For years, if you lived here and someone asked what to do downtown on a warm evening, the answer bent toward Village Green. Music on the Green on the second Sunday, the Saturday farmers market on Liberty, the Powell Festival weekend, maybe a walk to Kraft House No. 5 or Prohibition Gastro Lounge after. That rhythm still holds. What changed in 2026 is that the block east of the intersection stopped being a place you drove past on the way to Olentangy Street and became a destination in its own right.
The shift is not subtle. Powell now has a rooftop bar. It has a 14,000-square-foot coworking campus with a restored historic home on the same parcel. Two blocks north, a donut shop has moved into Liberty Plaza. A sushi and ramen spot opened on Home Road. A boutique hotel is in front of City Council. If your mental map of downtown still ends at the clock tower, this is the summer to redraw it.
The New Axis on East Olentangy
The single largest change is the COhatch Powell campus at 50 and 60 East Olentangy Street. The Dublin-based company opened its coworking and event campus on March 2, 2026, spanning 50 and 60 E. Olentangy St., including the Middlebury Member House and Lani Rooftop Lounge. The 14,000-square-foot campus features private offices, dedicated desks, coworking areas, meeting rooms and event space, and the Middlebury Member House is a restored historic home designed as a lodge-style setting for members to work, meet, and host private events.
The piece most residents will actually use is Lani. The venue sits atop the COhatch Powell campus and opened to the public April 9, being touted as Powell's first rooftop bar and one of only about 10 rooftop bars across Central Ohio, with both indoor and outdoor seating above the walkable downtown area. The kitchen is not an afterthought. Under Culinary Director Lingo Quichocho, the spring and summer menu includes olives and cucumbers, tuna tartare, artisan lettuces, smoked fish spread, and wagyu meatballs. Head Chef Michael Gadd has been profiled as one of Columbus's notable up-and-coming chefs and previously served as executive chef at Park James Hotel in California.
Hours matter here, because the shape of the week is different from what downtown Powell has offered before. Lani operates Wednesday through Saturday: 4 to 9 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays, 4 to 11 p.m. Fridays, and noon to 11 p.m. Saturdays. That is a mid-week evening option in a district that historically emptied out after the dinner rush at the older restaurants. Reservations run through OpenTable, and parking is available at street level and in Powell's public parking lots.
The campus is not a one-off. City officials have said the COhatch development is expected to create nearly 200 jobs and generate about $1.5 million annually in payroll once fully operational. That is a meaningful daytime population added to a block that, five years ago, was mostly quiet between lunch and happy hour.
New Arrivals Off the Green
The food scene has picked up in parallel. Three openings are worth knowing by name and address, because they are not on the Olentangy Street strip most residents already have memorized:
- Glazed Over. Every donut is hand-rolled and hand-cut in small batches throughout the day. The shop originally opened in Sandusky in 2019, and the new location is inside Liberty Plaza at 240 N. Liberty St., open 6 a.m. to 1 p.m. Same address as the Saturday farmers market, which is either convenient or dangerous depending on how you feel about pastries before produce.
- Hoseki Sushi and Grill. Located at 4290 Home Rd., Suite F, officially open in Powell after a soft opening on March 20. Hours are Monday through Thursday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., and Sunday noon to 9 p.m.
- Khaab Indian Kitchen & Bar. Announced a new Powell location for 2026, building on the success of its Bexley location. The pitch is refined dishes, handcrafted cocktails, and an upscale but inviting space.
None of these are chains you already know from Sawmill or Polaris. That is the point. The composition of downtown-adjacent dining is shifting toward independent operators, and if you have lived here long enough to remember the Kroger plaza on Liberty as the extent of the retail conversation, that is a real change.
The Weekly Programming That Didn't Change
The reason the new stuff lands, though, is because the old rhythm is still intact. If you moved here for the front-porch feel of downtown Powell, none of it has been traded away.
The Village Green calendar is the backbone of a Powell summer, and it is worth re-reading if you have not looked in a year. The Powell Farmers Market runs every Saturday from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m., starting May 23 through October 3, at 240 N. Liberty St. The Lolli-Pops! Children's Concert Series returns to Village Green Park with free, interactive concerts through the summer: June 1 with Paulette's Princess Parties (Movie Favorites), June 15 with Supa Fun Band, June 29 with Erica & Mark's Giggle & Groove Show, July 13 with Paulette's Princess Parties (Princess & Superheroes), July 27 with Bring the Farm to You, and August 10 with Columbus DanceArts Academy.
Music on the Green remains the piece that ties the DORA to the park:
Grab dinner from your favorite local restaurant, sip a DORA beverage from participating businesses, bring your lawn chairs and blankets, and enjoy a relaxing summer evening filled with live music in the heart of Downtown Powell.
And the anchor weekend is still the Powell Festival. The festival runs Friday, June 19 from 5 to 10 p.m. and Saturday, June 20 from 3 to 10 p.m. at Village Green Park in downtown Powell, free to attend, with live music, food trucks, local shopping, and a fireworks show at 10 p.m. Saturday. The 2026 headliner is Vertical Horizon, whose single "Everything You Want" hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2000. The free Delaware County Transit shuttle picks up and drops off at Seldom Seen Park on Friday and Saturday during festival hours, and free public parking is available in the downtown parking lots. If you have not used the shuttle before, this is the year. Between festival traffic and the added foot traffic downtown has picked up since March, parking on the streets has stopped being a given.
What Council Is Weighing Next
Two more projects are inching through the approval process, and both would change what evenings downtown look like a year from now.
Transform Construction has submitted plans for a two-story restaurant at 147 W. Olentangy St. and a three-story building at 173 W. Olentangy St. that would house another restaurant, retail space, and a 16-room boutique hotel. The combined investment totals about $7.8 million, and city officials are weighing 75% property tax abatements over 15 years for both sites, with the developer saving about $190,000 on the restaurant project and roughly $1.5 million on the hotel building. The economic development administrator said residents want more restaurant choices downtown, and city figures show the projects would support more than 70 full-time jobs and bring about $1.95 million in new payroll to downtown, generating around $39,000 annually in payroll taxes.
Whether or not you have an opinion on the abatement structure, the practical upshot for a resident is this: within roughly 24 months, downtown Powell could have a 16-room hotel where there is currently none. That is the first time in memory the answer to "where do my in-laws stay when they visit" might be inside the DORA footprint rather than at a chain by the interstate.
Reading the Season
The easy way to summarize downtown Powell this summer is to list the new openings and call it a roundup. The more useful frame for someone who already lives here is that the shape of the week has expanded. Saturday morning at the farmers market and Sunday evening at Music on the Green were always the fixed points. What is new in 2026 is a real Wednesday-and-Thursday evening scene, driven by Lani and a coworking population that has reasons to stay downtown past 5 p.m. If you are used to leaving downtown after your farmers market run and coming back Sunday night, try inverting the pattern once this summer. Walk the block east of Liberty on a weekday. It will not look like the Powell you moved into.
If you find yourself doing that walk and wondering what a home two streets off the Green would look like, or how the recent changes on East Olentangy are showing up in what buyers are asking about, Allie Beebe is happy to talk through it with the same attention she brings to a listing prep meeting. Let's Connect.
