"You won't recognize the city in eight to 10 years," Mayor Dana Snyder told LakeLife 24/7 Magazine, talking about what Southside Landing has set in motion. That's a big claim for a park built around a boat ramp. But more than four years after it opened, the Landing has already forced the city to rewrite its own plans once, and the paperwork on what comes next is already filed.
Here's what most residents already know: Southside Landing sits on a peninsula where the Coosa River bends past Highway 77, and on any given weekend you'll find someone launching a kayak, a family pushing a stroller down the boardwalk, or a line forming at the pizza window. What's less obvious is how much of that rhythm was improvised. The Landing wasn't supposed to be a gathering place. It was supposed to be infrastructure. The fact that it became something else says more about how this city actually runs than any council agenda does.
The Plan Was a Bait Shack
When the previous administration bought the land for Southside Landing, the goal was narrow: a boat launch, a pier, boat slips, and a bait shack to serve anglers heading out onto the Coosa. That's it. A functional stop, not a destination.
Then Mayor Snyder's administration inherited the unfinished project and made one decision that changed the shape of the place. Instead of the plain bait shack that was originally planned, the city let a local restaurant take the building. In October 2022, Blackstone Bait Shack, an offshoot of the long-running Blackstone Pub & Eatery, opened at 721 Pier 77 Lane. It kept the name. It did not keep the concept. Today it's a full pizza restaurant with outdoor seating that looks straight out over the water, and it's become the anchor almost everything else at the Landing gets planned around.
That single swap, restaurant instead of bait shack, is the clearest evidence of what the city figured out: people weren't going to drive to a peninsula on the Coosa just to launch a boat. They needed a reason to stay once they got there.
What's Actually on the Calendar
Once the boardwalk, playground, and paving were finished, Southside Landing stopped being a construction site and started being a schedule. The lineup has stayed remarkably consistent since the park's official opening in May 2022:
| Event | What it is | How often |
|---|---|---|
| Dinner and a Movie | Free outdoor movie at dark, run with Rainbow City and the Neely Henry Lake Association | Recurring, several times a year |
| Christmas Boat Parade | Decorated boats parade the river; started as an unofficial gathering in Dec. 2020 with over 200 cars parked on gravel before the park even opened | Annual, December |
| Sunset Suppers | Riverside dinner series at the Landing | Recurring |
| Sponsored fishing tournaments | City-backed events, including the Airport Marine High School Fishing Trail tournament | Several times a year |
Southside's April 2026 council minutes record one instance of that format in action: a Dinner and a Movie screening of Happy Feet on April 17, with the film starting at dark, the same low-key, no-ticket setup the series has used since it began. That's not a special event. That's what an ordinary Southside evening looks like when the weather cooperates.
None of this required a festival grant or a private developer. It required a park district, a bait shack that became a restaurant, and a city willing to keep showing up with a movie screen.
The Land Between the Two Bridges
Here's the part that hasn't made it into most conversations about the Landing yet. The city has purchased the strip of land sitting between the Little Bridge and the main Coosa River span, land officials describe as the parcel "between the two bridges." The stated reason is a future river bridge project. But if the state builds that bridge, the land becomes something else too: a direct link between Southside Landing and whatever comes next on that stretch of riverbank.
And there's a real list of what "next" might mean. City officials are working with the Birmingham-based Orchestra Partners on riverfront development aimed at pulling downtown shoppers toward the Coosa. Long-range plans on the table include a zoning overlay for the Alabama Highway 77 corridor, a future city center, new sports facilities, a possible recreational vehicle park, and talk of restaurant and retail space, even an amphitheater, filling out Southside's stretch of riverbank.
None of that is built yet. Some of it may never happen on the timeline officials describe. But the fact that a park started as a boat ramp is now the reference point for a zoning overlay and a bridge purchase tells you the city sees Southside Landing as the seed, not the finished product.
Why the City Keeps Paying for It
Southside holds more Coosa River frontage than any other city in Etowah County, more than 31 miles by Mayor Snyder's count. That's the resource the Landing was built to put to use, and the city keeps funding events there even though nothing about a boat ramp requires a marketing budget. The 2026 city budget included a $2,600 sponsorship for the Airport Marine High School Fishing Trail tournament at the Landing, a small line item, but a deliberate one, renewed year over year rather than left to chance.
That pattern isn't unique to Southside. A few miles up the river in Gadsden, officials point to the Coosa's 32 annual fishing tournaments as one of the county's biggest economic drivers, pulling in visitors from well outside Etowah County. Southside's version is smaller and less commercial, no ticketed concerts, no vendor rows, but it runs on the same logic: a river town keeps investing in river access because that access is the actual product.
The Rest of Southside's Green Space
Southside Landing isn't the only outdoor gathering point in town, and it doesn't need to be. Colonel Ola Lee Mize Patriots Park, home to the Etowah County War Memorial, serves a different purpose entirely, honoring military service rather than hosting movie nights. Southside City Fest, running every third Saturday of July since 2007, brings an antique car show, arts and crafts booths, and live music to a different part of town, and it's been a fixture longer than the Landing has existed. Twin Bridges Golf Club gives residents a fairway alternative to a riverbank evening.
What ties these together isn't geography. It's that Southside Landing has become the connective tissue between them, the place where a Rainbow City family shows up for a boat parade, where a Gadsden angler launches for a sponsored tournament, where a local coffee stop like Volt Coffee becomes part of someone's river-day routine before they ever reach the water. A city that never had a traditional downtown built its gathering habit on a peninsula instead, one boat ramp, one swapped bait shack, and one movie screen at a time.
If you already call Southside home, none of this changes your Tuesday. But it's worth knowing that the quiet park down Highway 77 is doing more civic work than its size suggests, and that the land purchases and zoning conversations happening around it now are the early paperwork for whatever the Landing becomes next.
If you're curious what a home near that stretch of the Coosa is actually worth, or what waterfront access looks like on a specific piece of Southside riverfront, Alabama Lake Homes knows this river the way locals do. Start Your Property Search whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
