Cover Story
Welcome to Beautiful Fairhope…...
.....a vibrant and livable Southern city that began over a hundred years ago when an adventurous group of people sought their personal utopia.
With its location high on the bluffs of the Eastern Shore of Mobile Bay, Fairhope has long been known for its lovely parks, rich with moss-draped live oaks, its sweeping panoramic views of Mobile Bay, and its charming and vital downtown where visitors and locals alike find reasons to shop, stroll, and dine. Whether you come for a day or for a lifetime, you’ll be welcomed to beautiful Fairhope.(From the official City of Fairhope Web site.)
This appealing description of Fairhope is accompanied by color photographs that validate the words. Fairhope is a beautiful small city, its nearly unique traditional downtown is clean, bright and perpetually decorated with flowers in full bloom. The city offers visitors and residents a collection of boutique-style shops, a scattering of interesting restaurants and bay-side parks with sunsets that beg to be captured on canvas. It is a beautiful, up-scale small city with some 13,000 residents, who – beautiful or otherwise – also tend toward the up-scale.
Average household income is over $60,000 a year, with over a quarter of the households having incomes over $75,000. Education matches income. Almost a third of those city residents over the age of 25 have a baccalaureate, graduate or professional degree. The neighborhoods that attract these Fairhopers tend to be within walking distance of downtown, around a golf course, near a lake, on or close to the bay or adjacent to a polo field.
Geographically this means affluence and education tends to be concentrated in the northern, western and southwestern areas of the city and in the adjacent unincorporated sections of the county. This is the Fairhope the city fathers are rightfully proud of. This is the city that attracts new residents from all over the country. And this is the place that has businesses relocating.
But there is another, grittier Fairhope. Visitors tend not to be taken through the neighborhoods in the southeastern section of the city. Young Street and Middle Avenue and the eastern segment of Kirkman Lane aren’t on the traditional itinerary. Nor is the adjacent part of the county – where the city provides fire and police service and where the city planning office has influence, but limited authority over development.
Those who go there see nothing of the flower-bedecked Fairhope so vividly described on the Web site. The roads are narrow and bordered by tall weeds, not park-like landscaping. The houses reflect an average household income of around $17,000. The best are well-maintained, but modest; many reflect years of neglect in their peeling paint, sagging rooflines and rotting siding. There are mobile homes and tiny houses scattered throughout the area, often hidden down narrow, rutted dirt roads.
These inadequate streets, impassible to emergency vehicles, often can be distinguished from a driveway only by noting the street sign, usually bearing the name of one of the residents and followed by the picturesque, but incongruous label: “Lane.” There are no lawns, much less golf courses and polo fields here. Beyond the drab Boys’ and Girls’ Club, there is little sign of any recreational opportunities for the children living here except in the bare dirt of the front yards or in the streets. This is the other side of Fairhope.
The portion of this area within the city limits receives the same services as the rest of Fairhope and the residents have access to all of the city facilities – usually located in other parts of the city. Those who live just over the line in the county are less fortunate. Baldwin County covers a huge area, and resources are focused on dealing with the stress of growth: roads, sewer and water service, drainage and the like. There is no real estate boom in this area and like similar neighborhoods throughout the county, little attention is being given to enhancing the services provide to those who live there. Nor are there any hot new developments planned in this less-attractive location, so there is no enthusiasm in Fairhope for annexation.
The subject of annexation is a sore point with many of those involved in community development here. Several years ago enough signatures were collected to request annexation into Fairhope. But the city declined on the grounds that bringing in an area lacking infrastructure and services would burden the city with the cost of meeting these needs. In a public statement at that time, the mayor suggested it would be better to have this low-income, poorly served area remain in the county so they could apply for federal and state grants to secure these services. He noted that were the city to annex the area, these funding sources would not be available. Valid concerns, but some of the individuals and organizations working to improve conditions in the area questioned the underlying assumption that grants could not be requested by the city once annexation took place.
Regardless of who is right on this issue, local organizations, politicians and individuals are working to make serious inroads on the blight that affects this long-neglected “extra-territorial” zone of Baldwin County. An interesting example of what can be done outside the constraints of bureaucratic processes is the Twin Beech Road sidewalk project. This much-needed sidewalk isn’t there – yet.
