Daphne Approves New Restaurant-3 Story Building in Old Towne
By: Rick McCann
Blue RAM Media/Gulf Coast News
August 30, 2025
DAPHNE Ala. Despite a large crowd attending Thursday night’s Daphne Planning Commission who was not in favor of a new three-story building being built in Old Towne, the project was approved.
The plan includes a restaurant and an office building.
A restaurant and retail space is planned on the first floor, and offices will be on the second and third floor.
The lot sits at the corner of Van Avenue and busy Main Street, right across the street from Daniel Johnson’s media business, and home where he, his wife, and seven children live, and Johnson is not happy that the business got the green light to build.
That site doesn’t allow enough parking, he says.
John Tillman, his wife, and five kids live in a house on Van Avenue in Olde Towne Daphne, the same house his parents and his grandmother lived in. He is also not happy with how the city approved his new neighbor to be.
At issue is parking and traffic concerns.
The city ordinance for parking is determined by frontage on the road, and residents say that the ordinance was never intended for the area to have a three-story office building in Old Towne.
The developer, also a resident of Daphne, assured those present that he’ll do nothing to harm the fabric of Olde Towne Daphne.
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