Indoor baseball/softball training facilities planned for Hoover, Meadow Brook

A company called Orange Development has plans to build two indoor baseball and softball training facilities on U.S. 31 in Hoover and off U.S. 280 in the Meadow Brook area.

The plans are still in development, but the Hoover Board of Zoning Adjustment tonight approved variances to help move the project on U.S. 31 along.

Orange Development plans to demolish the Mr. Transmission building at 1539 Montgomery Highway and the former Mexico Lindo restaurant next door at 1541 Montgomery Highway, said Skylar Jones, an engineer who represented Orange Development at tonight’s meeting.

The plan is to replace those two buildings with a 15,000-square-foot building that includes eight pitching and batting lanes, two golfing simulators, an event room and equipment shop, Jones said.

At a later date, Orange Development also plans to acquire the Quik pawn shop at 1543 Montgomery Highway, demolish that building and put an indoor baseball/softball infield in its place, said Donn Fizer, the company’s vice president of development.

Tonight, the Hoover Board of Zoning Adjustment approved setback and landscape variances for the first phase of development on the Mr. Transmission and Mexico Lindo sites.

The commercial zoning for those properties requires buildings to be set back 50 feet from the property lines along U.S. 31 and Lorna Road, but doing so would leave very little space for building and essentially would deny the property owner use of the property, said Mac Martin, Hoover’s city planner. The current buildings there now already do not meet the setback requirements, he said.

The Board of Zoning Adjustment agreed to let Orange Development put its 15,000-square-foot building right up against the property line that fronts the state right of way along U.S. 31 and 32 feet off the property line on the Lorna Road side. There is still quite a bit of unused right of way on the U.S. 31 side that should provide a sufficient buffer from traffic, Martin said.

The commercial zoning there also requires that at least 10 percent of the property be landscaped, but the Board of Zoning Adjustment agreed to waive that requirement as long as Orange Development complied with a landscape plan recommended by Hoover’s landscape architect. The waiver was recommended due to the hardships created by the shape of the property, Martin said.

The variances were approved subject to approval by other parties with an interest in the case, including the Alabama Department of Transportation, Alabama Power and the Birmingham Water Works. ALDOT controls access to U.S. 31, and the two utilities have power and water lines in the vicinity, Martin said.

“The city’s position is that this will be a very welcome new business and new building site on the U.S. 31 gateway to our town,” Martin said.

The landscape plan is more appealing that what is there currently, and Orange Development has agreed to install a left turn lane on U.S. 31 to provide better access to that property and move traffic headed that direction out of the through lane on U.S. 31, Martin said.

The new site layout, as it stands now, include two access points on U.S. 31 and 36 parking spaces, most of which will be on the Mr. Transmission site. The new 15,000-square-foot building would be situated more in the area of the current Mexico Lindo building.

The timeline for development is uncertain due to further approvals that still must occur, Fizer said. The project is being done in phases because the lease for the Quik pawn shop building does not expire until a later date, he said. Orange Development will come back to the Board of Zoning Adjustment for another variance on that property at a later date, he said.

Fizer said his company is building the indoor baseball and softball training facilities because there are not enough quality facilities of that kind in the area.

The facility planned in the Meadow Brook area would be on 3.5 acres off Resource Drive, which is either part of or next to Meadow Brook Corporate Park. That facility is still in the planning stages as well, with no development timeline available yet, Fizer said. The company is not quite ready to release more information about that site yet, he said.