USA by the Bay Speaker Series Explores Baldwin County Growth with Dr. Grayson Glaze

The University of South Alabama explored the opportunities and challenges shaping one of Alabama’s fastest-growing regions during a USA by the Bay Speaker Series event held Thursday, Aug. 13, at the USA by the Bay campus auditorium in downtown Fairhope. The evening drew university leaders, students and working professionals from across Baldwin County for a conversation about how the county can absorb its remarkable growth without losing the character that draws people to it in the first place.

Dr. Grayson Glaze, distinguished professor of real estate in the Mitchell College of Business, led an industry panel discussion titled “Building Baldwin County: Balancing Real Estate, Growth and Community,” examining the opportunities and challenges of managing rapid growth while preserving the character of local communities. The discussion came at a moment when growth is arguably the defining civic issue in Baldwin County, which for years has ranked among the fastest-growing counties in Alabama and, by most counts, in the entire Gulf South region.

A county remade by growth

Baldwin County’s expansion is visible almost everywhere a resident looks. The county’s population has climbed well past the 230,000 mark, fed by retirees relocating to the Eastern Shore, remote workers drawn to the coastal quality of life, and families priced out of faster-growing metro markets elsewhere in the Southeast. Municipalities such as Daphne, Fairhope, Foley, Spanish Fort, Gulf Shores and Robertsdale have all annexed land and issued building permits at a pace that has strained roads, schools, utilities and public safety budgets. State Highway 181, U.S. Highway 98 and the Foley Beach Express corridors have become focal points of the growth debate, as commuter traffic crossing Mobile Bay each morning and evening stacks up along the shore.

That pressure is precisely the territory the panel was assembled to explore. Real estate professionals, developers and municipal officials in Baldwin County have spent recent years wrestling with questions that once seemed theoretical: how to build infrastructure ahead of rooftops rather than behind them, how to keep waterfront and downtown districts from losing their identity to national chains and out-of-scale construction, and how communities like Fairhope — a city of roughly 22,000 that has become one of the region’s most desirable addresses — can manage demand that shows no sign of cooling. Fairhope itself has become a case study, with its flower-filled downtown remaining a postcard destination even as new subdivisions push outward along every thoroughfare leading into town.

Spotlight on USA’s growing real estate program

The presentation also highlighted the continued growth of the University’s real estate program, which launched as a full undergraduate major last fall. Glaze discussed the program’s rapid momentum, including student enrollment that doubled during his first year at South, and how it is preparing the next generation of real estate professionals to support Alabama’s growing communities.

The timing of that expansion is not accidental. Alabama’s real estate sector — from residential brokerage along the Gulf Coast to commercial and industrial development tied to the Port of Mobile, the Airbus final assembly line and the region’s expanding hospital systems — needs a steady pipeline of graduates who understand valuation, real estate finance, property law and market analysis. Programs like South’s are designed to supply that pipeline, giving students coursework and industry connections that historically were available only at much larger out-of-state universities. For the university, the program also strengthens the ties between the Mitchell College of Business and the practitioners across the region who hire its graduates.

Special guests at the event included University of South Alabama President Jo Bonner, Executive Vice President and Provost Dr. Andi Kent, current students, and local real estate and business professionals. Bonner, a former longtime member of Congress representing south Alabama, has made the university’s expanding footprint in Baldwin County a signature priority of his administration, and the USA by the Bay campus in downtown Fairhope serves as the institution’s academic bridge across Mobile Bay. The campus hosts courses, speaker events and community programming aimed at residents who live and work on the Eastern Shore, reducing the need for Baldwin County students to commute into Mobile for upper-level classes and professional programs.

Doors opened at 5 p.m., the presentation began at 5:30 p.m., and a reception followed at 6:30 p.m. The format gave attendees time to question panelists informally after the formal program, a feature that has become a hallmark of the Speaker Series. The series, staged at the Fairhope campus, regularly pairs university faculty with industry figures on topics that intersect with daily life in Baldwin County — from coastal resilience and health care delivery to, in this case, real estate markets and growth management. Attendance is typically a mix of university friends, local business leaders and residents with a direct stake in the evening’s topic.

