The Last Thursdays At Station Park, And What's Opening Behind Them

You've been going to Station Park on Thursday nights all summer, and by now you know the drill: lawn chair, a drink from Otie's or Crooked Can, kids at the splash pad, music starting at 6:30. What you might not have clocked, walking past the old Chase Bank building on Main Street on your way in, is that the storefront sitting empty behind the "Coming Soon" paper isn't just another vacancy. It's one of three separate restaurant projects landing in Old Hilliard inside the same twelve months, on top of a dining list where the oldest anchors have been serving the same tables since the 1990s.

That's the part worth sitting with before the season wraps. This isn't a roundup of new restaurants. It's what happens when three different developments, backed by two different companies, all bet on the same two blocks in the same year.

Two nights, back to back, closing out summer

Celebration at the Station, the city's Thursday concert series at Hilliard's Station Park, wraps its 2026 run on August 13 with Fleetwood Gold as the season closer, following a summer that also included Lt. Dan's New Legs on July 16 and Conspiracy on August 6. Music runs 6:30 to 9 p.m., and because Station Park sits inside the Old Hilliard DORA, you're allowed to carry a drink purchased at a participating location around the designated outdoor area while you watch.

The very next evening, the 15th Annual Columbus Food Truck Festival sets up at 4951 Northwest Parkway starting at 4 p.m. on August 14, a different location than Station Park but close enough that it functions as an unofficial second act to the concert finale. Two nights, two events, and then the calendar shifts. The splash pad at Station Park keeps running through the end of September, and the Hilliard Ohio Historical Society's Historical Village at Weaver Park stays open Saturdays and Sundays from 1 to 5 p.m. through the same month, so the transition out of concert season isn't a hard stop. It's a gradual handoff to a quieter kind of programming.

The empty storefronts are not staying empty

Here's what's actually landing on Main Street this year. In June, the city announced that the Hilliard Development Corporation, a city-partnered nonprofit, had reached an agreement with local real estate firm the Westwood Collective to redevelop the former Chase Bank property at 4056 E. Main St. The bank building itself is being preserved and converted into a sit-down Italian restaurant, while the adjoining parking lot becomes a new mixed-use building with ground-floor dining and retail and a limited number of luxury apartments above.

A few blocks away, on Trueman Boulevard, restaurant group Culinary Collectives has signed a lease at TruePointe for a chef-driven concept slated to open in summer 2026. The team behind it, Derek Bush and Justin McMaster, hasn't announced a name yet, but Bush has more than 20 years of hospitality experience, including leadership roles with Cameron Mitchell Restaurants and Ohio State's hospitality management program. Asked why Hilliard, Bush said some of the city's best food is "anchored in neighborhoods full of loyal supporters who treat it as their own."

And on the smaller end, Paris Baguette opened a bakery-cafe location in Old Hilliard in July 2026, joining a dining scene that's leaned heavily on local independents for most of its history.

What was already here, and what's showing up this year

The contrast is easiest to see side by side. Old Hilliard's core dining anchors range from a diner that's been serving the same neighborhood since the Clinton administration to a coffee shop that opened its doors a decade ago:

Six established places, the oldest more than thirty years old and the newest about ten, and three new full-service or bakery concepts landing in a single calendar year. That's not incremental growth. That's the dining list growing by half in less time than it once took to add one restaurant.

One developer keeps showing up

Look closer at who's behind these projects and a pattern emerges that a single visit to Old Hilliard wouldn't reveal. The Westwood Collective, the firm now partnering with the city on the Chase Bank redevelopment, has been quietly assembling a presence in Old Hilliard for a while. The company previously converted an existing residence into a commercial restaurant space, now operating as Legacy Smokehouse, complete with a new interior dining room, restrooms, and an outdoor patio. It's also connected to a tavern-style pizza restaurant tied to the Junction coworking space and theOne9 golf lounge, both in Old Hilliard.

That means the anchor project on Main Street isn't an isolated bet by an outside developer testing the water. It's the same local firm extending a strategy it's already run twice in the same few blocks, just at a bigger scale and with the city as a formal partner this time. If you've noticed Old Hilliard feeling different over the past year or two, this is a meaningful part of why. It's not scattered organic growth. It's one company's playbook, repeating.

The DORA got a permanent upgrade too

The other piece of infrastructure that changed underneath the dining boom is the DORA itself. Old Hilliard's designated outdoor refreshment area currently runs daily from noon to 9 p.m., with last call at 8:30 p.m., covering the same footprint where Otie's, Crooked Can, and the rest of the district sit. That's a shift from the earlier version of the program, which ran on a more limited seasonal and event basis. Some local listings describe the current version as a year-round designation, so if you're planning around it for a specific date, the city's own DORA page is the one to check before you go.

Either way, an everyday drinking district paired with three new restaurants opening inside the same twelve months tells you something about what the city and its developers think this neighborhood is becoming. A district built around concert nights and festival weekends is a seasonal draw. A district built around daily hours is a bet that people will show up on a random Tuesday, not just a Thursday in July.

What doesn't move as fast

Not everything in Old Hilliard is on the same clock as the restaurant scene. The Heritage Trail, a 7-mile multi-purpose trail converted from an old rail right-of-way, still starts at its trailhead on Center Street and runs toward Plain City, same as it always has. The Historical Village at Weaver Park, with its log cabin, one-room schoolhouse, and two cabooses split between Weaver Park and Homestead Park, keeps its Saturday and Sunday hours through September regardless of what's opening down the block. And after the food truck festival wraps on August 14, the next fixed point on the calendar is the Fall Festival at Hilliard Municipal Park on September 13.

That mix, fast-moving dining scene layered over slow, steady public spaces, is probably the most accurate way to describe where Old Hilliard is right now. The Thursday concerts end this week. The trail doesn't. Both are true at the same time, and knowing which is which is the difference between feeling caught off guard by your own neighborhood and feeling like you never left.

If you're weighing what any of this means for your own plans in Old Hilliard, whether that's timing a move within the neighborhood or just understanding how the block around you is changing, Angel Perez and the Perez Team track these shifts closely across Hilliard and the surrounding Columbus suburbs. Reach out for a free home valuation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.