Efforts to save Baldwin County farmland may have succeeded.
Neighbors on Lawrence Road in Baldwin County may have won their protest against a proposed townhouse development that would change life in their rural community just outside of Fairhope. The city’s Planning Commission followed the recommendation of the local Planning Department and unanimously denied the developer’s preliminary plat approval for building multiple occupancy units along Lawrence Road.
APR covered this story back in December. Landowners framed their efforts as a way to preserve their way of life in the face of aggressive development in the county.
“It means everything. We have fireflies out here. I learned about constellations looking at the stars,” Elizabeth Wilson recalled of growing up along Lawrence Road before Baldwin County became the retirement Mecca it is now. “When you are a teenager, you want to grow up and get away. I left. I went away for four years to Dallas. And as soon as I left, I just wanted to come back home.”
Last summer, developers purchased a nearly 20-acre farm on Lawrence Road, proposing to build 136 townhomes in an area where each home is surrounded by several acres.
The farmland around Fairhope is unzoned, APR explained back in December, which is what many rural landowners wanted. But as these farmers pass on, their children often sell the land and developers snatch it up. Without the rules and regulations of zoning, they are free to build whatever they want.
“The challenge, when you see this development pressure, is that it's the perfect environment for development. There are less rules, less regulations,” said Hunter Simmons.
He sees this a lot as Fairhope’s planning and zoning manager.
“In general, when you have rural areas that are seeing development pressure, especially when you go into unzoned areas, the farm lands, the larger lots, and rural areas, they aren’t comfortable with zoning because it's somebody telling them what to do with their land,” he said.
Some Lawrence Road neighbors pushed back against the development plan and created a campaign with a Facebook group and yard signs that read, “It’s Picture Perfect.” In February, they passed zoning for their Planned District 27, to help plan future development.
This week’s denial was based on the adverse effects of drainage, increased traffic, and not meeting green space standards or Fairhope’s Comprehensive Land Use Plan.
