For a decade, if you asked a Hilliard resident where to eat on a Thursday, the answer came from one place. Main Street. Center Street. Maybe the caboose if you were showing someone around. Old Hilliard was the whole conversation, because there was nowhere else to have it.
That stopped being true this year. Four miles east, on a stretch of Trueman Boulevard that used to be an office park, a $250 million development called TruePointe has spent 2026 filling in with restaurants at a pace that outstrips anything downtown has absorbed in years. By the time the leaves turn, Hilliard will have two legitimate dining districts running at the same time, and the two biggest events on the September calendar happen to land one right after the other, on opposite sides of that new divide. If you have lived here even a few years, the shape of a free evening has quietly changed underneath you. This is what that looks like right now.
The old anchor hasn't lost anything
Start with what has not changed, because it matters for the comparison. Old Hilliard's Designated Outdoor Refreshment Area runs every day, noon to 9 p.m., with last call at 8:30, and anyone 21 or older can carry a drink between participating businesses inside the boundary. That's been the daily standard since the city made the DORA permanent rather than a Thursday-and-Saturday summer thing, and it's still the easiest reason to end up downtown on a random Tuesday.
The Heritage Rail Trail starts at Station Park in Old Hilliard and runs 6.1 paved miles, passing Homestead Metro Park around the one-mile mark and continuing past Hayden Run Metro Park before the pavement gives way to farmland near Cemetery Pike. More than half that distance runs alongside a four-mile bridle path, which is why you'll occasionally share the trail with a horse trailer rather than another cyclist. On weekends from late April through September, the Hilliard Ohio Historical Society opens its Historical Village at Weaver Park, where the log cabin, one-room schoolhouse, and the city's original train station turn a walk into an actual stop rather than a pass-through.
None of that is new for 2026. It's the baseline Old Hilliard has always offered, and it's why the neighborhood still functions as the emotional center of the city even as the money moves east.
The new anchor is bigger than "new restaurant" coverage suggests
TruePointe is not a strip of storefronts. It's 27 acres being built out by Hilliard-based developer Equity, anchored by the new headquarters for Advanced Drainage Systems, the city's largest private employer, plus 359 apartments at Tempo, a Home2 by Hilton hotel, and roughly 2,000 daytime employees expected once the office component fills in. That scale is why the restaurant list reads less like a strip mall and more like a district being built from scratch.
The one worth planning around is Medley Kitchen, the first brick-and-mortar restaurant from Culinary Collectives, the company founded by Derek Bush, who spent about 12 years with Cameron Mitchell Restaurants before this. The concept is built around shareable plates that draw on tapas, dim sum, and mezze traditions in the same rotating menu, it will run dinner service only when it opens this fall, and it's expected to employ more than 50 people, a hiring number that tells you Equity isn't treating this as a side tenant.
Around Medley Kitchen, the roster has filled in fast. Old Scratch Pizza, a Dayton-based Neapolitan pizzeria and beer hall with locations in Troy, Beavercreek, and Centerville, is opening its first Columbus-area restaurant here, with open kitchens, multiple wood-fired ovens on display, and a full bar and patio. Smoked Lick BBQ is bringing a full dining room and bar to what will be its third location, after starting as a limited-seating spot on Cosgray Road and then a pop-up inside a Columbus bar. Teriyaki Madness, the Seattle-founded fast-casual chain with more than 200 locations nationally, has a third-quarter 2026 opening slated according to the Hilliard Area Chamber of Commerce. Qahwah House, a Dearborn, Michigan-based coffee concept that already has a downtown Columbus location, is taking 2,900 square feet in one of TruePointe's retail buildings.
Separately, on Hilliard Rome Road rather than at TruePointe itself, CAVA opened its first Columbus-area location this spring, another signal that the west side's restaurant math has changed even outside the two main hubs.
Two downtowns, two very different Saturdays
The clearest way to see the split isn't a restaurant list. It's the calendar. This September, two of the city's biggest gatherings land back to back, and each one belongs unmistakably to one side of town.
For the Love of Hilliard | Fall Festival | |
|---|---|---|
Date | Saturday, September 12 | Sunday, September 13 |
Time | 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. | 1 to 4 p.m. |
Location | Downtown Hilliard, on participating business properties | Roger A. Reynolds Municipal Park |
Format | Shop Local Passport: collect stamps at storefronts, earn a tote, enter a gift basket drawing at five stamps | City-run festival with food trucks booked through the Central Ohio Food Truck Association |
What it replaced or represents | Filled the gap left after Hilliardfest was discontinued | The city's long-running annual family event |
The structural detail worth noticing about For the Love of Hilliard is that it's built around actual storefronts rather than closed streets. That's a deliberate choice by Destination Hilliard, the city, and local businesses to route foot traffic through the doors of Old Hilliard's shops and restaurants rather than around them. If Saturday is about which downtown businesses are still standing and worth walking into, Sunday's Fall Festival at the Municipal Park is the version built for families who just want a few hours outside with food trucks and no itinerary.
Neither event happens anywhere near TruePointe. That's not an oversight. TruePointe's restaurants are still opening in real time this fall, and the development's own public gathering spaces, green areas, and trails are part of its build-out, not yet part of the civic calendar. For this September at least, the two Hilliards are still operating on separate schedules, which is exactly the moment worth paying attention to before they start to overlap.
Downtown isn't standing still either
The other piece of this that doesn't fit neatly into the "old versus new" framing is that Old Hilliard is redeveloping too, just at a smaller scale. The former Chase Bank building at 4056 E. Main Street, empty since the branch relocated to a new location on Parkway Lane, is being redeveloped by The Westwood Collective, a Hilliard-based real estate firm led by Andy Warnock, whose family has deep ties to the city. The plan preserves the bank building and turns it into a sit-down Italian restaurant, with a new adjoining structure adding ground-floor dining and retail plus a limited number of apartments above. The Hilliard Development Corporation, the city-partnered nonprofit that owns the property, entered the sale agreement in June 2026.
That project matters for the same reason TruePointe matters. It's evidence that both halves of the city are actively adding capacity at the same time, not one growing at the other's expense. Old Hilliard isn't the neighborhood that stayed the same while TruePointe happened around it. It's redeveloping its own vacant real estate on its own timeline, four miles from where the bigger dollars are landing.
What this actually means for your next few Thursdays
If you've been defaulting to the same two or three spots in Old Hilliard out of habit, this fall is the first season where that habit has a real alternative four miles away, not just a rumor of one. Old Scratch Pizza is aiming for a late summer or fall opening, which puts it on roughly the same timeline as the two September events. Smoked Lick BBQ hasn't announced a firm date yet, but it's part of the same wave. Medley Kitchen's fall target means it may land right in the middle of festival season rather than before it.
The practical read is simple. Old Hilliard still wins on any evening you want a drink in hand and a walk that doesn't require a car, thanks to the daily DORA and the density of the historic core. TruePointe is going to win on nights you want a specific kind of meal, a chef-driven menu, real barbecue, Neapolitan pizza, that Old Hilliard's smaller footprint hasn't had room for. Neither one replaces the other. What's actually new is that Hilliard residents now have to decide which downtown fits the night, instead of only having one.
If you're watching how a neighborhood's day-to-day center of gravity shifts, that's usually the earliest signal worth tracking, well before it shows up in any market report. Cece Miller Real Estate Group has followed Hilliard's growth for years, from the historic core to the corridors just now filling in, and we're always glad to talk through what a changing neighborhood means for the people already living in it. Request a Private Market Consultation whenever you're ready for that conversation.
