Potential future home of a new pocket park in Foley. The park would include an amphitheater and permanent musical instruments, and could be used for scheduled performances and musical outings.

Jessica Vaughn / Gulf Coast Media

FOLEY - A new pocket park is in the works for downtown Foley. The City of Foley, Foley Main Street, and the Baldwin County Board of Education are collaborating to bring a new, music-filled pocket park to the area. The park will be located beside Foley Middle School, at the northwest corner of Pine Street and Highway 98, which is being leased long-term to the City of Foley by the Board of Education.

Designs for the park include an amphitheater to sit approximately 100 people, a tree buffer along Highway 98, and permanent musical instruments to be placed beside the handicap accessible stage. The City of Foley is paying for the park’s design and construction, and the permanent musical instruments will be purchased via an AARP grant received by Foley Main Street.

“I applied for an AARP grant and received $20,000 to go towards the musical instruments that will be in the back of the stage,” said Darrelyn Dunmore, executive director of Foley Main Street. “AARP was very excited about the fact that this was property of the Baldwin County Board of Education and that the middle schoolers will be able to use it during the day, as well as it being for music events. Music always brings people together, so we want this to be another part of downtown Foley where people will want to come and group and be downtown.”

Plans are to go to bid for the project in January. WAS Design is designing the park. Dunmore said that while the stage and theater would be able to be used for scheduled performances, they would also be available for anytime use at no charge.

“One of the aspects that they worked on last week was making sure that we had good security,” said Mayor Ralph Hellmich. “It’s very open, anytime you have a park you want it to be a nice, safe place with good visibility and everything, but this is going to be very unique. It can be used for musical outings and things of that nature, so it meets the criteria of what everybody set out to do.”

He said if the project bid comes back under budget it will be brought before the council for consideration.

“From a financial perspective, we do have it in the budget, but we also included in the budget anticipating getting some grant dollars for this project,” said City Administrator Mike Thompson. “It doesn’t look like we’re going to get those grant dollars, so that’s something to be aware of. However, I will say with last fiscal year, the council approved impact fees, and the primary thing that decision made is it created a revenue stream that could be used towards parks.”

He said this project could be an example of a park enhancement created utilizing impact fees.