Ladd-Peebles Stadium is officially MCPSS property

MOBILE, Ala. (WKRG) — After months of negotiations and examinations, the transfer of Ladd-Peebles stadium from the City of Mobile to the Mobile County Public School System was finalized on Wednesday.

“As a board and as a school system, we’re glad that the negotiations have come to an end,” school board President Don Stringfellow said.

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The stadium will be used as a home football field for Murphy High School.

The city sold the stadium to the school system for $1 as part of an intergovernmental agreement that allowed the city to bypass a traditional bidding process. Along with the stadium, the city gave the school system $9.2 million to be used toward renovations to the stadium.

Stringfellow said the school board will spend an additional $5 million for renovations that had previously been portioned out to build a new stadium for Murphy High School.

“It’s got a lot of potential,” Stringfellow said.

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Once architects and engineers working with the school system determine the proper renovations to make, they will decide when to close the stadium for 30 months to make the repairs.

While much of the engineering decisions the school district will have to make remain unknown, the decision to take away 15,000 seats from the stadium’s current 40,000-seat capacity is something the school board has been very open about.

“We don’t need that for a high school,” Stringfellow said.

In the past, the city has hosted a multitude of events, such as concerts and a circus, at the stadium. Now that the stadium is under MCPSS ownership, Mobile City Attorney Ricardo Woods said other city events will be considered at the discretion of the school board.

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“There are going to be seldom city events. It will be a school board-owned property, and they will be in control of it,” Woods said.

Woods and Stringfellow agreed that HBCO games hosted by the city would still be held at Ladd Stadium.

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