Baldwin County subdivisions in the weeds

BALDWIN COUNTY, Ala. (WALA) - There are dozens of subdivisions in Baldwin County that were started during the economic downturn but never completed.

Now, with Airbus coming to Mobile and the MegaSite looking for tenants, growth is expected to return.

County leaders want to make sure that won’t include any more half-built subdivisions.

Baldwin’s vacant neighborhoods

The Valamour subdivision in Loxley has a grand entrance.

Tennis courts and a beautiful model home are surrounded by bean and peanut fields filling the vacant lots of a neighborhood that never was.

There are dozens of examples of unfinished developments like Valamour throughout Baldwin County. Most became overgrown as nature took back what man didn’t finish.

Baldwin County Commission Chairman Bob James said, “A lot of these developments that weren’t completed were by developers who shouldn’t have been in the development business.”

In such neighborhoods, what’s below the surface is important too. Gas lines, water lines and power lines if unused, will deteriorate over time.

James said growth will return.

Airbus is moving in and the Mega Site in northern Baldwin County is looking for tenants, but he wants to make sure that fly-by-night developers can’t make the same mistakes.

“What we’ve got to do is put a mechanism in place that will make sure that, in the future, if a subdivision is started it will be completed,” James told us.

James has proposed a subdivision bond; a process which he says will weed out bad developers.

Developers would have to apply for the bond, pay for it, and then be approved. The idea doesn’t sit well with some on the County commission which will debate subdivision regulations at a work session Tuesday afternoon.

Complexity and cost added

Baldwin County Commissioner, Tucker Dorsey told us, “I don’t believe that a subdivision bond is a good mechanism.”

Dorsey, who is in the development business, said the costs from bonds would be passed down to homebuyers and that unmitigated building is far less likely in the current economic climate.

“I also feel like the economics of the development business for the short and mid-term will be so complex that there won’t be people just randomly running around developing property,” Dosey said.