Independent local reporting from the Eastern Shore
Draft Ordinance 2026-20, on the June 8 city council agenda for discussion, would halt new apartment, townhome, condominium, and duplex applications for six months while Daphne rewrites its land use rules. Projects already in the pipeline would be exempt.
The K-6 school on Corte Road is scheduled to open in August, relieving crowding at Belforest Elementary. Its opening also redraws attendance lines across Daphne — changes that brought families out to public meetings last fall.
An updated version of the city's official zoning map is advancing at Daphne City Hall, listed for a public hearing and a first reading of the adopting ordinance on the June 1 council agenda. The revision consolidates the annexations, pre-zonings and rezonings the city approved between November and April.
The city's Code Enforcement and Ordinance Committee is scheduled to take up a multi-family residential development moratorium ordinance at its 4:30 p.m. meeting Monday at City Hall. The discussion comes as several major multi-family projects sit before the Planning Commission and the City Council, less than four years after Daphne's previous apartment moratorium expired.
The Daphne Planning Commission is scheduled to review the site plan for The Retreat at Daphne, a 17.96-acre multi-family apartment project northwest of County Road 13 and the Milton Jones Road Extension. The item is the apartment component of the larger 134.31-acre Rowan Oak Planned Unit Development that the Daphne City Council annexed and pre-zoned in June 2024.
The Daphne City Council on Monday approved an architectural services contract with PCDA Architecture of Mobile. According to the firm's proposal in the meeting packet, the design work is the first step toward a $26 million project to add to and alter the city's recreation and senior center.
Seven items on Monday's council agenda tied to the planned Italian Village of Daphne at Highway 181 and County Road 64. The amended PUD Narrative bundled with the meeting packet would raise the apartment lot's maximum density from 10 to 15 units per acre, increase the building-height limit from three to four stories, and pre-zone an additional 2.78 acres at the north end.
The City Council on Monday considered a resolution appropriating $29,300 from the General Fund to participate in a short-form documentary produced by EMPOWERED. The series will air on public television stations in all 50 states and is hosted by Meg Ryan.
Two resolutions on the council's May 18 agenda would authorize a drainage repair at the 600 block of Ridgewood Drive in the Lake Forest neighborhood and appropriate nearly $451,000 from the city's general fund.
Monday's agenda paired a public hearing on changes to the East Fish River planned unit development with a first reading of an ordinance that would amend the project's governing narrative. The site sits 500 feet northeast of County Road 64 and Dixon Lane.
