Orange Beach Recreation Campus Set for Major Expansion Under New Master Plan

Orange Beach Recreation Campus Set for Major Expansion Under New Master Plan

The Orange Beach Recreation Campus has grown substantially over the past two decades, evolving from two tennis courts and a handful of ballfields in the 1990s into one of the busiest hubs of community life in the city. Now, city officials are working on a comprehensive master plan to guide the campus’s next phase of growth. What began as a modest collection of playing fields has become the center around which much of Orange Beach’s civic life turns — youth leagues, senior programs, swim lessons, community gatherings and school activities all pass through its gates.

The early 2000s brought construction of the Tennis Center, the Aquatics Center, the Recreation Center and a new Community Center. Over just the past six years, the campus has added a new Recreation Center gymnasium, a new Fitness Center and, most recently, a Pickleball Complex that opened in May. The pace of those additions reflects both the city’s rapid growth and the changing demands of recreation itself: pickleball, the fastest-growing racket sport in the country, arrived at the campus almost as soon as residents began asking for courts.

The Recreation Center is also home to the city’s Expect Excellence program, which provides Orange Beach children with arts, academic and athletics programming, after-school care and summer camps. The program has become a defining piece of the city’s promise to families — a guarantee that children growing up in a resort town have structured, enriching places to go year-round, not just during the tourist season.

A Master Plan Takes Shape

Because the campus grew over time without a single cohesive master plan, City Engineer Chris Pappas set out to map a more efficient, enhanced and safer layout for the site, working under direction from city administration. Two decades of incremental additions left the campus functional but fragmented, with parking, circulation and facility placement evolving one project at a time rather than by design. The master plan is the city’s attempt to impose order on that accumulated growth before the next round of construction begins.

The conceptual improvements now on the table include dedicated golf cart parking, more than 200 new parking spaces, four additional tennis courts, improved sidewalks and crosswalks, an artificial turf multipurpose field next to the Recreation Center to serve the Expect Excellence program, and broader site beautification. The golf cart parking is a distinctly Orange Beach touch — the city’s streets and venues are built around a population that moves much of its daily life by cart, and any major public facility that ignores that fact creates bottlenecks.

“This is one of the most exciting projects our City has undertaken,” said City Administrator Ford Handley. “The Recreation Campus is among our most heavily used community assets, serving residents and visitors of all ages throughout the year. The addition of new green space at Contorno Park will provide a significant amenity for residents on the east side of town, while improvements to parking and circulation will better accommodate golf carts, vehicles, school program participants, and users of the campus’s many recreational facilities. Our vision is to create a destination where every member of the family can connect, play, relax, and enjoy activities that match their interests.”

Parks and Recreation Director Nicole Ard said the planned improvements reflect the city’s continued investment in residents’ quality of life. “Whether it’s additional tennis courts, new recreational spaces, safer pedestrian access, or expanded parking, every improvement is designed to enhance the experience for our residents,” she said. “These projects will help us meet the needs of a growing community while preserving the welcoming, family-friendly atmosphere that makes Orange Beach such a special place to live.”

Timeline and Next Steps

The next step is turning the conceptual plan into detailed designs so the project can be put out for bid. The Orange Beach City Council was set to vote at its June 16 meeting on a task order with Sawgrass Consulting to provide professional civil engineering and land surveying services, at a cost not to exceed $170,600. City officials hope to have the project bid out before the end of the year, with construction wrapping up in 2027.

That schedule puts design work through the summer, bidding in the fall and construction across two calendar years — a pace typical for municipal work of this scope, but one that keeps multiple disruptions overlapping: the campus would see construction while remaining open to the thousands of residents and visitors who use it weekly.

Contorno Park Takes Shape

Adjacent to the Recreation Campus, the city’s July 2024 purchase of 14 acres is developing into Contorno Park. Once complete, the park will include scenic walking trails around a pond, picnic areas and open green space intended as a quiet outdoor retreat. An existing home on the property currently serves as administrative offices for the Parks and Recreation Department.

“Contorno Park represents another exciting opportunity to expand recreational and outdoor experiences for our community,” Ard said. “As a passive park focused on walking, nature, and relaxation, it will provide residents with a beautiful new space to enjoy the outdoors while further connecting the Recreation Campus and surrounding areas.”

The contrast between the two properties is deliberate. Where the Recreation Campus is an active, programmed facility — courts, pools, gyms, fields, camps — Contorno Park is planned as its quiet complement, a place for unstructured time. The east side of town, which Handley identified as the park’s beneficiary, gains its first major green-space amenity of this kind, and the walking-trail loop around the pond gives the city’s growing population a routine outdoor destination that requires no reservation, league or schedule.

Aquatics Center Renovation Underway

The Orange Beach Aquatics Center is also slated for renovation and expansion. Planning and design work is underway to transform the facility into a modern, multi-use complex. The project will expand the existing six-lane pool to eight lanes to better serve high school and recreational swim teams, fitness swimmers, lessons and community programming. A new recreational pool with an interactive splash pad will also be added to support classes, open swim and family use.

Construction will be phased so the facility can remain operational throughout the process, with completion targeted for 2027. The phasing matters for a Gulf Coast city whose summer demand for pools is unrelenting: swim lessons, lap swimming, team practices and family recreation all compete for lane space, and shutting the facility down entirely for a year was never a realistic option. The eight-lane configuration aligns the center with competitive standards that the current pool cannot fully accommodate.

Programming Continues to Expand

As the campus’s facilities grow, so does its programming. Parks and Recreation Month was set to be celebrated in July under the theme “The Power of Parks & Recreation: Power of Community – America’s 250,” tying in a patriotic nod to the nation’s upcoming 250th birthday. The theme links the city’s local celebration to the national semiquincentennial that communities across the country are marking through 2026.

The Senior Center kicked off the month’s celebration on July 1 with a Rock and Roll Tie-Dye Americana Party, followed by a Pop-Up Park & Block Party on July 11 from 5:30 to 8 p.m. at John Snook Park. Additional activities and programs ran throughout the month, capped off by a “Summer Sendoff – Park after Dark” event on July 31.

The July calendar illustrates why the city treats its recreation system as core infrastructure. A single month brought senior programming, an evening block party for families, and a capstone event after dark — the kind of schedule that depends on having staff, facilities and open space in place, and the kind of schedule that the master plan and the Contorno Park purchase are intended to sustain as Orange Beach keeps growing.

What the Growth Says About Orange Beach

The scale of the campus expansion tracks the city’s own trajectory. Orange Beach has transformed over two decades from a small coastal town into one of Baldwin County’s fastest-growing communities, and the recreation system has absorbed that growth one project at a time — first the four centers of the early 2000s, then the gymnasium, fitness center and pickleball complex of recent years, and now a master-planned rebuild plus an entirely new park.

The city’s approach also reflects a broader pattern among Baldwin County’s municipalities, where revenues from tourism and growth have funded public amenities that rival those of much larger cities. For residents, the practical effect is that the town’s recreation offerings have kept pace with its population rather than lagging behind it — a balance many fast-growing communities fail to strike.

For now, residents can follow the work in stages: detailed designs through the remainder of the year, a public bid process as the plan firms up, and phased construction at the Aquatics Center and across the campus running into 2027. When the sequence is complete, Orange Beach will have a recreation system designed as a whole for the first time since its founding — courts, pools, fields, trails and parking laid out by plan rather than by accumulation.