Map courtesy of Shelby County
The area in pink is the nearly 900-acre Double Oak Park between Shelby County 41 and Shelby County 43. The area in green is the 907 acres being added to Double Oak Park, and the tan area to the right is Dunnavant Valley Park.
The Shelby County Commission on Monday voted to pay $1.6 million to help the Forever Wild Land Trust purchase 907 acres next to Double Oak Park, doubling the size of the park to about 1,800 acres.
The total purchase price of the land is $6.42 million, with the Forever Wild Land Trust picking up $4.8 million of the cost, county records show. The sellers are Ebsco Industries and Ebsco Development Co.
Double Oak Park covers about 900 acres between Shelby County 41 and Shelby County 43 — about 1.8 miles off U.S. 280, and this new addition to the park would be just northeast of the existing park, next to Shoal Creek.
The bulk of Double Oak Park was purchased by Shelby County in 2021, and the county developed hiking and biking trails throughout the property and held a ribbon cutting to celebrate the opening of the park in late 2022.
The first phase of Double Oak Park has been wildly successful, and protecting additional land in that area from development is very important, especially with it being atop a ridge, Shelby County Manager Chad Scroggins said
“We have over 22,000 acres of public land in Shelby County, which is unheard of for a county our size,” Scroggins said. “This continues to protect areas that also allow some of our most densely populated areas to have recreational opportunities. We’re looking for other opportunities. We always are, but this one is one you just can’t pass by because you’re only paying for 25% of the total value of the property.”
It should take another 30 to 60 days to get a second appraisal on the property and close on the sale, and at that point, the county will move its boundary gates for Double Oak Park to include the new acreage, Scroggins said. That likely will happen the next day, opening up old Jeep trails already on the 907 acres for public use as pedestrian and mountain bike trails, he said.
“It’ll be a great addition,” said Scroggins, who as a mountain biker himself is familiar with the trails in the existing Double Oak Park. “You can escape the world between those two valleys.”
In other business Monday, the Shelby County Commission also voted to pay $740,000 to cover half the local match of a project to complete 1.9 miles of 10-foot-wide trails in the vicinity of Buck Creek in Helena. The city of Helena is providing the other half of the local match, and 80% of the funds for the $7.4 million project are coming from the Federal Highway Administration’s congestion mitigation and air quality grant program, county records show.
The County Commission also voted to:
- Give Alabama Power an easement for a new transmission line through the Shelby County landfill for $221,000
- Reappoint Michael Smith to the Harrison Regional Library Board
