UPDATE: January 9, 2025

UPDATE: Congratulations, everybody. YOU DID IT! WE DID IT together! I received THE call telling me the good news from Councilman Woods right before lunch. My follow-up letter to him says:

Dear Mr. Woods,

I was so happy to receive your good-news today. As I understand it from our conversation, our Park, Lot #5 Block 4 of Highland Park Subdivision at 7151 East Lakeview Dr, Mobile AL 36695 is to be rezoned per the Mobile City Council and legal departments from “R-1” to “R-1 non-conforming” because we are a park. https://www.cityofmobile.org/…/22061010303806Nonconform… Which means that our park activities will now not need to be permitted and that in essence you have grandfathered in our park activities on that parcel of land.

The land being owned by Highland Park Community Association, Inc. requires reservations for parties over 5 people and will require a reservation through the HPca, Inc for individual parties to use the land for a designated period of time after signing the necessary waivers and fees if applicable. We ask the public to please contact our office to make reservations for park use at admin@highlandparkcommunityassociation.com, 251-222-4966 (leave a brief message).

Also, the Mobile City Council and Legal department have agreed to let Highland Park Community Association take out the necessary permit to replace the pavilion roof. We have already scheduled Go Roof from Daphne, AL Jeff Geary to be on site next week for that purpose.

Dear Councilman Woods and City Council Members, with all you have to do, thank you for listening to your constituents regarding our park issue and helping us move forward to getting it cleaned up. We cannot thank you enough. Please see attached 200 signatures of constituents, friends, family members, users of the park, and supporters. We can vouch for all the signatures as verified except the out of country ones. Thank you again for your time. We will never stop working for this watershed.

Sincerely,

Sherry Lynn Gros, President

Highland Park Community Association, Inc

From: Sherry Lynn Gros, President, Highland Park Community Association Oct. 2019 – Present

Today is my 65th Birthday! My life has not been boring. I am grateful to God, family, and friends who have come with me this far. Please help me celebrate and sign our petition to the Mobile City Council to allow the permit for the new pavilion roof. www.change.org/HPcaCleanParks Thank You. W00! What a ride! OMG Finally retirement age! ~S Lynn Gros

August 2021 brought hurricane Ida and the collapse of the dam at Optimist Lake on Milkhouse Creek. All efforts to save it failed destroying contiguous wetlands and the lakeside community activities. Today Highland Park Community Association is working to save and restore our neighborhood parks that lay around the lake land. We believe if we restore the parks then, with proper management going forward, the community and the waterside resort will return.

Highland Park Community Association was Incorporated on April 24,1967 to manage Optimist Lake dam and area parks. The 25 acre lake is a reservoir of the Milkhouse Creek that flows from Zeigler Blvd into the Halls Mill Watershed to the Dog River Watershed, to Mobile Bay, and into the Gulf of Mexico. Optimist Lake Dam provides a buffer for downstream wetlands and a sediment pond for 1445 acres of local area underground drainage and stormwater runoff from the surrounding area. Highland Park owns two parks and three easements relating to the lake and dam. Highland Park Community Association run by its Board of Directors must maintain and use the park lands for its intended purpose or the property will revert to the State of Alabama.

Optimist Lake at Milkhouse Creek in Mobile Alabama , is a reservoir of the Milkhouse Creek System that converges with Halls Mill Creek watershed flows into the Dog River then to Mobile Bay and finally into the Gulf of Mexico.

For almost 100 years Optimist Lake provided a buffer zone for Federally protected wetlands. Since the collapse of the dam those wetlands are filling in with silt and pollutants from upstream. The waterfowl are gone. The lake is gone. In time the Greater Mobile area will realize the important role that Lake Optimist Dam served this community and will come to restore the area. In the meantime we are managing the parks, cleaning up dead wood, protecting the land from outsider takeover, and are working to get grants to restore the creek banks, the park, support local bird watching in the natural habitat, and building community gardening activities at the park. We ask that you support us in any way you are able.