Storm Struggles

Gulf Shores, Orange Beach surpass pre-Ivan construction pace

By Angelle Bergeron

Wine tastings, weekend vacation giveaways and gallery tours are all part of a campaign to woo tourists and their money back to Gulf Shores and Orange Beach, Ala., in the wake of last year's Hurricane Ivan.

The storm's destruction has already lured thousands of construction workers, who have swarmed the area like ants hustling to rebuild their mound.

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In September, the Category 3 storm hit land with wind speeds of 120 mph, cutting a ferocious, 20-mi. swath with the famed Floribama Bar at its center. A year later, the sound of the crashing surf barely muffles the noise of backhoes and dump trucks in some parts of the area.

"Gulf Shores and Orange Beach are full of construction," said Jerry Wilcox, superintendent over construction of the $37.5 million Seawind Condominiums being built by Birmingham-based McCrory Building Co. "You can probably drive through Gulf Shores right now and count about as many cranes as you do in Panama City."
McCrory's contract was already in place with owner Inisfree Hotels of Gulfbreeze, Fla., but Ivan delayed the start date to January.

Ironically, the hurricane helped McCrory with the demolition phase by removing the first floor of Young's By the Sea Hotel and demolishing a Circle K, both previously located on the Seawind property. The new 20-story, shear-wall construction tower will fill the entire footprint of the former two buildings and feature 156 units.

McCrory, which does a lot of high-rise construction, recently completed another project across the Florida state line in Perdido Key and has several projects in the Panama City area.

New condominiums are going up so fast that many contractors are partnering with developers in an effort to get a head start on sales, said Herb Malone, president and CEO of the Gulf Shores Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Brett-Robinson Developers, a 32-year-old Gulf Shores company that acts as owner, real estate agency, developer and contractor, currently has about $380 million in new construction in the Gulf Shores/Orange Beach area, including four Phoenix condominium developments.

"Right now I see about $3 billion in new construction in our area and Brett-Robinson will probably have about 15 percent of that," said Tommy Robinson, president and one of the principal owners. "There is a lot going on here and sales seem to be exceedingly good."

Brett-Robinson also had a jump on restoration efforts because the company maintains many of its own properties.

"We've been through enough small hurricanes and a few big ones that even before a hurricane we're lining up people with heavy equipment, plumbing, electrical, everything we need so we can go to work the next day," Robinson said. The company, which owns an estimated 23 to 24 percent of all beach properties from Fort Morgan to the Florida state line, had workers at their properties the morning after Ivan.

"The first day we had 50 people, the third day close to 100 and, by the following Monday, we had 300 people on the beach working," Robinson said.

Brett-Robinson properties suffered about $50 million in storm damage at about 15 different buildings, mostly in the basement areas, he added.

Although both Gulf Shores and Orange Beach suffered extensive damage, Malone said, "We've put forth a Herculean effort to get both the public and private sector repaired, rebuilt and renewed."

By June, 100 percent of the area's golf courses and marinas and 85 percent of the condominiums and hotels had reopened, he said.
Although the infrastructure has been restored, storm damage is still evident in the occasional gaping roof, Malone said.

"In most buildings that are awaiting demolition or repair, it's usually because of outstanding insurance settlements that haven't been resolved yet," he added. "The insurance industry had to deal with four major disasters last year and I'm sure that stretched their resources."

Malone said one of the advantages of a storm like Ivan is how it precipitates renovation and renewal, whether it's new carpet, another coat of paint or the destruction of substandard construction.

"Prior to Hurricane Ivan, we had about 12,000 condo units and 1,800 hotel rooms," Malone said. About 6 percent of those were lost due to Ivan, but some were scheduled for demolition anyway.

"Condominium developers have for some time been buying existing structures, demolishing them and building new high-rises in their place," he added. By the end of this year, the number of new units will easily match those lost in 2004. Furthermore, the area will see an additional 1,000 units per year over the next two years.

"The bigger news is there are somewhere between 8,000 to 9,000 new units, most of which were in the works before Ivan, proposed to be built," Malone said. "A storm like Ivan simply accelerates the pace of change."

When Ivan bulldozed through the Alabama coast last year, Trustmark South of Gulf Shores and Milton J. Womack of Baton Rouge, La., were already a couple months into construction of the $12.5 million Bella Luna Condominium.

"We got behind schedule, lost a bunch of material and it was a big mess," said Ryan Pruitt, project manager. "We had driven pilings and were on the second level. We had a bunch of laydown material washed away."