Like so many projects in this area, the Twin Beech sidewalk started as a grant that required matching funds. About a year ago the Department of Transportation money was in place, but the hunt was on for the match-money. County Commissioner Bishop provided $20,000 from his discretionary budget while Fairhope residents Joe and Em Johnson committed to another $20,000. Smaller amounts came from various sources, including the Eastern Shore Democrats, with Louis Mapp agreeing to cover any shortfall. The project is expected to start any day now and serves a real safely and convenience need for those living along this busy connector between Section Street and US 98.
This single project success is just a small part of a bigger story. There is a brighter future for this underserved corner of the Fairhope community. The Rev. John Whitfield and the Ecumenical Ministries of Baldwin County, Incorporated is working to develop grants and project funding for blighted neighborhoods. Rev. Whitfied explains this neighborhood approach, focusing on small areas and individual projects, as necessary.
“Baldwin County is a ‘non-entitlement’ county – as defined by the federal government. So the county is not eligible for federal entitlement funds, because of the high median income level,” he said.
So his organization has numerous small initiatives being developed, grants being written and projects being started to improve the quality-of-life at the block, street and neighborhood levels. As an example, a long overdue water and sewer project was funded for Kirkman Lane just outside the city limits using a Community Block Development grant.
On a bigger scale, the Baldwin County Home Ownership and Property Enhancement (BC-HOPE) program was started up in 2005. This initiative is aimed at increasing home ownership in low income areas and helping those living in these areas make their properties safer, more habitable and more attractive. Since owner-occupied residences are shown to be better maintained by the residents than are low-income project housing, not only does this provide access to the “American Dream” of homeownership, but also contributes to the quality of the whole community. The disparity in wealth will remain unaffected, but the quality-of-life gap will be visibly narrowed.
Rev. Whitfield takes special pride in the emphasis on helping the residents help themselves.
“Ecumenical Ministries, Inc. has received approval from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for our homeowners’ counseling operation,” he said, adding with a note of accomplishment, “This is a first ever for Baldwin County.”
The next step – and it’s a big one – is to relocated the Ministries headquarters from downtown Fairhope to the middle of the community they are working to improve. The plan is to get authority to use the abandoned Point Clear school and the surrounding acreage to establish a “beachhead,” as the Reverend describes it, in the area. The school is to become a community center and would incorporate a local small business incubator with mentoring and continuing education offered. The surrounding area would provide a site for affordable housing using a self-help model for the actual construction – the owner-occupants are to provide 65 percent of the construction labor.
In his description of what is planned, Rev. Whitfield communicates facts and data as well as excitement over finally making progress. He is aware that apparent slow start has caused some to criticize the effort as nothing but “talk, talk, talk.” But there has been visible progress, people are being helped and the community as a whole is benefiting from these efforts. There remains an unresolved political issue – annexation of this area into Fairhope. Since rejection by the city of the request for annexation of this “other” area several years ago, Wal-Mart has appeared on the city’s doorstep. Not inside the city limits where zoning would block a big-box store, but in the county where little could be done to prevent its construction.
In reaction to this situation, a group of Fairhope citizen-activists took the anti-Wal-Mart energy and directed it at creating land use planning zones in the county areas adjacent to the city. Where approved, there would be authority to create restrictions on land use similar to those provided by zoning within incorporated areas. So far this effort has been successful in every district where a vote has been taken, except District 17.
This district includes the area that this article has been addressing and is the very district where the new Wal-Mart will be located. As explained by community leaders in District 17, the result of approving the land use planning zone would be yielding control over their neighborhoods without any say in what happens – a latter day play on “Taxation without Representation.” They encouraged the voters to reject the proposal. Obviously most accepted this advice and voted accordingly. This leaves a big chunk of open land right around Fairhope – land available for almost unregulated development. Since the planning zone has been rejected, perhaps annexation is a solution.
Revisiting the annexation issue may be productive for all involved. The initiatives currently underway in the “other” Fairhope will provide the infrastructure and neighborhood improvements that were concerns of the city at the time of the earlier annexation attempt. Annexation, unlike the planning zone, would provide the residents with some say in how they are governed – they would be residents of the city. From the Fairhope perspective, the zoning authority that annexation would bring, provides the city with the strongest possible control over land use. Annexation should be a mutually attractive proposition – a real “win-win” opportunity.
Regardless of how this plays out, “The Other Side of Fairhope” should soon be on the road to becoming a brighter, better place to live.
Contact Pete Gleszer at jubilee@lagniappemobile.com.
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