GULF SHORES, Ala. – A funny thing happened on the way to paving the way for luxury RV resorts in Gulf Shores.

A recently passed ordinance says the new facilities can’t be in a flood zone.

Councilman Phillip Harris, the council’s liaison to the Planning Commission, addressed the council about the possible problem.

“Isn’t that one of the criteria we’re listing is they not be located in a flood zone?” Harris said at an April 2 meeting. “What we learned from our previous planning commission meeting is the aerial map, it’s got a very, very small circle of available property according to those criteria.”

Most of Gulf Shores is by some standard in a flood zone, Harris said.

“If we are going to want these parks in our community we’ve got to revisit that,” Harris said. “I wanted to mention that in. Just about everything south of County Road 4 at least falls in the A zone except for a couple of small pieces of property. A lot of our A zone has minimal elevation requirements, three or four feet.”

Mayor Robert Craft thought some further study would be appropriate.

“I would think so and I would ask you if you would work with Andy (Bauer) to try to help us come up with a plan of how we do that,” Craft said. Bauer is the city planner.

Planning Commission Chairman Bob Steiskal said the rules could be adjusted to accommodate the parks.

“In the instance of something occurring or possibly occurring, they ought to be able to get up and go,” Steiskal said.

Another question was how the rules would affect the outbuildings commonly used in luxury RV resorts.

“There is some concern about these accessory buildings or additional buildings that they might have,” Steiskal said. “You’d either have to require that they be elevated or they just go into it with the understanding that those structures, they’re not going to be used for habitation and they take the risk.”

Craft said if the buildings have plumbing for bathrooms or kitchen areas, the ordinance calls for them to be raised.

“In our first discussion of the luxury RV resort concept it included accessory building that did have some plumbing in it and that’s what I think led to ‘if it’s going to have that it needs to be on higher ground,” Craft said. “It very well may be that as we dig deeper into this, the whole RV luxury concept will have to be expanded if we’re going to do this.”