A road deal years in the making cleared its final hurdle this week, putting the U.S. Navy on track to finish a nearly $30 million runway expansion project near Foley by summer, more than five years after the effort first got underway.
The Baldwin County Commission voted unanimously to vacate a portion of the county-owned Doc McDuffie Road east of the Foley Beach Express, clearing the way for the federal government to extend an east-west runway at Barin Field. In exchange, the Navy will fund construction of a new three-quarter-mile stretch of Doc McDuffie Road to serve nearby residents and businesses.
Commission Chairman Charles Gruber, who represents the district where the Navy airfield sits, welcomed the vote after years of anticipation. “I’m glad we’ll be able to go forward and complete this project,” Gruber said. “A lot of people have been waiting on it. We’re ready to go to work.”
Under the agreement, the Navy will spend $580,000 to relocate the existing roadway near where it branches off the Beach Express, making room for the runway extension. The upgrade is meant to accommodate a shift in training aircraft, as the Navy phases out older T-34 trainers in favor of newer T-6 aircraft that require longer runways to operate safely.
The project also includes repaving an existing stretch of Doc McDuffie Road that runs east toward Swift Church Road along the fenced federal property line, a repaving effort that has technically been part of the county’s road plan since around 2005, according to County Engineer Cal Markert. Rather than pave that section only to see it torn up later for the runway work, county officials opted to wait until the Navy’s expansion plans were finalized.
Markert estimated the repaving portion of the project at about $130,000 and said county officials hope to cover much of that cost using the Navy’s $580,000 appropriation rather than drawing separately from the county’s own road budget. “We’re going to try and squeeze it all out of that appropriation,” he said.
For military officials, the commission’s approval effectively closes out a much larger runway modernization effort that ultimately touched two runways at Barin Field and two more at nearby Summerdale Field. Commissioners noted the project is separate from the Alabama National Guard’s new training facility also under construction along the Beach Express corridor, even though both developments sit in the same general area of Baldwin County.
County officials described the airfield work as part of Baldwin County’s broader, long-running role supporting Navy pilot training operations, a relationship that has shaped infrastructure planning in the Foley area for years and is expected to continue as training needs evolve.