Olive Garden Plans Fayetteville Restaurant

Darden Restaurants Inc. of Orlando, Fla., submitted a large-scale development plan Dec. 10 with the city of Fayetteville to construct a 8,077-SF Olive Garden restaurant in the city’s Steele Crossing area (also known as CMN Business Park II).

Olive Garden is a casual Italian chain of restaurants.

The proposed restaurant would be located on the east side of Mall Avenue near the intersection with Van Asche Drive. The restaurant would have 40 to 48 parking spaces.

Milholland Co. of Fayetteville is the engineer for the project.

The proposal will go before the planning commission on Jan. 14.

Darden is the largest casual dining restaurant company in the world. It operates more than 1,100 Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Bahama Breeze and Smokey Bones restaurants in North America and employs more than 122,000 people.

Darden had $4 billion in sales for the fiscal year that ended May 27. The company had $197 million in net earnings after taxes for the same year.