South Alabama Community Events Roundup: Early March 2020

Early March brings a landmark zoo opening, a chili showdown, living history on Dauphin Island and a full slate of arts events across South Alabama. Here is what’s on the calendar.

The Little Zoo That Could opens its new home

The Alabama Gulf Coast Zoo — famous as “The Little Zoo That Could” — opens to the public at its new Gulf Shores location, 20499 Oak Road East, on Tuesday, March 11, finally moving the menagerie out of the flood zone that forced three evacuations of its old site.

The nickname was earned the hard way. The zoo’s former location, tucked low in a residential area off Zoo Road, sat in a flood-prone pocket barely a mile from the beach, and three times in a little more than a decade the entire animal collection — lions, tigers, lemurs, reptiles and hundreds more — had to be evacuated inland ahead of approaching storms. The 2006 Animal Planet documentary series that chronicled one of those evacuations made the little zoo internationally famous and turned its caretakers into familiar faces for viewers across the country.

The new site changes the math entirely. Located on higher ground well north of the beach highway, the 25-acre property puts the animals out of the storm surge zone for the first time in the zoo’s history, and purpose-built construction gives the facility room to grow — larger natural habitats, a modern veterinary clinic and event space that the old site could never accommodate. The move followed years of fundraising, and the March 11 opening is the moment the community’s support finally lands.

Food, fundraisers and history

The American Cancer Society’s Chili Cook-off fires up Mardi Gras Park on Saturday, March 7, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., with competing teams, live music and proceeds funding cancer research and patient support.

Mardi Gras Park, the downtown Mobile green space that opened adjacent to Government Plaza, has become a favored venue for midsize festivals, and the chili competition format — amateur and restaurant teams serving sample cups while judges and the public vote — fills the park’s central lawn for the afternoon. Proceeds support the American Cancer Society’s research funding and programs that serve patients in the Mobile area, including lodging and transportation assistance for people traveling for treatment.

Fort Gaines on Dauphin Island hosts a WWII Living History Event the same day, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., with drills, period camping and blacksmithing in the fort’s original shop.

The Dauphin Island landmark is best known for its Civil War role — the 1864 Battle of Mobile Bay that raged within sight of its walls — but its service life extended into the twentieth century, and the World War II reenactment weekend highlights that later chapter. Reenactors in period uniform occupy the fort’s grounds for the day, and the blacksmithing demonstrations take place in the original forge shop, giving visitors a working picture of how the garrison lived and labored.

Historic Blakeley State Park pairs local bluegrass band String Farm with storyteller Donnie Barrett, longtime director of the Fairhope Museum of History, for a bonfire evening Friday, March 6.

The park, which preserves the site of the last major battle of the Civil War fought east of the Mississippi along the Tensaw River delta north of Spanish Fort, has built its evening programming around the combination of music and storytelling under the stars. Barrett’s talks draw on decades of local history scholarship from his years leading the Fairhope museum, and the bonfire setting on the bluff above the river makes the event a seasonal favorite.

Downtown Fairhope’s Art Walk also runs that evening, with galleries and shops along the streets below the bluff keeping their doors open into the night for the town’s monthly celebration of local artists. The walk coinciding with the Blakeley bonfire makes for a full Eastern Shore evening, and many residents make a route of both.

Operation Clean Sweep offers Mobile County residents free dumping at the Irvington Landfill on March 7.

The county’s periodic cleanup events accept household debris, furniture and yard waste from Mobile County residents at no charge, with proof of residency, at the Irvington facility on the county’s south side. Organizers pair the disposal days with volunteer cleanup crews working illegal dump sites around the county, and residents hauling accumulated junk are advised to arrive early, as lines form through the morning.

Arts and letters

Autism2Ability brings Roman Street, authors Winston Groom, John Sledge and Watt Key, and art exhibits to the Daphne Civic Center Wednesday, March 11, with tickets from $55 to $65.

