Developers Withdraw Canal Road Proposal

Sunday, December 04, 2005
By RYAN DEZEMBER
Staff Reporter

ORANGE BEACH -- Developers hoping to build a 376-condo, 126-home Canal Road marina development have withdrawn their plans, canceling a Tuesday public hearing on the proposal so that they can recast their designs.

The project -- called Bay La Launch Village in its most recent version and earlier named Harbortown at Orange Beach -- had been set for review in a 3:30 p.m. public hearing. The City Council could have voted to rezone about 70 bayside acres from single-family residential uses to a planned unit development, which is necessary to accommodate the designs, as soon as its 5 p.m. meeting that same day.

According to city rules, if a request to rezone land as a planned unit development is turned down by the council, landowners cannot submit another rezoning proposal for six months. If the plans are pulled before a vote, though, revised designs could be filed to start over the approval process almost immediately.

Though the public hearing and vote still appear on the council's Tuesday agenda, the owner of property where Bay La Launch Village is proposed, Bay Minette attorney Dan Blackburn, sent a letter to city planners late this week asking them to delay the discussions.

"We ask that the matter be deferred until a later date after a less-dense site plan has been submitted for your consideration," Blackburn wrote.

If the developers Blackburn has hired, Olson Associates of Northwest Florida, do bring back less-dense plans, it will be the second time such revisions were made.

Originally, when the designs were called Harbortown at Orange Beach, the $500 million plans included 830 residential units, condo towers up to 18-stories tall, about 500 boat slips, a hotel, retail space and a proposal to cut a channel that would link a 4.76-acre lake on the property -- Lake Baldwin -- to Bay La Launch so that an inland boat basin could be created.

Following a May public hearing in which nearly 40 residents spoke out against the proposal, the Planning Commission voted 5-0 against the plans.

The developers returned in October with less-ambitious plans in attempt to sway neighbors who had opposed such dense construction on the long-undeveloped land. Under the name Bay Launch Village, designs included 502 residential units, a greater proportion of which were single-family homes than the earlier plans; fewer than 300 boat slips; towers toppings out at 12 stories; no plans for a hotel or retail space and the abandonment of plans to link the lake to the saltwater bay.

Nearly 30 residents spoke against these plans at the Planning Commission's Oct. 11 meeting before the body decided once again to oppose the plans, this time in a 5-1 vote. Though the 3:30 p.m. hearing is canceled, a public hearing on whether the city should trade a quarter of an acre of land at the southern end of Wilson Boulevard and trade it for a slightly larger parcel two lots to the east is still slated for 4:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Both properties sit on Terry Cove, but the city's right of way lies between two tracts owned by the same couple, one of which is Hudson Marina.

The council could vote on the swap at its regular meeting, which begins at 5 p.m.

Councilman Ed Carroll said he's opposed to the trade because the property currently owned by the city, at the end of a paved road, is a better place for firefighters to launch their rescue boat and it preserves a view of the water for all the property owners along that block of Wilson Boulevard.

"A lot of those people that bought property on that street bought it for a reason, and that reason was they didn't want to look at a condo, that they would love to look out and see the bridge and Terry Cove and what have you," Carroll said at the recent work session.