ORANGE BEACH, AL — City officials are working with the owners of the long-stalled Bama Bayou site that has been sitting vacant and dormant since it was foreclosed on in April of 2009.

‘It’s time to clean the site up,” Orange Beach Mayor Tony Kennon said.

Just a few short years ago, Pleasure Island was abuzz with the prospects of a “Gulf World” type entertainment center and community across the Intracoastal Waterway from The Wharf.

The city is now in talks the current ownership to work on demolition.

“We’re working with the owners over the next 60 days to come up with a plan to clean the site,” Kennon said. “Essentially bring the buildings down, if possible, and again, it will probably have to go before a judge in some way that we’ve worked together and make that happen.”

In 2011 city code inspectors had problems with trash and debris around the site and were close to declaring it a public nuisance. Debris was removed or moved out of sight and a fence was erected according to city directives.

Five years later the site is drawing city attention once again.

“We believe most of those buildings are defunct anyway and are going to have to come down and we don’t want it to drag on any longer,” Kennon said. “We’re going to do inspections of all the stick buildings. We believe those between all the mold, the vandalism, are beyond salvageable.

“The metal buildings have value, they can be taken down and sold and something worked out. Concrete structures, we’ll just have to get with a structural engineer and see what he says about those buildings.”

A promotional video from 2006 declares the “all-inclusive destination brings the charm and legacy of an old waterfront town to life.” The complex was conceived nearly 15 years ago and was initially called RiverWalk Orange Beach and was to be built on city property.

The city solicited proposals for a year-round tourist draw for the site. In March of 2010 another group of investors tried unsuccessfully to revive the project.

The primary lender for the project, Visions Bank, said the original investors defaulted on a $21 million loan and foreclosed in 2009. Visions then bought the property for $10.3 million in the ensuing auction.

“We are working with the bank and we want to be able to come to some common ground to make this work in a joint fashion and not through the court system,” Kennon said. “It’s time.”