Stand at the corner of North Alston Street and West Laurel Avenue on a Thursday evening and you'll see the same brick facade that's stood there since 1925, the same arched windows, the same corner entrance that used to lead into Foley Bakery and the Dumas Apothecary. What's different is what's on the other side of the door. This year it's Half Shell Oyster House, a New Orleans-style seafood spot serving chargrilled oysters and gumbo. Before that it was Colt Grill BBQ & Spirits. Before that, for more than fifteen years, it was nothing at all.
That one address has quietly become the clearest evidence of what's actually happening in downtown Foley right now. Not the new restaurant itself, but the fact that the building never sits empty long enough to matter.
A Building That Keeps Getting a Second Chance
The bakery building's history reads like a small case study in what it takes to bring a downtown back.
| Year | What Happened |
|---|---|
| 1925 | Building constructed at North Alston and West Laurel, houses Foley Bakery and Dumas Apothecary |
| 2007 | A fire damages the building; its last tenant, Cactus Cafe, closes |
| 2012 | The City of Foley buys the building to keep it from being lost |
| 2023 | A $443,296 renovation begins, led by developers Katapult Properties and 4Wright Investments, with a $19,500 city facade grant covering part of the window and door replacement |
| December 2024 | Renovation finishes and Colt Grill BBQ & Spirits moves in |
| 2026 | Colt Grill moves out; Half Shell Oyster House moves in |
Mark Wright of 4Wright Investments said he and his partners chose the building specifically because of its history and because city leaders and Foley Main Street had committed to bringing downtown back. The work wasn't cheap or fast. Windows alone were budgeted at more than $200,000 to replace, and the original facade grant application had targeted an October 2023 finish. That timeline slipped well past a year. Colt Grill BBQ & Spirits, the barbecue concept picked to fill the space, wasn't announced to the public until a Foley Main Street meeting in June 2024, and by the city's own account didn't actually open until December of that year.
What's notable is what happened after that long-delayed opening. A building that sat vacant for more than fifteen years, then took roughly a year longer to renovate than planned, has still managed to change hands twice in under two years since reopening, and each time something new has moved in within months rather than sitting dark.
The Turnover Is the Point
It would be easy to read a restaurant closing after roughly eighteen months as a sign that downtown Foley's growth has a ceiling. The data on empty storefronts says otherwise.
Mayor Ralph Hellmich told the Foley City Council that around twenty to twenty-four businesses have relocated downtown over the past several years, and the situation has flipped from too many vacant buildings to almost none left to fill. Foley Main Street's own accounting backs that up. Since the organization began working downtown in 2018, private investors have put nearly $16.44 million into building renovations and new business buildouts, against just over $7.41 million from the city itself. For every dollar the city has spent, businesses have put in about two.
That ratio only holds if space keeps turning over instead of going dark. A downtown with real vacancy doesn't attract that kind of private money, because there's nothing to renovate into and no foot traffic to justify the buildout. The bakery building's quick flip from Colt Grill to Half Shell Oyster House isn't a downtown losing momentum. It's a downtown where a good corner location gets snapped up again almost immediately, because there's a line of operators who want in.
The city's own $443,296 investment in that one building, done through a combination of grant money and private capital, only pencils out if the tenant base stays deep enough to absorb a change. So far, it has.
What Else Changed This Season Downtown
The bakery building isn't the only thing that's moved. Foley Main Street's Third Thursdays, the after-hours evening where downtown shops stay open from 5 to 7 p.m., have carried a summer theme through August, including an "Arrr-gust Adventure" edition on August 20. The series continues into the fall, and if you haven't wandered through on a Thursday evening yet, the format is simple: shops stay open late, there are usually drink specials or a raffle, and it gives you a reason to park once and hit six or seven storefronts instead of driving to just one.
The bigger date on the calendar right now is September 12, when Foley Main Street hosts Walk This Way, an 80s-themed 5K and block party starting at 5 p.m. on East Laurel Avenue. It's a different kind of downtown event than the monthly Third Thursday format, built more like a street festival than a shopping stroll, and it's a good marker of how much Foley Main Street has scaled up its programming beyond just keeping storefronts occupied.
Downtown has also picked up some smaller, permanent visual changes worth noticing if you haven't been through in a while. A set of seven crosswalk murals went in this year as part of a pedestrian safety and beautification push, so a few of the intersections near Laurel Avenue look noticeably different than they did even a year ago.
Ten Minutes Up the Beach Express, OWA Keeps Adding Reasons to Stay Local
If your fall plans stretch beyond downtown, OWA Parks & Resort has its own additions worth knowing about, and none of them require driving to the beach.
Primal Fear, OWA's Halloween maze attraction, runs select nights this fall: September 25 and 26, then October 2, 3, 9, 10, 16, 17, and every night from October 22 through 31. It's built as a walk-through horror experience with live actors and an optional Black-Out Hour add-on where the lights cut and you're left with a flashlight. If Halloween is a household tradition, this is the kind of thing worth putting on the calendar now rather than the week of, since the run of nights is limited and not every date repeats weekly.
Outside of the Halloween season, OWA has quietly added two amenities that skew toward locals more than tourists. FlyBama offers helicopter tours departing right from OWA, giving a bird's eye view of Foley, Gulf Shores, and Orange Beach that most residents have never seen from above. And OWA now has the region's first indoor pickleball center, with four courts, a pro shop, and 24/7 membership access, which matters a lot more once summer humidity makes outdoor courts miserable most afternoons.
The Actual Takeaway
None of this is about whether Half Shell Oyster House will still be in that building in five years. Restaurants close. Concepts change. What the bakery building's last three years actually show is that downtown Foley has crossed a threshold where losing a tenant isn't the same as losing momentum, because there's enough demand behind it that another operator is ready to step in.
That's a different story than most small downtowns get to tell, and it's worth knowing if you live here, whether you're deciding where to eat this weekend or just trying to understand why the corner of Alston and Laurel looks different every time you drive past it.
If you're thinking about what any of this means for property values or timing a move in Foley, that's a longer conversation, and it's one The Legacy Group has been having with buyers and sellers across Baldwin County for a long time. Schedule a private consultation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
