The Fairhope Farmers Market came back to its Thursday spot behind the Fairhope Public Library on September 10, the first week of a fall run that goes through November 12. Walk there from downtown and you pass the Welcome Center on Section Street, still wrapped in scaffolding, still waiting on its entrance doors. It has been closed during repairs to address a water intrusion problem traced to the siding.
Beyond that building, contracts have been approved for two roundabout sculptures, and the county announced a third roundabout project this month.
The roundabout projects and Welcome Center repairs are among the visible changes in Fairhope this fall.
Two Circles, Two Very Different Budgets
The Fairhope City Council this month approved contracts for public art at two of the city's roundabouts, the result of a selection process run by the Committee on Public Art, a group organized under the nonprofit Eastern Shore Art Center. Seventy artists applied. The committee narrowed that to 34, then to four finalists who each received a stipend to build a model.
| Site | Artist | Budgeted range (March 2026) | Final contract |
|---|---|---|---|
| Veterans Drive, at the flower-clock circle where Scenic 98 meets Triangle Drive | Maxwell MKs | $100,000 to $125,000 | $115,000 |
| CR 13 and CR 32, near the airport and sports complex | Nelson Grice | $75,000 to $100,000 | $117,300 |
To even qualify, an artist had to be based in Alabama, Mississippi, or Florida, or have a documented tie to Fairhope. Scale models of both winning pieces are sitting in the City Hall lobby right now if you want to see what your neighbors will be driving past for the next several decades.
The Airport-Side Sculpture Contract Exceeded Its Budget Range
When the city set its original budget ranges back in March, the airport-side sculpture was expected to cost somewhere between $75,000 and $100,000, notably less than the flower-clock piece. The flower-clock work landed at $115,000, squarely inside its projected range. The airport piece came in at $117,300, about 17 percent above its original ceiling.
Mayor Sherry Sullivan called both selections "fantastic" additions, and said they will push the city's public art beyond downtown for the first time. That is the piece worth sitting with. For years, Fairhope's public art lived on Section Street and De la Mare Avenue, where the galleries and the First Friday crowds already are. Now it is heading out to two intersections most residents only see through a windshield.
A Third Circle Showed Up This Week
If two roundabout sculptures felt like enough news for one month, the Baldwin County Commission added a third project on September 20, the same week this piece went to print. Through what the county calls the C3 Program, a partnership already in place between the commission and the City of Fairhope, the two governments approved a brand-new roundabout at Founders Drive and Boothe Road, along with upgrades to the US 98 and Twin Beech Road intersections and new pedestrian features throughout the project area.
The county and city are splitting costs 50/50, with the city handling design, bidding, and construction. No sculpture has been attached to this one yet. But if the pattern holds, a fourth intersection just became a candidate for the next round of the same public art process that produced the flower-clock and airport pieces.
Three roundabout projects announced or approved inside the same month is not normal pace for a city this size. It is a town actively rewriting how you enter it from four different directions at once.
The Building That's Supposed to Welcome You
Meanwhile, back on Section Street, the Fairhope Welcome Center is still working through repairs that started with a water intrusion problem traced to defective EIFS exterior siding. High humidity inside the building was the reason the project got approved at all. Fairhope Building Company won the bid at roughly $527,000 to strip the failing material and replace it with composite siding designed to keep moisture out.
As of this month, the building is still waiting on its front entrance doors. City sources say the custom doors will not arrive until October 10, and the hope is to have everything finished before the annual holiday activities that typically start downtown not long after. Completion remains a target; the siding work began in the spring.
The two sculpture contracts have been approved, as has the Founders Drive and Boothe Road roundabout project. The Welcome Center repairs continue while the building awaits its entrance doors.
What This Means If You Drive Through Any of These Intersections
If your regular route to the airport takes you through CR 13 and CR 32, you are going to watch a six-figure sculpture rise out of the farmland around that circle sometime after construction contracts are finalized. If you cut across Veterans Drive to reach the beach or the highway, the flower-clock roundabout is getting its own commissioned piece on a similar timeline. If Founders Drive or Twin Beech Road is part of your daily loop, expect construction activity tied to the new C3 roundabout and pedestrian upgrades sometime in the coming months, with details on that project still developing.
And if Thursday afternoons at the farmers market are part of your week, you will keep walking past a Welcome Center that is closer to finished than it was in the spring, but not there yet. October 10 is the date to watch. The doors are expected to arrive then, bringing the Welcome Center closer to completing its repairs.
None of this changes anything about buying or selling a home here. It is simply what the town looks like right now, in real time, for the people who already live in it. Limitless Homes keeps an eye on these details because a builder who works in Fairhope every day should know exactly what its residents are driving past, this fall and every fall after it.
