GULF SHORES, AL — On Oct. 10 the Gulf Shores City Council annexed nearly 400 acres into the city on County Road 6 west of the city’s Sportsplex.

Developer Nathan Cox, representing the Gulf Coast Opportunity Fund, will now seek get a planned unit development for the parcel for a potential 459-lot subdivision.

“This annexation will be placed in the R-1-4 single-family, medium-density zoning district,” City Planner Andy Bauer said. “Mr. Cox has made an application with the planning commission to develop this property as a PUD and develop a single-family subdivision.”

For the city, Mayor Robert Craft said, it is a chance to lead to the take over and improvement of the road way.

“We haven’t done the math yet, but recognizing County Road 6 cannot exist like it is with the activities we have going on at the Sportsplex and any further development out on that road, it’s just overwhelmed,” Craft said. “This zoning allows us to have this discussion.”

To that end, Craft has started talks with county officials about improvements the city wants to make to the road.

“I spoke today with Chris Elliott of the county commission and we discussed a little bit of strategy to manage that it being unzoned property in the county,” he said. “There are very little regulations related to them to require any type of improvements to the roadway meaning excel, decel and turn lane type of issues.

“I challenged him to help work through something that we could do a development agreement with them, and I don’t think Nathan will mind, but we do something as best we can to mitigate that difficulty that causes on County Road 6.”

The problems with unzoned county properties near city limits were raised when The Factory, a trampoline amusement complex, recently located on the road in the county.

“It’s not in the city and that is really part of the problem,” Craft said. “That property is unzoned in the county and they can do anything they want to it on that property. That may be fine in the middle of a remote area in the county, but when it’s adjacent to city property it’s a really problem.”

Gulf Shores, for instance, can’t regulate the amount of parking the business must have and overflow from The Factory has been parked along the roadway.

Other improvements Craft would like to see on County Road 6 deal with turn lanes and access on and off the road.

“There’s no center turn lane and if you’re going to turn that many people into an area, they have to be able to get out of a lane,” he said. “And we’ve only got two lanes and they are stopped in that lane to turn while they are waiting on traffic it stops everybody.

“Then getting in and out of the subdivision, you’ve got an excel and deceleration lane surrounding the entrance. Those are requirements we have for our subdivisions that the county does not have necessarily have for there’s. We want to make sure we don’t make County Road 6 worse.”

Little Lagoon Pier

Also on Oct. 10 the council voted to begin the ground work for a fishing pier at Little Lagoon Pass Park, paid for in part by a $50,000 ACAMP grant secured by Environmental and Grants Coordinator Dan Bond.

To start off the project the city will pay Hutchinson, Moore & Rauch and Associates $17,730 which will cover surveying, permitting, wetland permitting, design and construction services.

“Included in this is the design of an access trail, an asphalt trail back to the pier so it would be handicapped accessible,” Public Works Director Mark Acreman said.

The $17,730 design fee represents approximately 14 percent of the estimated $120,000 project cost, according to a city memo. The Alabama Coastal Area Management Program is through the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

Fort Morgan trail

Bond was also instrumental in getting an Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs (ADECA) Recreational Trails Program in the amount of $100,000 and received for authorization for matching funds in the amount of $50,000 for improvements to the Fort Morgan Trail.

This will include about 4,720 feet of the pathway West Fairway to Callaway Road and improvements will include repaving and increasing the trail width from 8 to 10 feet.