The fundraising evening assembles an unusually deep bench of Gulf Coast talent. Roman Street, the instrumental band rooted in the area whose guitar-driven sound has made it a regional favorite, provides the music, while the author lineup reads like a history of Mobile Bay letters: Groom, the Fairhope writer whose “Forrest Gump” became one of the most successful American novels of its era; Sledge, the Mobile historian and author of definitive works on the city’s architecture and the bay’s maritime past; and Key, the Monroeville-based author of adventure novels set in the Gulf Coast’s rivers and swamps.

The USA Symphony Band gives its winter concert Thursday, March 5, at the Laidlaw Performing Arts Center.

The university’s concert band anchors its winter program at the Laidlaw center on the South Alabama campus, the acoustically refined hall that hosts the university’s instrumental and choral season. Admission is modest and the repertoire traditionally mixes contemporary wind band works with standards, making it an accessible evening for families and student audiences alike.

The Mobile Symphony presents “Vivace” at the Saenger Theatre March 7-8 featuring teenage cello prodigy Sujari Britt, while Mobile Ballet artistic director Katia Garza appears with her limited-release film at Ben May Main Library on March 7-8.

The Saenger Theatre, the restored 1927 movie palace on Joachim Street downtown, provides the backdrop for the symphony’s program built around youthful virtuosity, with the young cellist’s appearance as guest soloist headlining both weekend performances. The orchestra’s downtown series draws audiences from across the Gulf Coast, and Saturday and Sunday matinee timing makes the program reachable for families introducing children to live orchestral music.

Across downtown at the Ben May Main Library, the Mobile Ballet’s artistic director presents her limited-release film in a rare local screening. Garza’s dual career as a ballerina and filmmaker has taken her work to festivals beyond the Gulf Coast, and the library screenings pair the film with discussion of the company’s upcoming season.

Agatha Christie’s “Black Coffee” closes at the Crescent Theater on March 8, and “Seussical Jr.” plays Bellingrath Gardens’ Great Lawn on Friday, March 6.

The Crescent, the intimate single-screen theater on Dauphin Street known for independent film and local stage productions, ends its run of the classic Christie stage mystery with its final weekend performances. The whodunit, the only original play Christie wrote around her famous detective Hercule Poirot, has been a draw for audiences who fill the Crescent’s small house for local theater.

Bellingrath Gardens’ Great Lawn turns family-friendly for the young-cast production of “Seussical Jr.,” the musical adaptation of Dr. Seuss’s beloved characters staged outdoors on the estate’s sweeping lawn. The Theodore gardens provide the kind of storybook setting the show’s source material deserves, and visitors can tour the gardens before the evening performance.

Races and more

The Funky Monkey 5K rounds out the weekend’s calendar, tying the region’s running community to the Alabama Gulf Coast Zoo’s opening celebrations at the new Oak Road East campus.

Runners and walkers alike make the zoo’s signature event one of the most family-oriented races on the Gulf Coast calendar, and this year’s edition doubles as a first look at the new property, with the course and post-race festivities on the zoo’s freshly opened grounds. The weekend of March 7-8 also fills with park runs and charity walks across the two counties, a reminder that early spring is the Gulf Coast’s peak season for outdoor events before the summer heat arrives.

With the zoo opening, the chili cook-off, the fort’s living history weekend, the bonfire at Blakeley, a civic-center fundraiser stacked with the area’s best-known authors, and a weekend of symphony, ballet, theater and runs, the first weeks of March offer the fullest calendar the region has seen in months.

Residents planning to attend multiple events should note the clustering around the March 6-7 weekend, when the bonfire, art walk, chili cook-off, fort event and free dumping day all fall within thirty hours of each other. Admission varies by event — the zoo opening, the fort’s living history day and Operation Clean Sweep are included with regular site access or free to residents, while the Autism2Ability evening runs $55 to $65 and the ballet film screenings and symphony performances carry their own ticketing through their venues.