Walk into 1709 Main Street on a Friday night and you will find two restaurants running out of the same building, sharing a wall, drawing two different crowds. On one side, Grizzly Pizza and Wings is pulling hand-tossed pies out of the oven. On the other, Fat Al's Burger Joint is smashing patties for the dinner rush. Both are new. Both are owned by the same two brothers. And both are already open, not "coming soon," not "planned for next year." That distinction matters more than it sounds like it should, because a few blocks away, a much bigger project just got approved on a timeline that runs a full year slower.
Nick and Al Karvelas grew up in Daphne, attended the local schools, and spent years eyeing that empty building on Main Street before they ever had the chance to lease it. Nick has said he used to walk past it as a kid and eat there when it was still occupied by other tenants. That personal history is worth noting because it is the same pattern showing up all over Olde Towne Daphne right now: the people making the neighborhood look different are, for the most part, the same people who grew up in it.
What's Actually Open Right Now
Grizzly Pizza and Wings is the second location for the brand, following an original restaurant in Atmore. The Daphne kitchen makes its dough in-house and serves wings both traditional and boneless, along with hand-breaded tenders. Next door, Fat Al's Burger Joint handles the smash burger side of the menu, along with loaded fries and milkshakes. The two businesses opened as a connected, two-part project in the same building, which means a single trip to 1709 Main Street now covers pizza, wings, burgers, and shakes without moving your car.
For anyone who has watched Main Street's restaurant turnover over the years, this is the kind of change that shows up on your table before it shows up in a headline. It is also the smaller of two stories happening downtown this year.
The Festival Finally Has a Permanent Address
The Jubilee Festival of Arts, now entering its 38th year, is set for October 17 and 18, 2026, and its home is confirmed as Lott Park in Olde Towne Daphne. This is not a one-year booking. The festival's own organizers describe the move to Lott Park as permanent, which settles a question that has followed the event as it grew: where does 140 artists' worth of pottery, painting, and handmade jewelry actually belong, permanently, on the calendar.
Parking for the weekend spreads across downtown, with Daphne Elementary anchoring the north end of the festival grounds and Daphne City Hall anchoring the south. If you live within walking distance, plan for two full days of closed streets and a crowd that skews well beyond just locals. If you do not live within walking distance, plan to arrive early or plan to walk from wherever you can find a spot.
The Bigger Change Is Still a Year Out
Here is where the story shifts scale. In early January 2026, the Daphne City Council unanimously approved a plan to bring a 68-room boutique hotel to Daphne Avenue, directly across from the U.S. Post Office. The project, called the Fortuna Hotel, carries a price tag north of $30 million and includes a 4,500-square-foot upscale dining venue along with a separate barn-style event space. Mayor Robin LeJeune has been direct about the intent: "It's great for our Olde Towne."
The financing mechanism is worth understanding because it is not the city writing a check. Daphne issued an $8 million interest-free warrant to the developer, 68 Ventures, repayable only from future tax revenue the hotel itself generates. The split runs 75 percent to the developer and 25 percent to the city, capped at $8 million or 25 years, whichever comes first. If the hotel underperforms, the city's exposure is limited. If it succeeds, the abatement pays for itself out of the new activity it creates.
The detail that matters most for anyone living nearby is timing. Early January coverage suggested construction could begin as soon as the following summer, which would have put groundbreaking in the middle of 2026. A more detailed follow-up from 1819 News pinned the actual groundbreaking to summer 2027, with construction expected to take two years after that. That puts the hotel's opening somewhere around 2029, not next year and not the year after.
Ahead of that groundbreaking, the city has already lined up a separate piece of work: a $5 million grant to move utilities underground in Olde Towne, paired with additional streetscaping investment the mayor has described as a way to highlight the district's existing restaurants and retail before the hotel ever breaks ground. That utility work is the piece most likely to touch daily life first, since it runs on the city's own schedule rather than the developer's.
Here is how the next three years line up, based on what has actually been confirmed:
| Timing | What's happening |
|---|---|
| Now (fall 2026) | Grizzly Pizza and Wings and Fat Al's Burger Joint both open at 1709 Main Street |
| October 17 to 18, 2026 | Jubilee Festival of Arts, 38th year, permanently at Lott Park |
| Ahead of 2027 | City-funded underground utilities and streetscaping work in Olde Towne |
| Summer 2027 | Fortuna Hotel groundbreaking, Daphne Avenue |
| Around 2029 | Fortuna Hotel expected to open, after a two-year build |
What This Means If You Already Live Here
The two stories are running at different speeds, and that gap is the actual news. The restaurant change already happened. You can eat it tonight. The infrastructure and hotel changes are still a year or more out, which means the disruption most residents picture when they hear "$30 million hotel," heavy equipment, torn-up streets, months of noise, is not the thing to brace for this fall. What is more likely to show up first is utility work tied to that separate $5 million grant, since it does not depend on a developer's construction schedule the way the hotel does.
In the meantime, expect Main Street to get a little more crowded on weekend nights simply because there are now two more reasons to park there, and expect the third weekend of October to require patience if you are trying to get anywhere near Lott Park.
None of this changes what Olde Towne Daphne has always been. The Karvelas brothers built their restaurants in a building they grew up walking past. The festival didn't leave, it just stopped moving. Even the hotel, according to the mayor, was designed to match the district's existing historic character rather than replace it. Bo Nichols has lived in Olde Towne Daphne for most of his life and spent his own money years ago handing out roughly 3,000 stickers for a grassroots "OTD" branding campaign, the same instinct now showing up in a pizza brothers' backstory and a mayor's talking points: this is a place people stay in, not just move through.
If you're watching these changes from inside the neighborhood and want to talk through what any of it might mean for your own street, your own property, or your own timeline, reach out to Bo Nichols for a conversation grounded in what's actually happening here, not a guess from three towns over.
