Beach communities across south Baldwin County are reporting a noticeably quieter spring break season this year, and local officials say a temporary alcohol restriction on the sand in Gulf Shores played a significant role in the turnaround.
Unlike the traditional single-week rush that once drew college students and high schoolers to the coast at the same time, spring break along the Alabama Gulf Coast has increasingly stretched across several weeks as different schools stagger their calendars. That shift has made crowd control trickier for local police, who now have to manage a rolling wave of visitors rather than one concentrated surge.
Gulf Shores enacted a ban on alcohol on its public beaches during the peak spring break weeks after the previous year’s crowds grew unruly, with underage drinking and littering along the shoreline prompting a broader crackdown on rowdy behavior. That ban lifted this week, and while officials aren’t encouraging anyone to celebrate its end with a beach party, the numbers gathered during the restricted period made a strong case for keeping the policy in place in future years.
Gulf Shores police recorded 633 arrests between March 3 and April 16 last year, a figure city officials have pointed to as they weighed whether to renew the alcohol ban again this spring. Gulf Shores plans to revisit the need for the restriction annually, but this year’s calmer atmosphere is likely to bolster the case for keeping it.
“I think it was a lesser crowd,” said Gulf Shores Police Lt. Bill Cowan. “There were still plenty of people here, but I think the alcohol ban for the weeks of spring break had the effect of letting people know that we’re not going to be the college party town. We’re not interested in being the college party town. I think that helped.”
The concern about Gulf Shores becoming a magnet for hard-partying college crowds grew out of what happened roughly 100 miles east in Panama City Beach, Florida, where authorities cracked down hard enough on spring break excess that many in the tourism industry along Alabama’s Pleasure Island worried the crowds would simply move west. When a portion of that crowd did show up on Alabama beaches last year, the underage drinking and trashed beaches that followed led directly to Gulf Shores’ temporary alcohol ban and a wider push to discourage rowdy, unsupervised partying.
Orange Beach did not adopt a similar alcohol ban on its beaches, but Mayor Tony Kennon said this year’s spring break was still markedly better behaved than last year’s.
“From our perspective it was better than last year,” Kennon said. “We had fewer numbers of unsupervised or unchaperoned spring breakers, which I think is a good thing, or we had a lot more kids who came down here who knew how to behave.”
Kennon credited condominium owners and rental property managers with doing a better job screening who they rent to during the spring break weeks, saying that shift made a real difference on the ground.
“Our owners and the folks who rent were very responsible in vetting who was coming,” he said. “They understand how detrimental turning into a no-holds-barred college spring break is to our brand and to our overall business model. So they did a really good job of making sure that these kids were either supervised or they were older and behaved.”
Cowan noted that a stretch of chilly, rainy weather during the height of the season likely helped keep crowds off the beach as well, regardless of the alcohol restrictions or rental screening efforts, since fewer visitors were inclined to head outdoors in poor conditions.
Not every night passed without incident. The most serious moment of the spring break period came late on the night of April 1, when gunfire erupted near The Hangout in the public beach area of Gulf Shores. No one was injured in the shooting, and as of Monday, police had a warrant out for a suspect’s arrest.
“Obviously, anytime something like that happens in such a high-profile place, it puts a bad spin on things,” Cowan said. He added that the incident also gave police a chance to demonstrate they take threats to public safety on the beach seriously as they pursue the suspect.
“We’re going to find whoever you are and we’re going to put you in jail for behaving like that on our very prime beachfront,” Cowan said. “Our beachfront is special to us, and we’re not going to tolerate that.”
City leaders in both Gulf Shores and Orange Beach say they will continue to evaluate crowd behavior, arrest data and business impact each year before deciding whether beach alcohol restrictions or other spring break measures are needed again.