ORANGE BEACH, AL – The much changed, much debated, much delayed Amber Isle planned unit development in Orange Beach is one approval away from a go-ahead from the city.

“We’re not officially approved, but everybody came to an agreement,” the architect for the project, Forrest Daniell, said. “I feel pretty confident about it.”

Currently work is well underway on two of the four buildings planned.

Under construction now and near completion are the Wing Shack, an Alabama-based restaurant at the west end of the project and next to it is a Ron Jon Surf shop.

“The Wing Shack and the Ron Jon are being turned over to the operators to start moving their stuff in at the first of May and I would say by the end of May or early June they would be open for business,” Daniell said. “It will be pretty quick. They are rocking and rolling.”

The property is on the north side of beach road in the city’s far western end and abuts Gulf State Park.

The topic of a second hotel on the property was discussed at length at the April 21 council meeting. Already approved besides the Wing Shack restaurant and Ron Jon Surf Shop is a 63-unit Indigo hotel.

Also discussed at the meeting was rent restriction requirements for the massive 36- and 37-story towers, Grace and Ascension, developers are planning at the only beach intersection in town.

A fourth piece of the Amber Isle project would be a 36-unit hotel sitting atop a restaurant in between the surf shop and Indigo, which was at the heart of the discussion April 21.

“About an hour and a half of that two-hour meeting was discussing compromises with the homeowners across the street and the city council,” Daniell said. “We basically ended up taking care of all their concerns.”

Most of those concerns revolved around beach access with the homeowners concerned hotel guests might make a beeline for the beach from the hotels straight across their property.

“The basic compromise at the end of the day was to put a fence across the front of the property to keep people from walking across the street and starting to trespass on the neighbor’s properties,” Daniell said. “We’re going to put up a 42-inch aluminum picket fence you that you can see through but it will prevent people from just walking across there.”

A previous developer – plans for the site have come and gone for almost 10 years – had some property for beach access, but concerns were raised and that idea was nixed.

“Previously on another version of this PUD approval, the owner actually owned a piece of property that was like 23 feet wide that gave beach access to the hotel people.” Daniell said. “The neighbors across the street didn’t want that. So the developer donated that piece of property to the city and said we won’t provide access.

“There is no beach access.”

Which now raises more concerns with the homeowners.  

“Now the only access if somebody were to try to go to the beach is to go through somebody else’s property and basically trespass,” Daniell said. “They wanted to keep people from doing that because apparently from time to time they have people coming from that Backcountry Trail and they just walk across to the beach walking across somebody’s lot.”

The agreed upon solution was twofold, with one of those already part of the developer’s agreement.

In addition to the fence neighbors and some on the council wanted the developer to encourage guests who want to go to the beach to use GulfState Park’s beach just up the road.

“Along those same lines, (developer) Mark Goldstein said they would provide notices to everybody that they are not allowed to go across the street,” Daniel said. “And they will also make sure that the shuttle that runs to the park for the hotel will stop at the hotels and pick the guests up and make sure people are more motivated to ride the shuttle to the beach where they are supposed to go instead of walking across the street.

“That’s part of the tri-party agreement between the developer, the City of Orange Beach and the state park.”

GRACE AND ASCENSION

City leaders have said rent restrictions on these gleaming towers would help ebb the traffic created by folks staying there. Under current plans, in the 200-unit Ascension a minimum stay of seven days is required and in the 77-unit Grace there is a 30-day minimum.

“They were talking about if it was possible for the city to enforce the rent restrictions,” Daniell said. “Currently the land is deed restricted for that. I called developer Nathan (Cox) after the meeting and he’s already got his attorney talking to the city attorney about how they can make sure it becomes an enforceable thing. I think we can write it into the condo documents.”