Originally scheduled for completion in December, the 14-story, poured-in-place concrete building was recently topped out and will be complete in March.

The Beach Club Resort at Fort Morgan fared Hurricane Ivan rather well compared to its neighbors to the east. The four buildings required re-roofing, which was completed at the beginning of May, said Jim McArthur, spokesperson in the Biloxi office of Yates Construction, contractor for the project.

Yates has also embarked on the first phase of a $40 million project to add 62 individual, upscale cottages to the resort for owners/developers Fort Morgan Joint Venture Partners.

By the end of this year, 27 of the units will be complete and sitework is already underway for the second phase, which should be complete by the end of 2006.

Located inland midway between the Gulf of Mexico and Fort Morgan Road, the site is scattered with wetlands, so battling the water has been a constant challenge when excavating, McArthur said.

Coastal Builders Inc. of Mobile, Ala., also has a healthy slate of condos under construction, including the Lighthouse Condominiums, San Carlos Condominiums and The Moorings.

Up the road from the beach on Highway 59, construction is finally underway on the $12.5 Riverwalk Orange Beach that owner and developer Scott Raley has been working on for about four years, said Joe Brown, project manager for Joe Raley Builders of Gulf Shores.

"It was tough to get it permitted because it is along the Intracoastal Waterway," Brown said. The multiphase project straddles the waterway on both the east and west side of the segment of Highway 59 that connects Interstate 10 to the coast. The completed project will ultimately include a waterfront resort, condominiums, marine park, amphitheater, marina, shopping village and water park.

Designs are still in progress or awaiting approval on most of the project, while the contractor is working on the infrastructure and constructing some small, wood-structure retail facilities, Brown said. By the end of August, the contractor expects to begin construction of phase two, which includes the condominiums.

The marine park is scheduled to open in spring 2006 and the remainder of the facility should be complete by 2007.

Orange Beach had adopted a new building code prior to Ivan and Gulf Shores took the same steps shortly after the storm, said Chuck Hamilton, public works director.

"I instigated it and said let's do it because what we had wasn't good enough," Hamilton said. The new standards will certainly increase the cost of construction, but "with beachfront properties at $175,000 a front ft., I don't think adding that bit of cost will matter much."

FEMA was actually impressed with how well some of the Brett-Robinson properties withstood the storm, Robinson said.

"Our buildings are poured out of solid concrete and the walls between each unit have 8 in. of concrete," he said. "The new specs don't bother us one way or another because we were already building above what the codes were."

Hamilton is also overseeing the restoration of a 16-mi. stretch of beach that borders Orange Beach, Gulf State Park and Gulf Shores. Beach restoration projects have been underway in the area since 2000, and Hamilton said this particular section of beach was scheduled for restoration when Ivan struck.

"We had to go back and adjust the project to add more sand," he added. "Our consultant calls it the mother of all addendums. It added a lot of sand and cost to the project in order to make up what Ivan did to us, but we were able to start four months after Ivan hit, when such a project would normally require an 18-month lead time."

Bean Stuyvesant LLC of New Orleans was awarded the $21.5 million contract by the Jacksonville, Fla., engineering firm of Olsen and Associates. The contractor has dredged around the clock since February, moving between 40,000 to 60,000 cu. yds. per day, Hamilton said.

"That is equivalent to about 3,000 dump trucks per day being dumped on the beach."

The contractor is using a 10-ft.-diameter cutter head to dredge sand from the Gulf in an area designated by the engineer, said Bart Cook, project manager for Stuyvesant.

"We dig into the sand and we have about 11,000 hp worth of dredge pumps that sucks it up through pumps, sends it through a steel pipe sunk under the water and onto the beach," Cook added. "Once we get it to the grade of the beach template, we have bulldozers on the beach that spread it out."

The dredge works in cuts that are 300 by 1,200 ft. and about 2,000 ft. of rubber hoses feed the sand through the steel pipeline to the beach.

"Our goal is to move as fast as we can down the beach and, once you move to the next spot, you carry the pipeline forward to the next area," Cook said.

The beach is open, except for the 1,000-ft. stretch where the dredging is taking place.

Nearby residents definitely hear the "beep, beep" of the bulldozers and the noise of the pumps.

The progress is steady and fast-paced, Cook said.

"Last week, in one 24-hour period, we moved 1,000 ft., so you can clear three or four houses in a daytime and be out of their hair," Cook added. The contractor expects to have the beach back in shape by the beginning of September.

Useful Source:

For updates and more photos on the restoration progress, go to:
http://www.gulfshores.com/crisis/