Baldwin County School Board Approves $3.2 Million for Fairhope Volanta Park Stadium, Baseball Upgrades

FAIRHOPE, Ala. — The Baldwin County Board of Education has agreed to pay the City of Fairhope $3.2 million for athletic and recreation upgrades at Volanta Park, including a new press box for the high school football stadium and a new baseball hitting facility. Fairhope Mayor Sherry Sullivan said the deal took 18 months to negotiate.

The board approved the payment at its regular meeting in Bay Minette on Thursday night, Oct. 22. The Volanta Park agreement is part of a larger school system effort to make similar improvements across Baldwin County. Including other football stadium work already planned, Baldwin County Public Schools is investing about $9 million in upgrades in Fairhope, Sullivan said.

The vote comes a few months after Fairhope looked into leaving the county school system and decided against it following a public interest meeting and a community survey over the summer.

What the $3.2 million will buy

The agreement lists five projects at Volanta Park, which sits on Volanta Avenue and includes W.C. Majors Field, home of the Fairhope High School Pirates football team. The money covers only these projects:

• New press box for the high school football stadium: $1,250,150
• New baseball hitting facility: $960,000
• New ornamental fencing with brick pilasters around the football stadium: $511,000
• Laundry and training addition, with locker renovation: $300,000
• Baseball and softball outfield “champion wall”: $185,000

Together the five items come to $3,206,150. The press box is the largest single cost, at nearly 40 percent of the total. The hitting facility comes next at almost $1 million.

Press boxes hold game announcers, scoreboard operators, coaches who call plays from above the field, and radio and video crews. A hitting facility lets baseball and softball players take batting practice under cover, so rain does not wipe out practice time. Outfield champion walls are typically used to display a program’s championships and other team accomplishments.

Fairhope will manage the work

Under the agreement, the school board pays the money to the city, and Fairhope is responsible for getting the projects built. The agreement gives the school system and the city equal access to the park, both while the upgrades are under construction and afterward, when the facilities will be used for student athletics and public recreation.

That kind of shared arrangement is common when a city owns a park and a public school uses its fields. The city can schedule recreation programs and community events, and the school can count on the facilities for practices and games. The agreement document says the work is expected to be finished around August 2028.

Sullivan said the arrangement will help every young athlete in the city.

“At the end of the day, eventually all of our student athletes in Fairhope will benefit from these projects,” Sullivan said. “I’m just very thankful to the school board for their vision in doing this and for that partnership. This has been a long time coming, and we’re really excited to get it started.”

A deal paused during the city school debate

Sullivan said negotiations over the park upgrades started about 18 months ago and were put on hold this summer while Fairhope considered forming its own school system.

“We kind of put things on hold while those conversations were going on, just to see what the community interest was,” Sullivan said. “It was decided that there was an overwhelming response that the people of Fairhope did not want a city school system at that time, so we picked the agreement back up and started moving forward again.”

In August, the city released a six-month feasibility study on whether Fairhope could break away from Baldwin County Public Schools. The study estimated that starting a city system would cost about $91 million. Some residents who pushed for a city system said they wanted more local control over education decisions and a chance to improve and expand athletic facilities. That second point is the same kind of work the county school board has now agreed to pay for.

The city held a public meeting at City Hall on Aug. 18 and asked residents to fill out an online survey. About 1,400 people responded, including 862 who live inside the city limits. According to results Sullivan shared, 83% opposed or strongly opposed creating a city school system, 89% said they were satisfied with the Baldwin County Board of Education and 81% opposed a property tax increase to pay for a new system. Two more public meetings, set for late August and Sept. 9, were then canceled.

At the time, Sullivan said the city school question will probably come up again someday. She noted that it has resurfaced every few years as enrollment, school construction, district boundaries and state laws change. Under Alabama law, a city school system is created by a vote of the city council, not by referendum.

Fairhope’s place in a fast-growing county system

Baldwin County Public Schools is one of the largest school systems in Alabama, and it serves Fairhope’s public schools along with schools across the rest of the county. Two Baldwin County beach cities have already left the county system: Gulf Shores and Orange Beach now run their own city school systems.

Many students who attend Fairhope schools live outside the city limits. During the summer debate, that was one of the main questions people raised about a possible city system: where those students would go to school. Shared facilities such as Volanta Park serve students from both inside and outside the city.

Fairhope High School’s athletic programs have kept those facilities busy this fall. The football team clinched the Class 6A, Region 1 title this week.

What happens next

With the board’s approval, the city can move ahead with design, bidding and construction of the five Volanta Park projects. As the managing partner, Fairhope will handle contracting, so construction contracts and related items will likely go before the Fairhope City Council in public meetings.

The school board’s larger plan for athletic and recreation upgrades in other communities will play out separately. Residents who want to follow the work can watch Baldwin County Board of Education and Fairhope City Council agendas, which are posted ahead of each meeting, and both bodies meet in public.

For now, Sullivan said, the city and the school board are glad to have the long-delayed deal moving again. If the schedule holds, the new press box, hitting facility, fencing, training space and champion wall should be ready around August 2028.