City buys 7.5 acres for future connector between Coastal Gatewood Blvd. & County Rd. 6 or East Oak Rd.

City buys 7.5 acres for future connector between Coastal Gatewood Blvd. & County Rd. 6 or East Oak Rd.
By John Mullen
Gulf Shores is partnering with Baldwin County to install a left turn lane on County Road 6 at Stafford Boulevard at the entrance to the Adventura subdivision.
Baldwin County is making drainage improvements to County Road 6, Engineer Mark Acreman said, and is planning to start repaving the road in August. Developers of the subdivision paid the city $200,000 to construct the westbound turn late and the city is planning improvements to County Road 6 in 2025 with BUILD grant money.
Also, during the meeting, the council hired ETC for $17,500 to conduct a resident satisfaction survey.
“We’ve been giving y’all reports about drainage improvements that have been occurring on County Road 6 in anticipation of a resurfacing project,” Acreman told the council. “The county highway department has been installing new culverts along County Road 6 west. Since they were already out there doing this work, I contacted the county engineer to ask him if he would consider constructing a left turn lane as part of that resurfacing project if we would give them the funds we received from that developer. The county engineer did support this request and is seeking county commission approval. This will expedite the construction of the left turn lane by about four years.”
The resurfacing project will be from State Route 59 on the east to Plash Island on the west.
Councilman Steve Jones asked if the county’s work would help with flooding issues between State Route 59 and Andhurst Walk “where there has been terrible flooding.”
“What they have done is upsized and increased the culvert capacity going under the road,” Acreman said. “There’s still some ditch maintenance that’s needed along County Road 6 and I think the combination of the two will ultimately help with the drainage. But I know there’s more work to be done on County Road 6.”
Residents’ Satisfacion Survey
Mayor Robert Craft said citizens have been requesting more and better communication with city officials and staff and hopes this survey will bridge that gap.
“We’ve heard a lot about we didn’t communicate well enough and this is one of our continued efforts of trying to do more opportunities to hear from you so that we can react as you would like us to if we can,” Craft said.
Public Engagement Manager Lindsay Hart is leading that effort and says she hopes ETC can begin its work in August.
“While that type of engagement is necessary and beneficial it’s usually driven by residents bringing an issue to city staff to find a solution or based off of a grievance that they need to have taken care of,” Hart said. “We currently don’t have a tool in place to measure the overall satisfaction of residents of the city at large. The resident satisfaction survey will provide that data.”
ETC will mail out some surveys to a cross section of the community but the survey will also be available to all citizens on the city’s website.
“One of the benefits of using ETC is we’ll receive benchmarking data that compares our community to other similar communities throughout the U.S. and see where Gulf Shores is falling, if we measuring up or falling short in certain areas,” Hart said. “This data is going to play a critical role in the planning process for Vision 2035. Vision 2025 is wrapping up rather quickly so it’s time to start planning what we’re going to do in the next 10 years.”
Some of the questions to be asked during the three-month project may include:
• Overall satisfaction with city services.
• Overall satisfaction with department-specific services like transportation, public works, public safety and parks and recreation, among others.
• Fiscal responsibility.
• Overall effectiveness of communication.
“This will be really neat for us to see how people are satisfied north of the canal, south, our beach district, our waterway district all based on where they live,” Hart said. “We hope to get it finalized by the end of August and then we’ll get it deployed.”
During the meeting, the council:
• Approved Morgen Szapiel as a designated signatory on the Norton Library board. She replaces Paula Tiepel as treasurer and needs council authorization to sign check. The city requires two authorized signatures on all checks.
• OK’d $90,000 to bring back the winter 2022 Entertainment Series that was canceled in 2021 because of COVID-19. According to city documents, the city sold 3,725 of the available 4,448 tickets, creating $125,965 of revenue in 2020 and is anticipating the same revenue for the 2022 series.
• OK’d a public assembly permit for the Sunset Music Series at Gulf Place each Thursday in September from 6-8 p.m. on the town green. The city anticipates it will cost around $15,000.
• OK’d an annexation request from Mr. and Mrs. Robert Sullivan to annex their property located in River Pines Subdivision. River Pines is located off of County Road 6 West.
• Delayed the business license revocation hearing two weeks for Gulf Shores Landfill LLC pending a letter from the Alabama Department of Environmental Management. The hearing was set for Aug. 2 at 4:30 p.m.