Baldwin County Commissioners Overrule Planning Board to Clear a Bay Minette-Area Wedding Venue

When the Baldwin County Commission convened in Bay Minette on a Tuesday in October 2014, the item before it was small in acreage but large in ambition: nine acres of quiet ground on the west side of Alabama 181, just north of Baldwin County 64, that one resident hoped to turn into a wedding rental facility.

By the end of the meeting, the commissioners had set aside the recommendation of their own planning board and cleared the path for the project to move forward.

A reversal in Bay Minette

The commission voted 3 to 1 to rezone the property from a residential designation to general business, the classification the venue needed before construction could begin. The vote overturned the recommendation of the Baldwin County Planning and Zoning Commission, which the previous month had rejected the same request on a 4-to-2 count.

For Danny Bebe, the man behind the proposal, the outcome removed the last major obstacle standing between an idea and a building. This project has been a dream of mine for quite some time now, he told the commission, framing the rezoning as far more than a line on a zoning map.

The drainage question

When the planning board met in September, neighbors had turned out to voice concerns, and the loudest of them centered on drainage, and where stormwater would go once a commercial building and its parking replaced open residential land.

Planning Director Vince Jackson said those worries had shaped the board’s earlier denial. But by the time the request reached the commission, the tenor of the room had changed and no residents rose to object.

Jackson told the commissioners the county intended to keep a close watch on the issue. There will be a thorough and timely look at the drainage issues, he said, adding that officials did not believe drainage should be a problem for the project.

How rezoning works in Baldwin County

In unincorporated Baldwin County, zoning applies only inside planning districts whose residents have voted to adopt it, and a request to rezone land in one of those districts goes through two bodies. The Baldwin County Planning and Zoning Commission, an appointed board, holds a public hearing and makes a recommendation. The County Commission then holds its own hearing and makes the final decision, so it can approve a rezoning the planning board recommended denying, as it did here, or deny one the board recommended approving.