ROBERTSDALE — Watching hundreds of homes pop up in subdivisions across Baldwin County gives Mike Floyd déjà vu.

Floyd moved to Baldwin County nearly a decade ago from Henry County in Georgia which at the time was swiftly becoming the fastest growing county in metro Atlanta.

His family watched as subdivisions with houses packed tightly together were raised in record time. They watched town homes come next and then apartments.

By April 2022, an estimated 5,918 new residents crowded into the area in a single year, making Henry County the fastest growing county in the metro Atlanta area.

"Guess what they left out of the equation?" Floyd said.      "Infrastructure."

Major arteries became parking lots, and Floyd said there were few detours around the backups because no secondary roads were added or improved.

Floyd and his family moved before the building boom grew out of control. Now, however, the family is seeing the same happen near their home in Summerdale. Developers are preparing to raise 636 homes nearby in the new Tealwood Estates subdivision on Underwood Road.

"I have a lot invested. I worked 52 years to retire to a nice, peaceful community. I don't mind seeing progress. But you don't come in and put lower-valued houses in the middle of million-dollar homes," Floyd said. "That's basically what's happening here. You have someone who owns a tract of property, and they see they can make a great deal of money by taking an acre and placing six homes on it and making a cluster home subdivision."

Floyd was one of dozens of homeowners and community leaders who packed into the Baldwin County Planning and Zoning Board meeting last week to question the specifics of three subdivisions planned in Summerdale and Fairhope. They never got the chance.

As the meeting began, commission Chairman Steven Pumphrey said the developers of Tealwood Estates, Mill Creek Subdivision, Phase I, and Gaineswood Subdivision all requested that their cases be tabled until the May 5 meeting so engineers can examine traffic data.

Tealwood Estates is a 636-lot subdivision expected to be built over seven phases on the north side of Underwood Road, east of County Road 9 and Fish River and west of County Road 49.

Phase one of Mill Creek is 103 lots on the south side of County Road 34, east of Ted Lysek Road and west of Davis Road, a quarter mile west of Summerdale. The Gaineswood subdivision application includes 174 lots on the west side of State Highway 181 between County Road 32 and County Road 24.

Officials at the meeting said even before residents poured in to question the plans that night that planning and zoning staff had major concerns with the traffic studies the developers submitted, detailing how the increase in cars would impact current traffic flow.

Baldwin County residents also have concerns.

Zoning questions have popped up in Baldwin County as fast as new neighborhoods.

In recent months, residents have tried to fight back against the build up by forming zoning districts and holding elections which officially give a volunteer board of residents from that district input on the type of new construction allowed.

Floyd's neighborhood sits in an unincorporated area of the county, meaning any developer who meets the county's technical requirements, which address concerns such as utility use, traffic plans and environmental impacts, can build anything.

Even with a successful vote for a zoning district, many residents are back where they started. Any project that has a completed application before the vote is held is grandfathered in. Such is the case for the Gaineswood Estates subdivision on Highway 181 in Fairhope.

The development sits squarely in Planning District 39 whose residents voted in favor of zoning in February. Developers submitted the completed application prior to the vote, however, meaning the construction continues.

Marla Barnes, organizer in District 14, has been rallying residents around the county to get involved and learn what is happening around their homes.

"It's really sad that all the developer has to do is meet the minimum requirements and they can totally change the environment with this type of subdivision in a rural area," Barnes said. "They are basically putting enough people in to create a town on less than 300 acres."

Barnes said residents need to also voice their concerns with facts, not emotion.

"We can't just go to that meeting and say, 'We don't want this.' We have to have concrete hard facts and the best we can hope is that something would be amended or improved. We are not going to fundamentally change or stop any type of development," she said.