Developer Patrick Lawler said he sees “tremendous opportunity and growth potential in Gadsden.”

And that’s why the man behind City Harbor, the waterfront business, dining and entertainment development on Lake Guntersville that has attracted attention and produced nearly a million added tax dollars annually in its two years of operation, wants to put a similar project here.

Mayor Craig Ford during his State of the City presentation on Nov. 19 revealed the plans for Coosa Harbor, which will be located on city-owned property along the Coosa River.

Ford in a statement on Nov. 20 called it “a project that is going to change the landscape of Gadsden. We’re blessed to have an amazing natural resource like the Coosa River running through our city, and we have to utilize our riverfront.”

Lawler attended the event at The Venue at Coosa Landing, and in response to a prompt from Ford offered a two- to three-year timeline for those plans to become reality.

Afterward, he said once an agreement is finalized, the first step will be “to get the civil engineers involved” to check and sign off on soil samples from the property.

“We’ll go from there to blueprints,” Lawler said. “It usually takes about six to 10 months to get to that, and from there we go to permits.”

Those include shoreline permitting from Alabama Power Co.

“As soon as we have all the approvals in place,” Lawler promised, “we will be breaking ground.”

The developer said Coosa Harbor will feature 20 two-bedroom, two-bath condominium units with an “open living concept” (extensive use of open spaces) and balconies overlooking the water.

He expects them to be purchased by investors — “The ones in Guntersville, we sold all of them before we ever broke ground,” he said — and they can be used either for permanent accommodations or short-term, Vrbo-like rentals.

As in Guntersville, there will be dining and shopping opportunities, including Big Mike’s Steakhouse and Levi’s on the Lake (a casual bar with live entertainment). There also will be “kid-friendly, family-oriented” options, Lawler said.

The developer said a dollar figure on the project is “a tough question,” but published reports have put the cost of City Harbor, which opened in 2022, at $30 million.

However, the development has pumped an estimated $950,000 in new tax money into Guntersville’s coffers each year, and Lawler expects that to grow to $1.5 million once the latest addition to City Harbor, a 90-room Hilton hotel, is completed and operating.

“That doesn’t include the additional business for downtown merchants,” he said, “plus property values have gone up. It’s hard to put a metric on it; it feeds on itself.”

Kay Moore, director of Downtown Gadsden Inc., said following the State of the City presentation, “I think the growth is positive, and I think the more people we can bring to Gadsden particularly from outside of (the city) is going to bring them downtown as well. So I think it’ll be a great thing.”

The city purchased the property, once the home of Rainbow Cinemas, in 2014, and Ford said it has been “vacant and unused” since then.

During his State of the City presentation, the mayor said he and John Moore, Gadsden’s director of economic development and governmental affairs, met with Lawler at City Harbor. He said the developer called Gadsden “a gem” and said he wanted “to look into it.”

In his subsequent statement, he said, “One of the things we heard from citizens through the Grow Gadsden master plan is the need for riverfront development, so this is an opportunity to use some of our existing assets to meet those needs and help build a landmark development for the city.”

Lawler said he’s “100% excited” to be in Gadsden — he’s also working on a similar waterfront development in Decatur, Ingalls Harbor — and has enjoyed working with Ford and Moore on Coosa Harbor

“It’s coming; it’s not a pie-in-the-sky idea, this is what’s happening,” Ford said during his State of the City presentation. “He’s going to build this, and we hope he makes a ton of money, because if he makes a ton of money, we make a ton of money.”

Ford noted other things happening down the road — the move of City Hall and a hotel locating in its current spot overlooking the river, a planned aquatic complex on West Meighan Boulevard — and said, simply, “It’s Gadsden’s time.”

This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: Coosa Harbor developer calls Gadsden a gem