About Dr. Grayson Glaze

Glaze joined the Mitchell College of Business faculty in 2025 as professor and director of the real estate program, leading its transition to a full undergraduate major after more than two decades at the University of Alabama. While in Tuscaloosa, he served as executive director of the Alabama Center for Real Estate and helped build one of the nation’s largest academic real estate programs, an operation known for its strong student placement rates, deep industry partnerships and scholarship support for students entering the profession.

A graduate of the University of Alabama, Glaze earned his Juris Doctor from the Birmingham School of Law. Throughout his career, he has combined academic leadership with extensive industry experience as a real estate broker, advisor and property developer, a blend that university officials say allows him to speak credibly both to students considering careers in the field and to the professionals already working in it. That dual credibility was on display at the Fairhope event, where the panel ranged across market conditions, development pressures and the day-to-day decisions that shape neighborhoods.

His move to South also reflects a broader push among the university’s business programs to align curriculum with the industries driving the Gulf Coast economy. Real estate touches nearly every part of that economy — housing supply, commercial corridors, industrial sites and the property tax base that funds schools and municipal services. Program leaders have said they intend for graduates to be ready to work anywhere in Alabama, not just in Mobile and Baldwin counties, and the undergraduate major is structured to give students both classroom theory and early exposure to working professionals.

Why the event mattered locally

For Baldwin County audiences, a university conversation about growth carries practical weight. Decisions made in the next few years — about sewer capacity, school construction, road widening and zoning — will determine whether the county’s second decade of boom feels managed or chaotic. Forums like the USA by the Bay Speaker Series put data and professional experience in front of the residents, elected officials and business leaders who will make those calls.

What the growth debate means for residents

For Baldwin County residents, the questions raised at the panel land close to home. School districts across the county have struggled to keep pace with enrollment growth, funding new classrooms through a mix of local revenue and state support while older campuses in established communities face renovation backlogs. Water and sewer providers have extended lines into formerly rural areas, and volunteer fire departments have added career staffed stations as subdivisions replace pine forest. Local governments have responded with a wave of comprehensive plan updates, zoning rewrites and impact-fee debates, and each attempt to manage growth has drawn its own coalition of supporters and opponents to public meetings.

On the Eastern Shore in particular, the tension between growth and character is a recurring civic argument. Fairhope’s historic downtown, Daphne’s waterfront parks and Spanish Fort’s eastern growth corridor each face versions of the same underlying question: how much change can a community absorb before it stops being the place people chose? Panels like the one Glaze moderated do not settle those debates, but they arm the people who will with better information — market data, planning experience and the perspective of professionals who have watched other fast-growing regions manage, or fail to manage, similar waves.

The university’s stake in Baldwin County

The event also underscored the University of South Alabama’s growing investment across the bay. The USA by the Bay campus gives the institution a permanent presence in a county that supplies a large share of its student body and, increasingly, its clinical and business partnerships. University officials have described Baldwin County as essential to South’s long-term enrollment strategy, and speaker series events like this one double as outreach to alumni, donors and prospective students in the area. The downtown Fairhope auditorium setting put the discussion within walking distance of the very growth the panel was examining.

For the Mitchell College of Business, the real estate program’s momentum offers a visible early win. Enrollment that doubles in a single year signals demand that the college says it intends to meet with expanded coursework, internship placements with regional brokerages and development firms, and continued engagement with the professional community that turned out for the Fairhope event. Students in attendance had the chance to meet brokers, lenders, appraisers and developers face to face — the kind of networking that often determines where a first job lands after graduation.

As Baldwin County continues to add residents, businesses and tax base, the conversation Glaze led is likely to be repeated in city council chambers, planning commissions and civic clubs across the county for years to come. The panel’s central premise — that growth and community character are not necessarily opposites, but require deliberate management and honest trade-offs — is one that local leaders will test street by street. The University of South Alabama, through programs like the real estate major and venues like the USA by the Bay Speaker Series, has positioned itself as a convener of that ongoing conversation rather than a bystander to it, and Thursday’s audience left with a clearer picture of both the opportunities and the hard choices ahead.