ORANGE BEACH, Ala. – The shared parking lot between the Orange Beach Adult Activity Center and the library on Canal Road was filled to overflowing on Monday afternoon.

Residents were asked to show up and give their ideas on a revamping of Canal Road to make it more homey and pedestrian and bicycle friendly.

Kit Alexander, who is director of community develop among other things for the city of Orange Beach, was thrilled at the full house.

“The number of people, the enthusiasm and the ideas – everything was just more than I expected and hoped for, quite frankly,” Alexander said. “They want to retain the authentic Orange Beach character.”

Those among the crowd also provided some excellent input to get the projected Canal Road Overlay district up and running.

“I was very impressed with the savvy of the group of people that threw out these ideas,” Alexander said. “It was really encouraging to see the enthusiasm. I’m hoping that March 1 when we start putting this on paper, we’ll continue to see this enthusiasm.”

Dan Burden with Walkable and Livable Communities will be in town for the March meeting. His website, www.walklive.org, featured a rendering of what Canal Road might look like after the redesign on Wednesday.

Among the many suggestions, most centered on walking or biking, green gathering spaces and clusters of retail shops.

“The main things that people supported was landscaping and landscaping medians,” she said. “Not just pedestrian sidewalks, but both pedestrian and bicycling sidewalks. A lot of concern was expressed about the safety issues on Canal Road for bicyclists. They would prefer multi-modal, larger, wider sidewalks.”

This comes right in line with what Mayor Tony Kennon says the Orange Beach Business Council is currently working with its “Project Paradise.” A group interested in that project took a bus tour on Wednesday to pinpoint areas to begin this effort.

“Now I’ve been talking about since I went into office about the Disney World affect,” Kennon said before Monday’s meeting. “When people go on vacation they want to drive into a grand entrance, almost like going into Fantasy Island.”

“You come through this entrance that’s taking you to paradise. You know you are no longer in Kansas anymore. You are now at your destination, your vacation destination, and everything is beautiful.”

Among other things suggested were human-scale lighting, accommodation for electric-type vehicles, gathering space amenities like benches and little areas where people can congregate, raised crosswalks, traffic calming devices and small little green space nooks.

“We call ‘em sanity parks up in New York,” Alexander said of the nooks.

The elephant in the room just might have been the Cross Island Parkway, a proposed road that would extend the Foley Beach Express all the way to the beach. At one time the state plan was to widen Canal Road to five lanes.

“When the Foley Beach Express was first built, that was like Phase I,” Alexander said. “The intention was to follow through with Phase II and get that out to the beach. If we can get that extended as was originally planned it will help with local planning and what we are talking about.”

Chad Watkins of Watkins, Acy and Strunk, the firm hired to help the city revamp coding so the changes can be implemented, pointed out that of all the main thoroughfares in the city, Canal Road is the only one not five lanes.

“If the state follows through and says we cannot widen Canal Road, then what do we want to do with Canal Road?” Kennon asked.  “And what we want to do with Canal Road is make it a shopping district.”

Watkins started out the program by leading the crowd through 45 minutes of basics about planning and traffic flows and zoning techniques.

“How it’s used and can be treated can have a huge impact on the kind of town, the kind of urban fabric you can have,” he said. “Canal Road has opportunities in this direction.”

He also cautioned that the first session was not about how to do these things, but to come up with the big ideas of what to do first. Watkins told the crowd to submit ideas based on the assumption the Cross Island Parkway was coming.

“Not necessarily how today,” he said. “Just big ideas. Today is about exploring options. Our land is valuable and we can fill it up with pavement if we want to. But there are alternatives.”

Another idea that Alexander found exceptional was expanding walking and biking paths to intertwine neighborhoods with schools and shopping areas.

“I thought that was an excellent comment,” she said. “We didn’t come up with that in my group and I was kinda jealous.”