Why Downtown Powell Ohio's New Restaurants Follow the Sidewalk

Everyone in Powell has an opinion about Lani. The Hawaiian-inspired rooftop lounge that opened April 9, 2026 on the third floor of COhatch's new building on East Olentangy Street is the kind of place people point to when they talk about downtown "finally changing." It has a sky room, a patio, three separate dining areas, and a menu built by culinary director Lingo Quichocho, who has cooked in California, Massachusetts, and Guam, working alongside local head chef Michael Gadd. It is, by any measure, the most photographed new thing in the Four Corners district this year.

But Lani isn't the reason downtown Powell looks different than it did two years ago. The reason is buried under the sidewalk in front of it.

What Went In Before The Bar Did

Before COhatch poured a single foundation, the city was already digging. Crews installed new sidewalks and on-street public parking along East Olentangy Street, paired with utility upgrades, as part of a public-private investment aimed at improving walkability and access in the district. That work started in the same window COhatch broke ground on its 13,900-square-foot site at 50 and 60 East Olentangy Street in late 2024, and it kept going through the demolition, the framing, and the eventual March 2026 opening of the building itself.

That sequencing is not an accident. It shows up again in Powell's current five-year capital improvement plan, which sets aside $7.65 million for a Scioto Street extension and a consolidated public parking lot serving the northeast quadrant of downtown, the same corner where COhatch and its neighbors sit. City Manager Andrew White described the 2026-27 timeline for that project as "aggressive" when it came before council last year, which is a polite way of saying the city knows it needs the parking before it can plausibly ask for more buildings.

The pattern holds on the smaller stuff too. Last year the city secured an ODOT safety grant to rebuild crosswalks at Traditions Way, Hall Street, and Depot Street, funded roughly 90 percent by the state's Highway Safety Improvement Program. None of that is glamorous. None of it shows up in a restaurant review. But it is the layer that has to exist before Lani's patio or COhatch's rooftop makes sense as a place people can actually walk to, park near, and cross the street to reach.

The Businesses That Followed The Trench

Once the ground was ready, the businesses arrived in a predictable order. COhatch opened its coworking floors to members in early March 2026. The rooftop lounge followed five weeks later. The restored historic home on the property, now known as the Middlebury Member House, opened to members in May. Each piece landed roughly a month after the infrastructure around it was functional, not before.

What's easy to miss in that timeline is that downtown Powell's older anchors never closed while any of this was happening. Kraft House No. 5 on Liberty Street and Prohibition Gastro Lounge on West Olentangy kept serving through a year and a half of sidewalk construction and utility work, both still pulling strong local followings if their Google review counts are any signal. Espresso 22 kept its regulars. The businesses that predate the redevelopment are the reason downtown didn't feel like a construction zone even while it technically was one. New openings get the headlines. The places that stayed open through the disruption are why there was still a downtown to reopen into.

Here's how the sequence actually laid out, infrastructure and openings side by side:

A Different Kind Of Growth A Mile Away

That last line in the table is worth sitting with, because it's not the same story as the one downtown. Cava opened its Powell-area location at 9711 Sawmill Parkway this month, projected to employ between 25 and 40 people. It's a good addition if you like customizable Mediterranean bowls. It is also a fast-casual chain landing on a commercial corridor built for exactly that kind of tenant, with parking already in place and no municipal capital plan required to make it happen.

Downtown's growth runs on a slower, more deliberate mechanism: the city lays infrastructure, then recruits developers to build into it, then independent restaurants and lounges fill the space that infrastructure created. Sawmill Parkway's growth runs on a faster, more familiar one: a corridor with existing capacity attracts a national brand. Both are real. They are not the same phenomenon, and treating every new opening in Powell as evidence of one undifferentiated boom flattens what's actually two distinct growth patterns running at once inside the same city limits.

What's Proposed Next

If the downtown pattern holds, the next visible wave is still a year or two out. A local developer, Transform Construction, brought plans to Powell's Development Committee last November for a two-story restaurant at 147 West Olentangy Street and a three-story building at 173 West Olentangy Street that would house another restaurant, retail space, and a 16-room boutique hotel. The combined investment comes to roughly $7.8 million, and the city was weighing 75 percent property tax abatements over 15 years for both sites when the proposal was presented. Economic Development Administrator Sean Hughes framed the additional restaurant space as a direct response to resident demand, telling the committee that people living downtown want more dining choices, not fewer.

Nothing about that proposal is finished. It was a committee presentation, not a ribbon cutting. But if the last two years are a guide, don't expect the hotel or the second restaurant to open until the parking and street work around them is further along. The order tends to hold.

Your Actual Calendar This Fall

None of this changes what a Thursday night or a Saturday morning downtown looks like right now, and that's worth its own note.

• Nocterra Run Club still meets every Thursday at 6:15 p.m., working with the Columbus Running Company and welcoming all paces before the group heads back to the taproom.
• The Powell Street Market & Business Expo runs Sunday, September 13, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., with more than 60 local vendors along downtown's streets, benefiting the Powell-Liberty Historical Society.
• Movie Night on the Green continues at the Village Green Amphitheater, shown on a large LED screen, with locals sponsoring the popcorn and the city and Powell Development Corporation covering the rest.
• This year's Powell Festival already came and went in June, headlined by Vertical Horizon at Village Green Park with a Saturday fireworks show, and it's the clearest evidence that the crowds downtown's new construction is meant to hold already show up every year.

The Order Is The Story

The easy version of this piece writes itself: downtown Powell got a rooftop bar, a coworking campus, and a Mediterranean fast-casual spot, so downtown Powell is booming. That version isn't wrong, exactly. It's just incomplete in a way that matters if you live here. The sidewalk came before the bar. The utility work came before the member house. The crosswalk grant came before the boutique hotel proposal even reached committee. If you're trying to guess what downtown looks like eighteen months from now, watch the parking lot and the Scioto Street extension, not the next restaurant announcement. The businesses are following a plan the city already wrote down. They're just the part you can see from the sidewalk.

If you're weighing what any of this means for your own address, whether that's a downtown property that just got a lot more walkable or a house a few blocks out that's about to feel closer to the action, Angel Perez has spent years tracking how Powell's neighborhoods shift block by block. Get a free home valuation to see where your property stands as downtown keeps building out around it.