"No one at the arts council makes a dime."
J.D. Snoddy said that to a reporter a few years back, talking about the volunteers rebuilding Looney's Amphitheater Complex off Highway 278. It sounds like a throwaway line about a nonprofit board. It is actually the whole story of how this town operates, and if you have lived in Double Springs for any length of time, you already know it, because this is not the first time the town has saved something this way.
Looney's sat closed for roughly two decades before the Winston County Arts Council bought it in 2022. In that stretch, the buildings rotted, the putt-putt course grew over, and the flagpole out front stood empty. What is happening there now, the concerts, the mini-golf rebuild, the state money, follows a pattern Double Springs used once before, back when the town itself was the thing that needed saving.
The Sewing Plant Playbook
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, cotton was fading out and nothing was coming in to replace it. A handful of local men, James Hadder, Garnet Adkins, Corbin Seymour, Bobby Jack Martin and Aucie Overton, met in Hadder's television repair shop and formed an Industrial Development Board. They eventually landed a small sewing plant willing to relocate from Florida, but landing it was one thing and paying for a building to put it in was another. So they sold shares in the project at ten dollars apiece, framed to neighbors as an investment in the community rather than a business deal. The county chipped in by pouring the concrete foundation. A local building supply company donated five hundred concrete blocks. Nobody drew a salary. The plant got built because enough people in a small town decided it was worth doing without waiting for someone bigger to do it for them.
That is not a nostalgic detail. It is the mechanism. And it is the same mechanism running at Looney's right now, just with a different building and a different generation.
From Auction Block to a $272,000 Thank You
Looney's had already failed once before it failed the second time. The original private investors who built the outdoor amphitheater and staged the musical "The Incident at Looney's Tavern," a production built around Winston County's near-secession from Alabama during the Civil War, eventually could not keep the place running and deeded it to the Town of Double Springs. The town held it for about eight years, could not cover the debt either, and the property went to auction. Brothers T.J. and Mickey Milligan bought it in 2010. By their own account, when later asked why they had bought it, they could not fully explain the decision. It sat closed under their ownership for another decade.
In October 2022, the Milligans sold the seven buildings on 13 acres to the Winston County Arts Council for $272,000, a price the council has described as a gesture of appreciation for the group's work in the county rather than a market transaction. That is not how most commercial real estate changes hands. It is exactly how a $10-a-share sewing plant gets financed. Someone with a reason to let go hands the asset to someone with a reason to keep it running, at a price shaped by relationship rather than appraisal.
What the Money Actually Bought
By early 2025, Snoddy told the Double Springs Town Council that the arts council had put roughly $2 million into the site since the purchase, a mix of state grants, other organizational support and community donations. That money bought real, specific things: rotten wooden steps from the parking lot down to the concession stand replaced, the 300-seat Dual Destiny Theater fully remodeled and now home to the Winston County Free State Theater Troupe, new parking lot lighting, a new flag run up the more than 100-foot flagpole out front, and a first pass at the bathrooms, which by Snoddy's account needed to be gutted entirely.
Earlier this year, the state legislature approved another appropriation on top of that, this one worth $875,000, earmarked specifically for the outdoor amphitheater, the part of the complex still waiting on new seating, updated sound and lighting, and a concrete stage to replace the old wooden one. Senate President Pro Tem Garlan Gudger visited the site to announce the appropriation in person, which tells you something about how much this project matters to people well outside Winston County's borders, not just inside them.
Six Women Rebuilding Six Pieces of History
The most specific evidence of the pattern is the smallest project on the site: the putt-putt course. It sat abandoned along with everything else, and instead of hiring an outside contractor to rebuild it, the arts council picked three sets of identical twins, all local, all women who grew up playing the original course, to lead the restoration alongside project manager David Jacobs. An artist named Brian Canuteson, of Elior Designs in Decatur, is designing each hole around a piece of Winston County history rather than a generic golf obstacle. Finished so far are a Dual Destiny statue replica, a red rotary-dial phone marking the first 911 call ever placed, and holes modeled on Corinth Church, the Houston Log Jail, the Winston County Courthouse and Looney's Tavern itself, with new holes added most weeks.
This is not a marketing gimmick built for a press release. It is the same instinct that had a county pour cement for a sewing plant in 1958. When something in Double Springs needs rebuilding, the people who show up tend to be the people who already had a stake in it.
Not Everyone in Town Agrees on the Math
The pattern does not mean the project runs without friction, and it shouldn't. At a Double Springs Town Council meeting, council members pressed Snoddy directly on the town's ongoing donations to Looney's, with one member asking bluntly what the economic impact to the town actually was. That is a fair question in a town this size, and it is the kind of question that gets asked when real money, not just goodwill, is on the table. Snoddy's answer at the time pointed to three separate grants then in progress, one for the putt-putt course, one for new dressing rooms at Dual Destiny, and one for the ground floor space that once held Sister Sara's Restaurant. The council did not simply write a check and move on. They asked, they got answers, and the project kept going. That back and forth is part of how the town keeps its own institutions honest, and it is worth knowing about if you only ever hear the celebratory version of this story.
What's Actually Running This Year
For anyone wondering what all this restoration has actually produced so far, here is what is live right now rather than still under construction:
- A monthly bluegrass concert series inside the Dual Destiny Theater, held the first Saturday of every month, with two bands per show running from 6 to 8 p.m. Admission is $10 at the door, and kids 12 and under get in free. The series continues into the fall and winter, so there is a show coming up the first Saturday of next month.
- The Lodge at Looney's is now booking private events, including parties, family reunions and meetings.
- The Winston County Arts Council's Empty Bowls fundraiser, now in its 13th year, returned to the Double Springs Municipal Building this past February, benefiting both the arts council and Main Street Ministries.
None of that requires waiting on the amphitheater to finish. The theater is already running shows, the mini-golf course is already gaining holes, and the Lodge is already hosting reunions while the rest of the complex catches up.
The Course Isn't Finished, and Neither Is the Pattern
Walk the property today and you will see two things side by side: a finished theater hosting bluegrass bands on Saturday nights, and a half-built mini-golf course with a few new holes each week. That gap between finished and unfinished is not a flaw in the project. It is what this kind of rebuilding always looks like partway through, whether it is a sewing plant in 1958 or an amphitheater in 2026. The people doing it are not developers on a deadline. They are neighbors putting money and time in as it becomes available, the same way the county poured that foundation and the supply company donated those blocks decades ago.
If you have followed Looney's story this far, you already understand something about how Double Springs operates that outsiders tend to miss. Sherry Pruitt Real Estate keeps an eye on this kind of local history because it says something real about the community, not because a mini-golf course changes anyone's closing costs. If you are ever curious about property in Winston County, or just want to talk through what a place like this is actually like to live in, Sherry Pruitt Real Estate is glad to have that conversation. Schedule a consultation today, or just stop in and ask about Looney's. Either way, the coffee's on us.
