Gulf Shores Breaks Ground on $9.7 Million Gulf Coast Eco Center Funded by RESTORE Act

Gulf Shores is getting a $9.7 million outdoor learning campus designed to immerse students in coastal conservation, funded through the RESTORE Act and built on 22 wooded acres adjoining Gulf Shores City Schools property.

City officials, school leaders, the Gulf Coast Center for Ecotourism and Sustainability, and Jean-Michel Cousteau’s Ocean Futures Society broke ground on the Gulf Coast Eco Center on Oct. 27. In a nod to what’s coming, the ceremony skipped the ceremonial dirt-turning: instead, Gulf Shores Elementary students toured the site, gathering plants, saplings and reindeer moss from land that will soon be cleared for construction.

The campus will feature outdoor classrooms connected by trails leading from the adjacent school property, with plans for bunkhouses that will let students stay overnight and become fully immersed in conservation studies. Cousteau — son of famed oceanographer Jacques Cousteau — will bring his Ambassadors of the Environment experiential education program to the site.

Mayor Robert Craft said he envisions the center doing for Alabama’s coast what the U.S. Space & Rocket Center has done for Huntsville, giving the state a signature destination that changes how people see it.

Years of planning went into securing the RESTORE Act dollars, which are drawn from penalties paid after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The project was set to go out for bid within weeks of the groundbreaking, with construction expected to begin early the following year and the center operational sometime in 2023.

How RESTORE Act Money Works

Congress passed the RESTORE Act in 2012, directing 80 percent of the Clean Water Act civil and administrative penalties paid in connection with the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill to environmental and economic restoration in the five Gulf Coast states. The spill began with the April 20, 2010, explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico.