ORANGE BEACH, Ala. — The next round of work on East Second Street in Waterway Village has reached the drawing board, according to a project update released this week, moving a long-running effort to remake the corridor one step closer to a construction contract.
The update describes the phase as “currently in design” and frames it as part of the broader Waterway Village improvement initiative — a multi-stage push to turn East Second Street into what the announcement calls a more connected, attractive and pedestrian-friendly corridor.
Two work items are named for this phase. The first is street reconstruction between East 22nd Avenue and East 23rd Avenue. The second is a package of landscaping, lighting, irrigation and furnishings, which the announcement says will be installed in two sections.
That is the full scope as stated. It is a short list, and readers should know up front that the announcement appears to be incomplete in at least one respect: it includes a heading reading “Features include:” with no items beneath it. Whatever specifics were meant to appear there did not make it into the released text. We are not going to guess at them, and neither should anyone else planning around this project.
One block of reconstruction, and a longer corridor behind it
The reconstruction segment is tightly bounded: East 22nd Avenue to East 23rd Avenue, a single block of East Second Street. That kind of narrow limit is typical of streetscape programs that advance in fundable increments rather than as one continuous mega-project, and it explains why the corridor has been improved in pieces over several years.
The announcement is explicit that this phase builds on work already completed. It cites widened sidewalks, added on-street parking and enhanced stormwater systems among the recent upgrades along the corridor. Combined with what it describes as ongoing efforts further south, the update says this phase will help create a fully connected “complete street” running from East 22nd Avenue to Waterway East Boulevard.
The word “reconstruction” is doing meaningful work in that description. Reconstruction generally means rebuilding a street’s structure rather than resurfacing it — taking the roadway down and rebuilding the base, and typically addressing curbs, drainage and the cross-section at the same time. It is more disruptive than a mill-and-overlay job and takes longer, but it is also the point at which a street’s geometry can actually be changed. If a corridor is going to end up with a different balance between driving lanes, parking, sidewalk and landscaping, reconstruction is when that happens.
What a ‘complete street’ actually means
“Complete street” is a term of art in transportation planning, and it is worth defining, because it is used loosely in public discussion. The concept holds that a street should be designed to serve everyone who uses it — drivers, pedestrians, cyclists, transit riders, delivery vehicles and people with mobility limitations — rather than being engineered primarily around vehicle throughput.
In practice that usually shows up as a set of design choices made together instead of separately: sidewalks wide enough for two people to pass comfortably, safe and clearly marked crossings, curb ramps, street trees and shade, lighting scaled to people on foot rather than only to the roadway, and a travel lane width that encourages moderate speeds. The defining feature is not any single element but the insistence that they be coordinated along a continuous stretch.
That word — continuous — is the reason the announcement emphasizes connection. A comfortable block of sidewalk that ends abruptly at a gap does not function as pedestrian infrastructure, because the weakest link determines whether someone is willing to walk the route at all. Filling in the remaining segments between East 22nd Avenue and Waterway East Boulevard is what converts a series of individual improvements into a corridor people will actually use end to end.
Why sidewalks and on-street parking matter to a commercial street
The improvements the announcement credits to earlier phases — widened sidewalks, added on-street parking, better stormwater handling — are the standard toolkit for a commercial corridor, and each does a specific job.
Wider sidewalks change what a sidewalk is for. A narrow walk is a channel for getting past a place. A wider one accommodates people stopping, window shopping, waiting, and in some cases sitting or dining outside, without forcing anyone into the street. It also creates room for the street furniture, trees and lighting that make walking pleasant in a hot, humid climate, all of which have to physically fit somewhere.
On-street parking is often misread as merely adding spaces. Its more significant effects are that it places parking directly in front of businesses, which matters enormously for short trips to small storefronts, and that the parked cars themselves form a buffer between moving traffic and people on the sidewalk. That buffer has a measurable calming effect on driver behavior, since a street lined with parked vehicles reads as narrower and prompts lower speeds.
