Foley's New Indoor Aquatic Center at Max Griffin Park: What's Coming and When

If you've been watching what's growing in Foley, here's one worth knowing about: the city is adding a year-round indoor aquatic center at Max Griffin Park, right next to the outdoor pool that's already there.

I get asked all the time what's actually happening in Foley — not the flashy stuff, but the things that change daily life. This is exactly that kind of project. So let me walk you through what's planned, the timeline as it stands, and why it matters if you live here or you're thinking about a move to the Alabama Gulf Coast.

What's being built

The plan is a year-round indoor aquatic center at Max Griffin Park. The key word there is indoor. On the Gulf Coast, swimming has mostly been a summer activity by default — the outdoor pool, the beach, the bay, all warm-weather plans. An indoor facility changes that math entirely.

With an indoor center, you're looking at lap swimming, swim lessons, and a place to actually be in the water in the cooler months. January swimming, in other words. That's a meaningful shift for a town's year-round livability, especially for anyone who swims for fitness or wants lessons that aren't locked to one season.

The timeline

Here's where things stand as it's been reported. Bids are set to go out later this year. Construction is expected to begin in late 2026. And the build is projected to take about 19 months from there.

Timelines on public projects can shift, so treat these as the current expectation rather than a guarantee. But the path is laid out: bids, then groundbreaking, then a roughly year-and-a-half build.

The detail I appreciate most

Here's the part that makes this a genuinely smart plan. The existing outdoor pool is set to stay open the entire time the indoor facility is being built. You don't lose summer access while you wait on the winter option.

Then, once the indoor center is done, the outdoor pool gets replaced with a new amenity. A pavilion or a splash pad is on the table — the final call hasn't been made. So the end result is both: summer water access through a new outdoor feature, plus a year-round indoor option.

It's the kind of sequencing that's easy to overlook but matters a lot if you're a family that uses the pool, or anyone who'd rather not give up one thing to get another.

Why this matters if you're thinking about Foley

When people ask me what's happening in Foley, projects like this are what I point to. Not the headline-grabbing announcements — the steady, livability-focused additions that make a place easier to live in all year.

Foley sits in a part of South Baldwin County that keeps adding this kind of infrastructure: parks, recreation, the everyday amenities that decide whether a town feels like a place you visit or a place you live. Max Griffin Park is already a hub, and a year-round aquatic center deepens that.

If you're researching a move to Foley or anywhere on the Alabama and Florida Gulf Coast from a distance, this is the sort of thing worth tracking — because the amenities a town is building now tell you a lot about what daily life there will look like in a few years.

I keep an eye on this kind of growth across Foley, mainland Gulf Shores, Elberta, and the broader Gulf Coast, and I'm always glad to talk through what it means for a specific neighborhood or move.

Katie Ragland, Realtor® · Real Broker, LLC. Questions about moving to Foley or anywhere on the Alabama and Florida Gulf Coast? Call or text, or find everything at linktr.ee/katieraglandrealtor®.