FAIRFIELD, Ala. -- When people describe the mayor of this town, they often start by saying, "Well, that Larry he's crazy."
Crazy or not, the charismatic 50-year-old Larry Langford seems to be single-handedly transforming this former steel town of 12,000 west of Birmingham into a financial dream -- or a nightmare, depending on whom you ask.
Some say his latest triumph -- a municipally financed theme park -- is a miracle and a blessing. They tout the work it took to get 11 municipalities to put up $65 million in bonds to build the 70-acre park, called VisionLand, in nearby Bessemer. They envision millions in revenues.
Others call it a "money-sucking" pit that doesn't have a prayer.
Langford, who works as the Alabama spokesman for Anheuser-Busch Cos., runs the town with a combination of social and religious conservatism and liberal government spending.
He once spent $10,000 of his own money to plaster billboards all over adjacent Birmingham with the words "Wall of Shame." He kept the signs updated for a year with a running tally of black-on-black murders in the United States.
Frustrated by his inability to lure a family restaurant to economically depressed Fairfield, he used $300,000 of city money to build one. He named it "Glory's," as in "to God be the glory."
He banned bikinis and Speedo swimsuits at the community pool he built and posted a sign cautioning: "If you wear a size 20, buy a size 20."
At VisionLand, male employees are forbidden to wear earrings, ponytails or baggy pants. Women may wear no more than two earrings. "If you want to work here," Langford says, "we're the final word on what you look like."
The park has been the "vision" of Langford's decade-long tenure as mayor -- ever since his then 3-year-old niece begged him to take her to Atlanta's Six Flags amusement park. Longford refused and set out to build his own amusement park.
With sticky-pad notes and napkin sketches, he persuaded 11 of west Jefferson County's 15 mayors to sign on to the project, which he originally estimated would cost $25 million. They pledged from $1 million a year over the next 25 years for the city of Birmingham to $1,700 a year from North Johns, a town of 170.
In 1995, Langford negotiated the purchase of 520 acres adjoining Interstate 59 from USX Corp.'s real-estate division. Three years later, the park opened.
"At first, they all thought I was about three french fries short of a Happy Meal," Langford chuckles. "I was tired of having to drive somewhere every time you want to do something. I wanted people to stop driving through Alabama. I wanted it to be a destination."
In its first seven weeks, the park has drawn more than 220,000 customers. It features Rampage, a wooden roller coaster with a 120-foot drop, a 7-acre water park with slides and floating pools, a 106-foot Ferris wheel and dozens of kiddie coasters.
According to a study by Atlanta-based Visioneering, the park is expected to bring in 890,000 to 1.2 million people in its first year and generate a profit of more than $8.5 million to be divided among the cities, based on how much they put in.
Therein lies the worry of some of Fairfield activists.
"It will be a cold, cold day in Hades when we get back what we put into it," says Dr. James Blake, a member of the Birmingham City Council who voted against funding the park.
Langford ignores the criticism, his eyes dancing as two tour buses approach the park's main gate. "I love to see those roll in here," he says.
Langford tours Fairfield in his fully loaded sport-utility vehicle. Its vanity tag reads "Visionland 3" -- his top two managers have "Visionland 1" and "Visionland 2."
"See that Home Depot down there?" he asks. "I brought that here." A boarded-up Winn-Dixie supermarket is soon to become a U.S. Postal Service tracking office.
Atop a hill sits a 30,000-square-foot civic center that cost $4 million in city bonds to build six years ago. When no restaurant would come to the center, Langford built Glory's. Three white crosses illuminate it at night. "See those crosses on top of that building?" he says belligerently. "They're going to stay up there."
But the Southern-food buffet seems to be struggling. Since Kelco Food Service Inc., a Miamicompany, started running Glory's for the city two years ago, it has lost about $60,000, according to its manager, Jim Badia.
Langford's plans include a $57 million aquarium, a 60-store outlet center, a 14-screen stadium-style theater and a hotel. "When I put myself out of the way and put him [God] first, everything I touch works," he says.
Other improvements go to the city's appearance. Last year, Langford bought a troublesome nightclub in a residential area, had it demolished and built homes for needy families. Tired of tall grass in front yards, he charged homeowners $1,000 to cut their grass if they failed to heed his warnings. It generated $80,000 for the city's coffers.
He frets about the two homicides in Fairfield this year -- the first in the city in four years. One was a young man who shot his grandmother over a check. The other, Longford thinks, shouldn't count against Fairfield -- the victim was just passing through, on the run from Birmingham police.
"This is a real city now," says Terence Witherspoon, a Fairfield city councilman and steelworker. "It was a city on its way to the graveyard. It's because of Larry. He can be domineering, but that's because he's got a vision. He's a godsend."
Indeed, the mayor can hardly walk 10 feet without someone asking him to take a picture with a child or shake his hand.
But his critics say that the newly concreted downtown sidewalks and the fancy new field for the town's championship boys soccer team and the stone-lined Japanese Koi pond in the downtown center plaza come with a huge price tag.
"We're investing $400,000 a year in a recreation, entertainment place and our schools are in deplorable condition," says Charles H. Kemp, 72, a retired Fairfield educator.
Perhaps what irks his critics most are the personality-cult touches in VisionLand.
A bronze statue at the entrance to the park shows a man bearing a striking resemblance to Langford, appearing to read the Bible to little children. Some say it is sacrilegious. The park's arcade is called Langford High School, a mockery, many say, of his neglect of the city's schools.
But few can argue that Langford is not passionate about his work. He launched his political career when he couldn't get the city to pave his own street. "I ran on the promise that I would pave my street first and then do everybody else's," he recalls.
Thin and wiry, Langford says he is often too preoccupied with work to eat regular meals. His diet, he says, consists of Fritos, three banana splits a day and a half-pack of Marlboro Lights.
His loves are skeet-shooting and gun collecting. He has invested more than $300,000 in 150 guns -- including two custom-made, pearl-handled pistols, a $7,000 stainless steel Python 657 (the same gun used by Dirty Harry, he proudly notes) and a replica of a 1966 Walter PPQ, which Langford describes as a German "hit" gun.
"Anything I like, I love," says Larry Langford.
Pub Date: 7/26/98