Stormwater work is the least visible and among the most consequential. Rebuilding a street in a coastal community means confronting where water goes during heavy rain. Improved drainage keeps intersections and crossings usable during storms, protects the pavement structure that the reconstruction investment is paying for, and reduces the standing water that makes a corridor unpleasant well after the rain has stopped.
Landscaping, lighting, irrigation and furnishings — in two sections
The second named item in this phase bundles four categories that are usually installed together because they share the same trenches, conduits and planting areas.
Landscaping typically means street trees and planting beds, which supply shade — a serious functional consideration on the Gulf Coast, where the difference between a shaded and unshaded sidewalk in August determines whether anyone walks. Irrigation is the supporting system that keeps those plantings alive through their establishment period and beyond; without it, new landscaping on a hardscaped street tends to fail. Lighting on a streetscape project generally serves pedestrians as well as vehicles, at a scale and spacing suited to sidewalks. Furnishings is the catch-all for benches, waste receptacles, bike racks, planters and similar fixtures.
The announcement’s note that these elements will be installed in two sections is a scheduling detail with practical consequences. Splitting installation lets crews finish and open one stretch while working on the next, which limits how much of the corridor is disrupted at any one time. The update does not say where the dividing line between the two sections falls, or which will be done first.
What ‘in design’ means, and what comes after
Because the announcement’s headline news is that the project has entered design, it helps to lay out where that sits in a typical municipal construction sequence.
Public projects of this kind generally move through design, then bidding, then construction. In the design stage, engineers and landscape architects turn a concept into biddable construction documents: plans, specifications, quantities, materials, utility coordination and the details a contractor needs to price the job accurately. Design is also when the trade-offs get resolved — how wide the walk is, where the trees go, how parking is laid out, how drainage is routed.
Once the documents are complete, the project is advertised and contractors submit sealed bids, which are opened publicly on a set date. The award follows, then contracts and notices to proceed, and only then does construction begin. Each handoff can shift, which is why an announcement that a project is “in design” is meaningful progress but not the same as a construction start date.
A timeline that does not appear to be current
The update closes with a project timeline stating that bids are expected to open in August, with construction planned to begin after Labor Day and wrap up in January.
Those dates should be treated with caution. The announcement carries a Sept. 8, 2026 date, which places it after both the August bid opening and the Labor Day construction start it describes in the future tense. At the same time, the body of the update says the phase is currently in design — a stage that precedes bidding. The timeline language and the status language do not fit together, which strongly suggests the schedule paragraph was carried over from an earlier notice and was not updated before this version was released.
We are flagging that rather than resolving it, because resolving it would require information the announcement does not contain. Readers should not assume bids have opened, that a contractor has been selected, or that construction will start this month or finish in January. What the update reliably establishes is the project’s stage — design — and its scope. The dates attached to it are unclear.
The other open questions
Several additional details are absent from the announcement and are worth listing plainly so that no one fills them in by assumption.
- No cost figure or funding source is given for this phase.
- No contractor, engineering firm or designer is named.
- The missing “Features include:” list means the specific streetscape elements intended for this phase are not identified.
- The announcement does not describe traffic control, detours, business access or parking arrangements during construction.
- It does not say where the two installation sections begin and end.
- The reference to “Gulf Pines” appears in the project’s title but is not explained anywhere in the body of the update.
None of that undermines the substance of the news. A block of East Second Street is being designed for reconstruction, a coordinated package of landscaping, lighting, irrigation and furnishings is being designed alongside it, and the stated objective is a continuous complete street from East 22nd Avenue south to Waterway East Boulevard. That is a concrete and checkable set of commitments.
What to watch next
The next genuine milestone will be the project’s advertisement for bids and the public opening of those bids, which will attach a real dollar figure and a real contractor to a scope that is currently described only in general terms. After that comes an award and a notice to proceed, at which point a construction window can be stated with confidence.
The announcement promises that more updates will be shared as the project moves from design into construction. For merchants and residents along East Second Street, the details worth waiting for are the ones that determine day-to-day life during the work: the construction sequence, how access to businesses will be maintained, where customers will park, and how long each of the two installation sections will take.