Orange Beach City Council enacted a residential building moratorium on March 18, 2025. Eighteen months later, in June 2026, that same council rezoned 28 acres of the Margaritaville resort property into a 142-lot single-family subdivision called The Wharf Landing. Both things are true. Neither one contradicts the other, and the reason why tells you more about how Orange Beach is actually managing growth than the word "moratorium" does on its own.
If you've been comparing new construction options along the Alabama Gulf Coast and heard that Orange Beach hit pause on building, it's worth understanding exactly what got paused. The city didn't stop construction. It drew a line around a specific kind of construction, and a 142-lot neighborhood tied to one of the largest resort developments on the coast landed on the side of that line that was never restricted in the first place.
What the Pause Actually Restricts
The moratorium the council adopted in March 2025 applies to two categories: residential developments of three or more units, which covers multifamily projects like apartments and condos, and subdivision applications with three or more lots under 9,000 square feet. Single-family homes built on individual lots were exempt from day one.
Mayor Tony Kennon framed the pause as an infrastructure timeout rather than a growth freeze. At the meeting where the council adopted it, he pointed to roughly 15,000 sewer taps citywide and warned that unmanaged growth could push the city toward 5,000 to 7,000 additional residential units without a matching increase in tourism and retail tax revenue to pay for the services those units would need. City officials also flagged the possibility of tens of millions of dollars in added sewer system costs if capacity planning didn't keep pace with permitting.
That's a density and service-capacity argument, not a construction ban. It targets the kind of development that adds a lot of rooftops per acre relative to the tax base those rooftops generate, and it leaves the door open for the kind of development that doesn't.
How a 142-Lot Project Cleared It
The Wharf Landing is part of the larger Margaritaville resort complex across the Intracoastal Waterway from The Wharf, developed in partnership with Art Favre, owner of The Wharf and a major investor in the Margaritaville project. The residential phase went before the Orange Beach Planning Commission on April 13, 2026, proposing to rezone roughly 26 to 28 acres for 142 lots split across a larger northern parcel and a smaller southern one, with house types ranging from two-bedroom cottages up to an 11-bedroom building referred to in city planning documents as the Lodge.
The planning commission recommended approval, and the item went to city council on May 19, 2026. Council didn't vote that night. Two members were absent, and the rest of the council chose to wait two weeks rather than decide an extensive rezoning without full participation. When the vote finally came in June 2026, council adopted the ordinance rezoning the property from general business to single-family residential, clearing the way for the subdivision.
That zoning designation is the whole story. The moratorium's density trigger is built around multifamily unit counts and small single-family lots under 9,000 square feet. A 142-lot subdivision zoned single-family residential doesn't fall into either category the way an apartment complex or a dense infill subdivision would. The project moved through the same planning commission and council process every rezoning goes through in Orange Beach. It just wasn't the kind of project the pause was built to catch.
A Second Pause Running Alongside the First
Orange Beach isn't managing growth through one restriction. In May 2025, the council added a companion moratorium on development within 15 feet of any wetland, and it also barred developers from counting wetland acreage toward density calculations on a site. That second rule drew pushback at the November 18, 2025 council meeting, where builder Ken Vicens asked the council to shorten or exempt the setback for residential lots, arguing it would burden lot owners who had smaller parcels with wetland edges running through them. Council members acknowledged the concern for smaller RS1-zoned lots and said staff would look at accommodations, but the wetlands rule stayed in place alongside the multifamily pause.
Both restrictions got extended together at that same November 2025 meeting, pushing their expiration to September 30, 2026. As of mid-August 2026, the council was weighing a further extension for both, stretching the timeline to June 30, 2027, tied directly to the city's ongoing Comprehensive Plan work.
That timeline matters right now. September 30, 2026 is this week. Whether the council formally extends both moratoriums through next summer, lets them lapse, or replaces them with whatever comes out of the new zoning ordinance is the open question, not whether Orange Beach is done managing density. The city has renewed this pause twice already since March 2025, and the planning work driving those renewals is still in progress.
The Plan Behind the Pause
The reason the moratorium keeps getting extended instead of resolved is that the city hired outside planners to rebuild its zoning framework from the ground up before lifting it. The Walker Collaborative came on in March 2025 to lead a strategic and comprehensive plan, and the council later awarded Orion Planning + Design a $163,540 contract to update the zoning ordinance itself. Consultant Bob Barber presented a buildout analysis at a public meeting on January 29, 2026, based on what could be constructed under current zoning across the city's remaining vacant land, a projection the planning team was careful to describe as a ceiling based on existing code rather than a prediction of what will actually get built.
The city also ran a resident survey between September and December 2025 to shape the plan, drawing 843 responses, about 10.2 percent of the city's population according to 2024 Census figures. Priorities that came out of that survey and a follow-up workshop included protecting the environment, adding community and cultural amenities, balancing tourism with residential needs, and controlling the pace of future development.
The planning commission adopted the resulting Comprehensive Plan at its August 10, 2026 meeting. That document is described in city materials as the long-term guide for land use, transportation, housing, environmental protection, and community design decisions going forward. It's the framework the moratorium has been holding space for since last year, and it's the reason council keeps buying more time rather than letting the restrictions expire on their own.
What This Means If You're Comparing New Construction Right Now
If you're pricing out new construction in Orange Beach against other Gulf Coast markets, the practical read is straightforward. What's paused is the pipeline of new small-lot subdivisions and multifamily projects, the kind of supply that usually shows up as a freshly platted neighborhood with dozens of similar homes built in sequence by a single developer. What's never been paused is on-your-lot custom construction on a parcel you already own or are buying individually, and what got explicitly approved despite the pause is a large single-family-zoned project that happened to clear the density thresholds the moratorium was built around.
That's two different supply channels moving at two different speeds. One is waiting on a zoning ordinance rewrite that won't be finished before mid-2027 at the earliest. The other has kept moving the entire time, subject to the same permitting and inspection process any custom build in Baldwin County goes through, moratorium or not.
A Few Questions Worth Asking Before You Compare Markets
Does the moratorium affect a lot I already own or I'm buying to build on individually? No. The restriction targets multifamily developments and subdivisions of three or more lots under 9,000 square feet. A single-family home on an individual lot was exempt from the original March 2025 ordinance and remains exempt under every extension since.
Why did Wharf Landing get approved if the city is trying to slow growth? Because it was rezoned to single-family residential rather than multifamily, and its lot structure didn't trigger the small-lot subdivision threshold the moratorium targets. It went through the same planning commission and council review every rezoning request goes through in Orange Beach.
When will the moratorium actually lift? The original restriction was set to expire September 30, 2026, after already being extended once. As of mid-August 2026, the council was considering pushing that expiration to June 30, 2027, in step with the city's Comprehensive Plan and zoning ordinance rewrite. Anyone comparing timelines should treat the current date as a checkpoint, not a deadline the city has committed to holding.
Building on the Alabama Gulf Coast means paying attention to which rules apply to your specific project, not just the headline version of a city ordinance. Limitless Homes works through that permitting picture with every Orange Beach client before the first stake goes in the ground.
