By Gary Lloyd

On a stretch of Highway 11 that most motorists drive 15 mph over the speed limit, I ease off the gas.

Glendale Farms has been in the news maybe more than any other topic in Trussville over the last couple years, and despite this inevitability, it still stung when Mayor Buddy Choat said it to me over the phone a couple months back.

“It would be more for the industrial side of it, something that would bring in jobs and create opportunities for either new companies or expanding companies to come to Trussville,” Choat said to me.

He was referring to a Site Evaluation and Economic Development Strategy grant application and contract with consulting firm Witt O’Brien’s. In it, the city committed to providing up to $3 million in matching SEEDS funds for the future development of 86 acres of Glendale Farms as a technology park.

The funding would be used for mass grading, drainage, utility infrastructure, and the construction of a portion of a new industrial access road for the technology-related industry within the park. The proposed road would connect to the east end of a new bridge and would run northward to access the technology park.

The city, Choat said, should know the result of its application this month. The first application was not approved.

If this application is approved, the turning of dirt, the adding of drainage and utilities, could begin this year. My twice-daily drive along Highway 11 that parallels Glendale Farms will be marred by utility trucks, dump trucks, excavators, and who knows what else.

“They paved paradise to put up a parking lot” is a song lyric that comes to mind.

When I met with the former property owners, Mary Beard-Foster and her husband, Rick Foster, in 2023, we traversed the seemingly endless farm in an off-road side-by-side. I heard stories of filling cartons with free-range eggs and stocking the five-acre lake with bluegill, bream, and largemouth bass. Some of the cattle were favorites, notably Georgie, Roscoe, Sweet Pea, and Buford. Beard-Foster’s grandfather started the farm in 1936, and her dad took it over in 1973. She inherited it in 2019 when her father died. She said that a newer tomorrow was appropriate because she wanted to spend more time with her son, his wife, and granddaughters.

“Our journey is over,” she said. “The journey for a newer tomorrow for it is there. That’s how I look at it.  It’s been incredible for me in my life. I would love for every kid in the world to experience what I had at this farm.”

Me, too.

“Progress” is the word I hear when something new comes along, in Trussville and in many places. I will always struggle with that word. What truly is “progress”? Buildings? Pavement? Jobs? Doing it all as quickly as possible? I am one person, but I think we have enough “progress.”

A year ago, I stopped along Glendale Farms Road and watched the cattle devour hay. One of the cows, a white one spotted on its sides with black dots, roughly rubbed its neck and top of its head on a rusty flatbed that held extra hay. I worried about jagged shards of metal injuring the cow.

Can we leave the cows and picturesque land, buy a new flatbed, and call that progress?

Gary Lloyd is the author of six books and a contributing writer to the Cahaba Sun.