SPANISH FORT, Ala. — From captains of industry and political leaders to charter-boat captains and community volunteers, the effort to create Alabama’s Roadmap to Resilience started Tuesday at 5 Rivers Delta Resource Center.

One day after Gov. Bob Riley established by executive order the Commission for Coastal Recovery, a standing-room-only crowd gathered at the Spanish Fort facility to take part in a brainstorming session for drafting a plan by Dec. 15 that will help the coastal communities create a post-oil spill economy while improving the quality of life statewide.

“More than 20 percent of the state’s General Fund comes from Baldwin and Mobile counties …“We’d better get this right,” Ricky Mathews told the crowd in 5 Rivers’ Tensaw Theater while hundreds more watched via simulcast in other portions of the facility.

Mathews, who is publisher of the Press-Register in Mobile, was tapped by Riley to lead the commission because he led a similar effort in Mississippi following the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina.

Mathews said the impact of the oil spill on Baldwin and Mobile counties won’t be over “until these people tell us it’s over,” pointing to a picture he took of a crowded Orange Beach meeting held only two weeks ago to discuss the claims process with claims czar Kenneth Feinberg.

“Alabama needs a plan. This is about transformative change … that can build something that is unique in the world,” Mathews said.

Riley was very clear his commission of about 100 community leaders, hailing primarily from the business community, was created to draft a plan for the future administration as his second term in office winds down.

Riley said the saddest words in the English language are “what if” and he challenged every citizen in the state to make his voice heard throughout this process.

“This gives you an ability to take a huge amount of money and direct it into something that benefits everyone in the coastal community,” Riley said, estimating Alabama stands to receive its share of billions of dollars resulting from the oil spill.

“We’re here because this is what we love. We’re here because this is who we are,” said U.S. Rep. Jo Bonner, R-Ala.

The group assembled Tuesday will begin the process necessary to help the coastal communities of Baldwin and Mobile counties, and in turn, the entire state of Alabama “continue on the path to recovery from the worst environmental and economic tragedy we have experienced in our nation’s life,” Bonner said.

Riley said he is hopeful, however, that five, 10 or even 20 years from now people will look back and realize that this particular moment was “a tipping point that gave us opportunities we never thought we’d have.”

From the creation of equitable and accessible coastal insurance to the possible construction of a Baldwin County convention center to rival those in neighboring states that steal business on a regular basis, Riley said the “options and the opportunities are truly limitless,” but it will require every person involved to be “enthusiastic, passionate and intense” or else it becomes “just another work product.”

“Either we develop a plan, or this money will filter away, and you’ll look back and never really understand the difference we could have made and didn’t,” Riley said.

The blueprint can only succeed, however, if it is simple, completely transparent and put into action quickly, Mathews said.