"Folks will be able to park here, fish off the shoreline, probably more safely than sitting on the bridge." That's Spanish Fort Mayor Brad Bass, describing Valor Park, the two-acre stretch of causeway shoreline the city broke ground on in February. He wasn't describing a new hobby he hoped to inspire. He was describing something residents were already doing, informally, on the shoulder of the Tensaw River Bridge, long before anyone drew up plans for a park.
That detail is worth sitting with, because it says something about how Spanish Fort has been building its parks system over the last two years. This isn't a city inventing amenities from scratch and hoping people show up. It's a city watching what residents were already doing on land it didn't fully control, then building the legal, paved, parked, and pavilioned version of it a few hundred feet away.
Valor Park is the newest and most visible example, but it's the fourth park project the city has taken on since late 2024, and a fifth is still coming. If you live in Spanish Fort and haven't been keeping a spreadsheet on city council actions, here's what's actually changed, and what it means for how you spend a Saturday.
The Money Nobody's Tax Bill Reflects
None of this required a local tax increase most residents would notice. Valor Park's roughly $3 million price tag comes from a GOMESA grant, money the federal government routes back to Gulf coastal states from offshore oil and gas leases. Alabama's coastal counties get their own direct disbursements, and Spanish Fort has been unusually aggressive about claiming its share for parkland rather than roads or drainage.
The clearest example is the land that will eventually become Honor Park. The city paid Baldwin County $8.5 million for roughly 142 acres along Bay Minette Creek and Bay Minette Basin off Highway 225, land that a private developer had been eyeing for townhomes, apartments, and condominiums before the city stepped in. State Route 225 actually splits the property, leaving 45 acres on the east side and 97 on the west, which is part of why the city is still working through how to connect the two halves with something other than a crosswalk over a busy highway. A second GOMESA grant, another $3 million, is funding the first phase of design.
So the honest way to describe the last two years of Spanish Fort parks spending is this: the city has been using federal offshore energy royalties to buy back pieces of its own waterfront edge before someone else built on them.
What Already Opened While You Weren't Looking
Valor Park gets the attention because it's the one under construction right now, but three other projects have already opened, and if you haven't visited them yet, you're behind most of your neighbors.
| Park | Location | What's there | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Town Center Park | 29000 Bass Pro Drive, inside the Bass Pro Shopping Center | Six pickleball courts including the first ADA-accessible court in Baldwin County, a renovated playground, a splash pad, a pavilion, evening court lighting | Opened August 22, 2025 |
| Loyalty Park | 7375 Huckleberry Lane, off Highway 31 | The city's first dog park, separate large- and small-dog areas, water fountains, a paw rinse station, restrooms, a shaded gazebo | Opened June 11, 2025 |
| Integrity Park (Phase 2) | Jimmy Faulkner Drive | Two new soccer fields, lighting added to a third field, the city's first outdoor basketball courts, expanded parking | Completed late 2024 |
| Valor Park | Along US-98, between Felix's Fish Camp and the USS Alabama Battleship | Walking trails, a stabilized natural shoreline, a pavilion, picnic tables, a fishing-accessible seawall, a Mobile Bay viewing point | Under construction, expected by end of summer 2026 |
A few of these are worth a second look even if you think you already know them. Town Center Park's pickleball courts opened to a crowd that included players who'd been driving to Daphne just to find open courts, and the six new courts sit close enough to the playground and splash pad that a family with kids of very different ages can actually split up and reconvene. Loyalty Park sits just south of Spirit Park's ballfields, on a lot small enough (about an acre and a half) that it never feels crowded even with both the large-dog and small-dog sides in use.
Integrity Park's expansion is the one most likely to go unnoticed unless you have a kid in youth soccer or football, since the original 2018-era fields were already busy enough that the city called the demand for more of them an "explosion." The $5 million phase-two contract added two competition-ready fields, lighting for a third, and the city's first outdoor basketball courts, on top of the parking that had become a genuine bottleneck on game nights.
The Bridge Problem, Solved With A Pavilion
Valor Park is the one to watch this month. Construction has faced real delays, first pushed back by ongoing work on the new Tensaw River Bridge (which won't be finished until late 2027), then slowed further by summer rain and heat. As of a city update in early July, the mayor was still projecting a late-summer opening and said the project remained on budget, possibly under.
What makes Valor Park different from the other three isn't the size. Two acres is small. It's the location and the reasoning behind it. The park sits on the causeway between Felix's Fish Camp and the USS Alabama Battleship, on what the design firm's own project manager called an abandoned site before construction started. Once finished, it will give people who currently pull off onto the bridge shoulder to cast a line a legitimate, paved place to do the same thing, with a seawall, a parking lot, and a view of the battleship instead of passing traffic. The city also secured a $7,500 grant from the National Association of Realtors to help fund it, a small but telling sign of how many different groups had a stake in getting this particular stretch of shoreline cleaned up.
Mayor Bass has called it the new gateway coming into Spanish Fort from Mobile, which is a fair description. It's the first thing you'll see crossing the causeway, and for years that first thing was an empty strip of grass and a bridge full of people fishing where they weren't really supposed to.
What A Weekend Looks Like Once Valor Park Opens
Once Valor Park is open, a Saturday in Spanish Fort starts to look different than it did two years ago. You can start the morning with pickleball at Town Center Park, let the dog run at Loyalty Park on the way home, and end the evening watching the sun go down over Mobile Bay from a bench that didn't exist a year ago, all without leaving city limits. Felix's Fish Camp is still right next door if you want dinner with the same view. Bass Pro and the rest of the Eastern Shore Centre shopping corridor are a short walk from Town Center Park if the afternoon calls for errands instead of exercise.
None of this required residents to drive to Daphne or Fairhope for the kind of outdoor recreation that used to be scarce here. Even the smaller, less park-related signs of growth back this up. A new ExtraMile convenience store paired with a WingFingers restaurant opened this spring in the Stonebridge community off Bedrock Boulevard, one more small sign that the everyday infrastructure of the city, not just its parks, has been filling in fast.
The Honor Park Question Nobody's Answered Yet
Honor Park is the piece still missing from this picture, and it's worth understanding why it's taking longer. The city held a public hearing on a conceptual master plan back in February 2025, but a plan that size, 142 acres split by a state highway, with proposed piers, kayak rentals, walking trails, outdoor classrooms, and a second dog park on the east side, has to clear the Planning Commission and City Council before it ever goes to bid. There's no groundbreaking date yet, and given how long Valor Park's much smaller footprint took to move from concept to construction, residents shouldn't expect Honor Park to open quickly. What's clear is that the land itself, once destined for private townhomes, is staying public, which is the same pattern running through everything the city has built since 2024.
That's the actual story here. Spanish Fort isn't just adding amenities. It's using money that doesn't touch a resident's tax bill to reclaim the pieces of its own waterfront and roadside edges that were either informally in use already or about to be developed by someone else. Watch for the ribbon cutting on Valor Park in the coming weeks. It'll be worth the drive across the causeway just to see what used to be an abandoned strip of shoreline.
If you're weighing what any of this means for property values along the causeway or near these new parks, that's a longer conversation, and one worth having with someone who watches this market closely. Call Chrissi Moore today to talk through what's changing in Spanish Fort and how it might affect your next move.
