If you drive Highway 181 through the Belforest side of Daphne, you've watched the same stretch of cleared farmland at County Road 64 through an entire spring and summer of city council meetings without seeing a foundation poured. Just graded dirt where a working farm used to be, right where the Trotman Company's Italian Village project is supposed to break ground. If you've been checking that corner every few weeks expecting to see a Walmart Neighborhood Market rise out of the mud, you might assume the whole thing stalled.
It didn't. Every major decision about this project has already been made, in a string of Daphne City Council votes most residents never watched. What's left isn't a fight over whether Belforest gets a grocery store. It's a sequence of road work the city required before anyone pours a slab, and that sequence is the actual reason the lot still looks empty.
What's already locked in
The project has a name, a footprint, and a phase order that the council finalized over four months this spring and early summer.
| Phase | What's built | Where it stands |
|---|---|---|
| Phase 1 | Walmart Neighborhood Market, custom-designed with an Italian architectural theme | Approved, construction contingent on infrastructure work |
| Phase 2 | Eight commercial outparcels for retail and restaurants | Approved as part of the same site plan |
| Phase 3 | 200-unit luxury apartment complex | Approved after being cut down from an original pitch of more than 400 units |
The site started as a 32-acre parcel at the northwest corner of Alabama 181 and Baldwin County 64. In May, the council approved a boundary addition of 2.79 acres to the north, giving the developer room to move the apartment buildings away from County Road 64 and add two outparcels for parking and emergency vehicle access, according to Gulf Coast Media's coverage of the PUD modification. That change came with a unanimous favorable recommendation from the planning commission, and it's the kind of adjustment that happens in a meeting room, not on a job site, which is part of why the lot hasn't visibly changed even as the plan has.
The final piece fell into place on June 15, 2026, when the Daphne City Council approved the annexation resolution that Gulf Coast Media described as the last formal step for the project to move forward. That vote also locked in the incentive structure: a $2.5 million tax rebate, paid back to the developer out of the sales tax the neighborhood market itself generates, capped at roughly $850,000 a year for four years, as reported by Gulf Coast Media. The developer doesn't see that money until the store is open and ringing up sales. That detail matters more than it sounds like it should.
Why the dirt hasn't moved
Here's the part that doesn't show up on a rendering. Before this parcel could become the Italian Village, it had to become part of the City of Daphne. It was county land, and Daphne had no authority to require anything of a developer building on county property. Annexation was the price of admission, and the city set the terms.
Mayor Robin LeJeune said as much at a Coffee with the Mayor event on June 2, when he explained why the city could demand infrastructure work that had never been required on that stretch of road before.
"Turn lanes from 64 onto 181 right there on Allegri. That causes issues, but that's never been addressed because it's all county property right there. So, this coming into the city, we're able to make demands on them. Redoing the roundabout on 64 and 13. Making that better."
That quote, reported by Fox10, is the whole mechanism in one sentence. The same report notes the city was still working with developers on infrastructure improvements before the project could move forward, weeks after the council had already voted to approve it. The traffic fixes residents actually want, a rebuilt roundabout at County Road 64 and 13, a right-turn lane on eastbound Route 64 onto southbound 181, and new sidewalks along County Road 64, didn't come from developer generosity. They came bundled into the annexation deal because annexation was the only leverage the city had. Trotman agreed to cover more than $1 million of that road work as part of getting the project approved.
So the sequence residents are watching, or not watching, makes sense once you know the order. Vertical construction on the Walmart doesn't start until the traffic infrastructure the city demanded is substantially in place. That's not delay. That's the deal.
The fight that actually happened
The public part of this story played out at a March 16, 2026 council meeting, and it's worth knowing who said what, because the outcome split the difference.
Andrew Tool, who lives in the Belforest area, told the council the neighborhood was a "desert" for grocery shopping and restaurants, and that having something to drive to nearby would be "pretty cool," a comment Gulf Coast Media captured from the public comment period. Mayor LeJeune made a similar point from the dais, noting the area had little beyond a Dollar General and a couple of small businesses, and that residents currently have to drive into Daphne, down to Fairhope, or out toward Spanish Fort for a real grocery run.
Ben Schoenfeld, who lives on Pleasant Road north of the site, took the opposite position, telling the council plainly that the area didn't need more traffic and urging them to decline the annexation request.
Both got something. The developer's apartment count came down from an initial pitch of more than 400 units to 200 by the time the council voted, a direct response to the density concerns raised at meetings like this one. Trotman also agreed to the traffic package outlined above. Neither side got everything, but the record shows the density fight actually changed the final plan, cut roughly in half from where it started.
What to actually watch for on your next drive down 181
Given the infrastructure-first sequencing the mayor described, here's roughly the order construction should follow from here:
- Road work near the site frontage on Route 64 and 181, including the turn lane onto southbound 181 and the roundabout rebuild at County Road 13
- New sidewalks along County Road 64
- Site grading and utility work on the Walmart pad, since it's Phase 1
- Vertical construction on the Neighborhood Market itself, built with the project's Italian architectural theme rather than a standard Walmart box
- Retail outparcel construction, filling in the eight commercial parcels around the anchor store
- Apartment construction last, once the 200-unit complex site, now repositioned away from County Road 64, is graded
Trotman told WKRG the finished project should bring 300 to 350 new jobs, not counting construction work, along with the sales tax revenue the whole incentive structure depends on, a figure reported here. None of that starts generating anything until the store opens, which is exactly why the developer has reason to move once the road work clears the way rather than sit on an approved project.
Why this matters if you live out here
If your daily frustration is the drive into town for milk and dinner, the practical answer to "when" is tied to a roundabout rebuild, not a building permit. Watch the road work at County Road 64 and 13 first. That's your clearest sign that the Walmart, and eventually the restaurants and shops around it, are close behind.
For a lot of Belforest residents, this stretch of 181 has been an afterthought for years, the part of Daphne you drive through on the way to somewhere else. That's changing, slowly and in a specific order the city negotiated on your behalf whether you watched the meetings or not.
If you're curious how a project like this, or the broader growth along the Eastern Shore, might affect home values or timing in your part of Daphne, Bo Nichols has been tracking these neighborhoods for close to two decades and is always glad to talk through what it means for your street specifically. Reach out anytime to book a consultation or request a home valuation.
