GULF SHORES — During his recent visit here July 15, traffic wasn’t the only thing Gov. Robert Bentley addressed.

He’s still excited about the prospects of a lodge and convention center in Gulf State Park to replace the one destroyed in 2004 by Hurricane Ivan.

“We had a very good meeting with the governor,” Mayor Robert Craft said. “His focus on the lodge and conference center at Gulf State Park has been intense. He’s determined to make it happen. He repeated that a couple of times today and talking about what all that included.”

Bentley spoke to the local group, Gulf United Metro Business Organization, at its annual meeting at Craft Farms.

The mayor said the new lodge is good news for the state park and Gulf Shores.

“A very significant benefit to the state park and it was really exciting to hear,” Craft said. “Really exciting to hear from Gulf Shores’ standpoint, the majority of the park being in our city limits, to see the governor’s focus on that issue.”

According to Craft, this is an issue, while important to the area and future growth and convention business, the governor has taken the initiative with.

“This is not something that we as a community have pushed him to do,” Craft said. “It’s something he selected to do on his own.”

Bentley procured the $85.5 million through a National Resources Damage Assessment grant in kind of a unique way, Craft said.

“It is typically looked at as being environmental money and how that environmental money could be used for a lodge and conference center which had to come up with $58 million,” Craft said. “There is a formal calculation for loss of human use. So the time frame there was oil on our beaches and that we lost the uses of our beaches, including Gulf State Park, that number you can calculate the value of that. That came to $58 million.

“That money can be used for replacing human-use facilities. There’s an eligibility issue he went into great detail explaining.”

The rest of the money from the NRDA grant will go toward a wildlife education building and other improvements to the state park.

“He also went into a great deal about the other $27.5 million that makes up the $85.5 million,” Craft said. “About there being an education center, an interpretive center additional trails in the state park, more campgrounds, better campgrounds, better restrooms in the campgrounds. Work on the dune system and vegetated dunes.”

The governor has had property in the area for many years and is a frequent visitor, Craft said.

“He’s owned property here down on West Beach,” the mayor said. “He built a house down there in 1987. It got too crowded down there for him so he moved to Fort Morgan.

“He and his wife come down here every chance they get. He’s very well aware of the opportunities that we have here and the issues that we deal with including the traffic.”

While he was here, Bentley also met with Orange Beach officials about the traffic situation during the Fourth of July weekend. Those officials hope the meeting will mean work will start in earnest on planning a bridge over Wolf Bay in Orange Beach.