Orange Beach Slowing Their Growth Down
ORANGE BEACH Ala.
By Rick McCann
BlueRAMMedia.com
March 21, 2025
Another Baldwin County city is hitting the pause button on new subdivisions for the next nine months.
Orange Beach, one of numerous areas that has continued seeing rapid growth for years has decided to slow down the building boom.
The city council approved a moratorium on certain residential projects to allow time for city leaders to assess and manage the growth and ways of keeping up with infrastructure.
“We all know that gone unchecked, we will either be catching up or we won’t be able to catch up,” Mayor Tony Kennon said at a recent city council meeting. “What we are trying to do is get ahead of the growth and evaluate the infrastructure.”
To be clear, this pause only affects large single-family subdivisions and apartment complexes but commercial development or beachfront development such as high-rise condominiums will be allowed to continue to build.
Kennon acknowledged that it’s a tough call, balancing property rights and responsible growth.
“I think for every one of us, it’s a conundrum,” he said. “Most of us here are all about property rights and the right to build. But at the same time, as elected officials, our job is to make sure we maintain our quality of life and do the best we can to keep our taxes low.”
Recently, the City of Fairhope also issued a similar moratorium on building, allowing commercial and individual single-family homes to be built but stopping large developments such as apartment complexes or subdivisions for at least nine months.
Kennon estimates that at the current pace of development, Orange Beach could see 7,000 new homes in just five years—which would require massive infrastructure investments.
“We are the ones who have to deal with it, and one of two things has to happen: there is a reduction in services or an increase in taxes,” Kennon said. “We want to keep everyone’s taxes low and maintain the level of services we provide.”
In recent weeks, Orange Beach leaders have also talked about “shrinking” their city limits through de-annexation allowing the city to better serve the residents within their city limits, meaning some current residents may find themselves in other towns or part of the county.
Kennon explained that the properties in question are currently vacant and that the de-annexation discussion was prompted by a proposed 1,700-home development far from the city center.
“The moratorium and de-annexation proposal go hand-in-hand,” he said. “Those added costs could include an expansion of the city’s sewer system, which could be $40 million to $60 million.”
Fairhope, Daphne, Orange Beach, Gulf Shores have all tried to slow down growth by using moratoriums but the fact is, Baldwin County continues to be an area that people and businesses want to move to and county and city leaders have to find a smart way of managed growth.
City leaders in Baldwin County, one of the fastest growing counties in the country, are struggling with managing growth, with necessary infrastructure and public safety.
Right now, many police agencies in the county are understaffed for the volume of calls that they receive daily and the majority of the fire protection in the county continues to be done through volunteer fire departments, many of which are inundated almost daily with responding to multiple emergency calls with fewer volunteers.
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