GULF SHORES, AL – A memo from someone who works in an office in Boston was able to shut down a well-used north-south artery through Gulf State Park at a moment’s notice.

“I had no idea they were going to close that road,” Gulf Shores Mayor Robert Craft said. “And neither did our police or fire or anybody knew until I got a text from the folks at the state park at 6:30 yesterday morning. The road was closed sometime around 6 o’clock.

“We did not know.”

According to a memo from Jill Dixon of Sasaki Associates, the planning and architecture firm hired to design a new state park lodge and other improvements and enhancements, stated, in part, “Beginning Monday, April 18, a portion of State Park Road 2 that runs roughly 1.5 miles through Gulf State Park will be converted to a vehicle free path for pedestrians, cyclists and the future park tram.”

The north end of the closure will begin south of the entrance to the Oak Ridge Trailhead parking lot and the south end will be closed just north of the entrance to the campground.

State park officials contacted said they could not comment on the closure and nor could officials in Montgomery. The only statement on the closing of the road, Gulf Coast Media was told, would be the memo from Dixon at Sasaki which is based in Boston.

The memo goes on to say the project has been developed “with community input through five public open houses, 12 stakeholder meetings, and over 2,600 responses to an online survey.”

But nowhere in the materials released by the group does it say State Park Road 2 would be permanently closed in its center section. The only mention of State Park Road 2 in renderings in an overview for master plan elements states:

State Park Road 2 Conversion.

“That’s sad,” Craft said. “That’s the first time I’ve had a problem with being completely left out of the loop. I’ve had pretty good communication with this group up until this. I was surprised and certainly disturbed at the whole deal as we all were.

“This is not a step forward. This is a step backward in our relationship with them.”

He and other city leaders noticed the “State Park Road 2 Conversion” indicator but had no idea what that meant. He says they were told work in that area would be a part of Phase II.

“We were concerned about but it was so premature and so vague that we had not had time to react to it,” Craft said. “We really didn’t think we had to have time on a Phase II project that was just recently even discussed.”

The way the mayor sees it Gulf Shores has two major concerns for the future leaders are working on: traffic and education improvements.

He says the memo’s closing off of that connection is a setback in the city’s traffic control efforts.

“They are going to create a lot more traffic in our city,” he said.

State Park Road 2 is one of only four north-south connections to the beach on Pleasure Island. The others are Alabama 59 in Gulf Shores, Alabama 161 in Orange Beach and Alabama 135 through state park along the west bank of Lake Shelby.

“So you can’t cut through State Park Road 2 and go from Gulf Shores to Orange Beach anymore,” Craft said. “You have to go 135. That will be a potential interference with our normal traffic flow if they keep closed like they are planning. Forever.”

The closed road was a connection on the east bank of Lake Shelby and a vital connection for campers coming for a stay in the Gulf State Park Campground. Now the campers are being routed down Alabama 59 to the beach and Alabama 182 where they will travel east to State Park Road 2 and access the campground from the south.

“It’s quite an issue with RVs,” Craft said. “It’s putting all that RV traffic that was going through the state park not going that way anymore. They are routing them around through our 59.”

Craft went on to say during the busy season emergency vehicles use park roads to avoid traffic on Alabama 59.

“We route a lot of fire trucks through the park because it’s sometimes a lot easier than dealing with the beach area and dealing with unknown traffic situations,” he said. “We can go through there a lot easier to get around the corner down there.

“Fortunately we didn’t have any emergency calls we struck out on and had to turn around. I think we had a lot of RVs that had already made their way down there and had to turn around in the Golf Course parking lot.”