Town leaders in Silverhill are pressing ahead with a series of road resurfacing, widening and paving projects designed to keep pace with a wave of new homes, businesses and school-age families moving into the small Baldwin County community.
Silverhill Mayor Jared Lyles said the town has seen a steady uptick in commercial activity in recent years, with several shops expanding into larger buildings and new businesses opening their doors for the first time. New residential subdivisions and a new elementary school have followed close behind, adding to traffic on streets that in some cases had gone without major work for decades.
“The growth in Silverhill has been the kind of growth we like to see,” Lyles said, pointing to the new storefronts and larger commercial spaces that have popped up around town as evidence of the community’s momentum.
That growth is exactly why town officials say road maintenance can no longer wait. Lyles said that before Silverhill received a Rebuild Alabama grant roughly two years ago, it had been about 25 years since the town undertook any major road project. The Rebuild Alabama Act, passed by the Alabama Legislature in 2019, created a dedicated state funding stream for road and bridge improvements, and it gave small towns like Silverhill a rare opportunity to catch up on deferred infrastructure work.
Since then, the town has used that funding to begin resurfacing, widening and paving streets that were showing their age. Now, additional help is on the way. U.S. Rep. Jerry Carl, who represents Alabama’s 1st Congressional District, recently secured a $500,000 federal grant to continue that work in Silverhill. The money will not arrive immediately, but town officials say they are already prepared to act once it does.
Silverhill is required to provide a 10 percent local match for the federal funding, and Lyles said the town has that money set aside and ready to go. “Our 10 percent match is ready. We’re ready to go, so really whenever the funds are available we’ll put out the job for bid and we’ll be ready to do it immediately,” Lyles said.
The urgency behind the roadwork is tied directly to what town leaders expect in the coming years. Lyles said developers have already received approval to build at least 700 new homes just outside Silverhill’s town limits, a scale of residential construction that would significantly increase the number of vehicles traveling through town on a daily basis. Combined with the commercial growth already underway, officials say it is only a matter of time before local roads see substantially more traffic.
By lining up state and federal funding together, Silverhill officials say they hope to get ahead of that growth rather than react to it after roads become congested or worn down. The town’s approach mirrors a challenge facing many small, fast-growing communities across Baldwin County, where new rooftops and retail development have often outpaced the public infrastructure needed to support them.
Town officials have not released a detailed timeline for when construction bids will go out, saying that will depend on when the federal grant funds are officially released. In the meantime, Silverhill’s town government says it will continue to monitor road conditions and prioritize projects based on need as the community keeps growing.