Big Creek Lake provide treated water to Mobile and untreated water to local industries such as chemical plants and paper mills.
    • Many years ago, the Board made the decision to create a water supply reservoir in West Mobile. The Reservoir consists of a 3,600-acre man-made lake. The Converse Reservoir supply is adequate to meet the potable water needs of all of Mobile County, at least until the year 2050. The Converse Reservoir system can supply 100,000,000 gallons of water per day.
  • The Mobile Water Service System is publicly owned and is operated by the Board under a deed of trust from the City. This Board consists of five members that are appointed by the City Council. Raw water was purchased from the City Water Works Board from 1952 to 1968. The two Boards were merged in 1968, with the Board of Water and Sewer Commissioners taking over the raw water system.
  • The potable water system provides water through two water treatment plants.  The potable water system consists of approximately 1,265 miles of water lines ranging in size from 2 to 60 inches in diameter. The total storage capacity for the potable water system is 57,000,000 gallons. The Mobile Area Water and Sewer System has three wastewater treatment plants
    • Raw water from Big Creek Lake is prechlorinated prior to coagulation with aluminum sulfate and lime to remove sediments and organic matter, brown color, and turbidity. After settling of precipitants in sedimentation basins, the water is passed through a sand filter and gravel. The water undergoes secondary lime treatment to adjust the pH. Post-chemical treatment consists of fluoridation whereby fluoride as sodium silicofluoride is added after filtration because fluoride can be removed by the lime-softening and alum-coagulation processes.
  • MAWSS Mobile River system for industrial customers pumps water from the Mobile River at Bucks, just above Barry Steam Plant (well above the saltwater intrusion “wedge”) into a one hundred acre lake north of Bayou Sara that was formed by damming Cold Creek.
    • The Pipeline Canal, constructed in 1968, exits the lake and carries water eight miles into in a seventy-eight inch underground pipe, through which it is transported to a 60 acre reservoir in Saraland.
    • As the number of industries has declined dramatically since the canal’s construction, the demand for industrial water has fallen substantially and, consequently, the canal is routinely shut down. In the event of emergency, water from the pipeline canal could be diverted to a water treatment plant for public consumption.
  • Mobile County Water, Sewer and Fire Protection Authority

Telephone

  • Harbor Communications is a Mobile-based competitive local exchange carrier, or CLEC.
    • In 2007 it was sold to J&L LLC, consisting of real estate developer Larry Wireman and his associate Judy Ramey, along with Boihem Investments LLC, an entity of New Orleans businessman Lester Boihem. It was bought from RJW Holdings, a company belonging to Bob Williams, Mobile businessman and a former major owner of the Terminix Co.
    • Mark B. Baggs Sr. co-founded Harbor in 2001 with Ed Forbess and two other people. Forbess now serves as the company’s general manager, while Baggs is its vice president of operations and marketing.
    • Harbor grew up in the Center for Entrepreneurial Excellence business incubator alongside Southern Light LLC. At one time, Harbor and Southern Light had a common investor, and they still do business together.  Harbor’s has had 19 employees for the past three years. Various business information services put annual revenue at about $4 million. Harbor provides services primarily to businesses including the RSA Battle House Tower.  –  PR 6/7/07
  • Southern Light LLC, founded in Mobile in 1998, was ranked 151 in Inc. Magazine’s fastest growing private companies list. The ranking was based on 2006 revenue of $13.6 million, a 1,303 percent increase over 2005. The company, which employs 31, provides fiber optic communications to business and government customers along the Gulf Coast.  – PR 8/27/07

Miscellaneous

  • The DayTrading Institute in Mobile was founded in 1996 by Tom Busby
  • A Mobile-based partnership, Oil Shale Exploration Co., was offered an oil-shale mine lease in Utah by the Interior Department. Dan Elcan is OSEC’s managing partner and a Mobile commercial real-estate developer. His partnership is backed by Twin Pines Coal Co. of Alabama and would use Canadian technology. Oil Shale Exploration Co., also known as OSEC, still needs to submit operational plans for its phased testing program. – PR 5/2/07
    • Utah has the only mining project where oil shale will be brought to the surface, crushed into gravel and fed into a furnace-like retort. The White River mine near Vernal, 130 miles east of Salt Lake City, was abandoned by three major oil companies in 1985 when falling crude prices made shale oil long an elusive bonanza in the West uneconomical. Today’s crude oil prices could make oil-shale development more practical. Environmental groups have shown little resistance to the demonstration projects, but that could change when oil companies seek to mine or heat up larger pieces of federal land, consuming vast amounts of water in an arid region. The oil shale reserves scattered in Colorado, Utah and southwest Wyoming are believed to contain a 100-year domestic supply of oil if it can be unlocked. Oil shale is said to be “rich” when it contains 30 gallons of petroleum for each ton of rock, but pound for pound that amounts to only 1/10th of the energy of liquid crude oil. Those tough economics have defied efforts at oil shale development for more than a century, most recently in 1982, when Exxon shut down its $5 billion Colony project in western Colorado and laid off 2,200 workers.
  • James R. “Jimmy” Phipps, the brainchild behind the “Life Without Debt” pyramid scheme that ensnared numerous affluent Mobilians several years ago, has been found guilty of money laundering, tax evasion and other crimes, and faces what could be a substantial prison sentence. Phipps operated pyramid schemes for more than 20 years, all the while claiming that federal tax laws were illegal and didn’t apply to him because he was “sovereign.” Prosecutors charged that from 1998 to 2006, he collected more than $25 million from 30,000 “Life Without Debt” participants. Of those, more than 90 percent lost their money. In the summer of 2001, “Life Without Debt” swept through Mobile and the Florida Panhandle, as was reported in a series of Press-Register articles. Dozens of Mobilians, some of them well-to-do businessmen, ponied up a $2,500 “entry level fee” to join the program. To make money, entrants had to recruit new members. They, in turn, were to recruit others, with the new entry fees shared by those up the pyramid or, as Phipps called it, the “matrix.” Investors in the program received booklets claiming that their entry fees would grow above $100,000 “with minimum effort and absolutely no risk.” With the rumor mill churning out names of those who’d supposedly participated, Mobile Mayor Mike Dow and Councilwoman Bess Rich — then campaigning for Dow’s job — felt compelled to issue statements denying involvement in “Life Without Debt.”



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