Two Canal Road Proposals in Orange Beach Receive OK

Mike's comment - More developments off the beach are getting the go ahead. All developments do not have to be on the beach to be a success. When The Wharf opens all of this will be taken to the next level.

Thursday, March 16, 2006
By RYAN DEZEMBER
Staff Reporter

ORANGE BEACH -- The Planning Commission, at its Tuesday evening meeting, added a member, appointed a new chairman and gave favorable reviews to two Canal Road developments that would add 380 single-family homes.

Al Bradley, an accountant and attorney and former Texas apartment developer, was named to fill the vacancy left by Chairman Larry Alexander, who had to resign his seat when he was appointed to the City Council last month. With the open seat filled, the board selected a new chairman, voting unanimously to appoint Robert Stuart to that position.

All Planning Commission positions are unpaid.

Once the appointments were settled, the board held public hearings regarding two large, single-family planned unit development proposals and voted unanimously to recommend that the City Council approve both.

Designs for one, called The Retreat at Orange Beach, call for 112 single-family home lots and a marina on about 70 acres along Canal Road. The property, west of Sampson Avenue, is owned by the family of Bay Minette lawyer Dan Blackburn and is bound on the north by Bay La Launch and encompasses the 4.76-acre Lake Baldwin.

The Retreat plans are the third set of designs, each carrying a different name, that Blackburn has brought before the Planning Commission since May.

Named Harbortown, the original $500 million proposal called for 830 residential units, condo towers up to 18 stories tall, about 500 boat slips, a hotel and retail space. At the time, planners also proposed cutting a channel to link the lake to Bay La Launch to create a boat basin.

The Planning Commission voted unanimously against those plans after a public hearing in which about 40 residents spoke out against the dense designs.

In October, new, scaled-back plans, with the new name of Bay La Launch Village, were brought to the board. That proposal did not include any retail space, abandoned plans to open up the lake, decreased the maximum height of condo towers to 12 stories, decreased the number of residential units to about 500 and made a greater proportion of that total single-family homes.

Again, after a long public hearing in which about 30 residents opposed the plans, the Planning Commission voted against the project.
On Tuesday, the tenor changed as the latest designs, which include only single-family home sites, acres of green space and wetlands, recreational facilities, boardwalks and a much smaller private marina in a gated community, were lauded by city officials and residents.

"This is the type of development that we would like to have on Canal Road," said Community Development Director Jim Lawson.

Bob Burton, who lives near the site and opposed the earlier plans, said he hopes The Retreat will set a precedent, "a message to other developers that we want to preserve our neighborhoods."

At the other end of the city, developers have proposed turning 62.6 acres into a 268-home subdivision called The Homestead at Orange Beach. The property is owned by Deck Investments LLC, a company registered to a Louisiana investor, who, according to Probate Court records, bought the land in December 2003 for $1.495 million.

The site was once proposed as the home of a water park, but nearby residents turned up so much opposition to that idea that then-Mayor Steve Russo asked the developers to look elsewhere for a place to build their attraction. Later, after Hurricane Ivan struck in September 2004, the property was used by the city as a place to pile debris before it could be hauled to a landfill or mulched.

The clear-cutting that preceded the property's use as a debris staging site combined with a high water table there has caused stormwater to run off the property and flood nearby neighborhoods, said City Engineer Kit Alexander. Developers of The Homestead proposed solving the flooding problems as the "public benefit" if they are granted planned unit development status.

Guidelines for such developments allow the city to approve projects that may not meet certain zoning criteria but are deemed the best use of property.

In this case, developers of The Homestead ask that they be allowed to subdivide the tract into lots that are generally 45 feet wide by 75 feet deep. At 3,835 square feet, these would be far smaller than the 9,000-square-foot single-family lots typically allowed under Orange Beach zoning rules.

The size, developer Robert Lowe Jr. said, will allow for the construction of smaller, more affordable homes geared toward local workers, which Orange Beach officials have stated a need for.

Lowe said that the average cost of the homes will be $250,000. Some, he said, will be as small as 1,300 square feet, while others, likely priced at around $350,000 will be in the 2,300- to 2,400-square-foot range.
Though the homes will be far less expensive than many existing residences in Orange Beach, Planning Commission member Joni Blalock, who is also a city councilwoman and the city's representative to a county task force studying work force housing, said that mortgage payments for a $250,000 home is more than the average resort or restaurant worker could afford.

"I don't know many in the work force in the city of Orange Beach that could afford $2,200 a month," Blalock said.

Other commission members expressed concerns about the density of the planned neighborhood.

"I think it's very good that we're doing affordable housing, we really need that," commission member Jil Walker said. "Can you reduce the density at all and make the numbers work on this affordable housing project?"

Lowe said he'd rather not and even hoped to get permission from the Alabama Department of Environmental Management to fill some wetlands and add more homes.

"The overall site itself is going to be 50 percent green space with all the wetlands that we have," Lowe said. "We are talking about a cottage environment where the homes are close to each other from a proximity, but if done correctly it has a wonderful community feel."

Though several residents of adjacent neighborhoods spoke about the proposal, most indicated that they just wanted to make sure that any development would solve rather than exacerbate the area's flooding problems. Some residents of the Captain's Cove subdivision, which sits to the east, predicted that with so many households in such close quarters, residents of The Homestead would encroach on their property.

"Folks are going to be tight, they're going to be cramped and they're going to be looking to spread out," said Andrew Lowe, one such Captain's Cove resident.

The developer Robert Lowe, responding to worries about the density, said, "Housing in this dense of an environment is new to this area, it's not necessarily new on a national scale."

Before voting in favor of the plans, the Planning Commission placed a condition on the developers that they build a six-foot fence between The Homestead and properties on the north and east.

With the Planning Commission's approval, both proposals move on to the City Council, where they will likely be considered within the next month.