Ask someone who lives downtown what the Scioto Mile is and they will describe the fountain. The one outside Bicentennial Park with the 100-foot super shooter and the fog nozzles, the one every kid downtown has run through at least once this summer. That answer isn't wrong. It's just incomplete, and the gap between the two is worth noticing if you live within walking distance of the river.
The city's free summer fitness series, the one quietly running since June 1, doesn't stay at the fountain. It moves. Bicentennial Park hosted it in June. Dorrian Green took over in July. This month it's at Topiary Park on the near east side, and come September it lands at CCAD Park, on the other side of downtown entirely. Same format each stop: free Mat Pilates at 6:15 p.m., free yoga at 7:15 p.m., both led by 614FitClub, both open to any skill level. The program isn't advertising four separate parks so much as it's using one recurring class to walk downtown residents through green space they'd otherwise never have a reason to visit.
That rotation is the real story of the riverfront this year. Not that the fountain came back on schedule, but that the infrastructure built around it has stopped pretending the Scioto Mile is a single destination.
The park schedule nobody memorizes
Here's where the free evening classes actually are this summer, and where they're headed next:
| Month | Location | Neighborhood context |
|---|---|---|
| June | Bicentennial Park | The anchor, right at the fountain |
| July | Dorrian Green | South end of the Mile |
| August | Topiary Park (480 E. Town St.) | North end, tucked behind the Columbus Metropolitan Library |
| September | CCAD Park (60 Cleveland Ave.) | Adjacent to Columbus College of Art & Design |
If you've lived downtown for more than a summer or two, there's a decent chance you've never set foot in Topiary Park, even though it's an easy walk from the fountain and currently hosting the same free class you might have gone to in June. The program's schedule runs through September 28, which means there's still time to catch it at both remaining stops before it wraps for the year.
The fountain itself runs on its own calendar, open from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily through September 7. New this year is a sensory-friendly hour every Monday from 11 a.m. to noon, running June 2 through August 25, with the volume and sudden bursts dialed back. It's a small addition, but it's the kind of detail that tells you the park department is still actively iterating on this space more than a decade after it opened, not just running the same programming on autopilot.
The building that sat empty for a year finally has a tenant
For most of 2025, the oval-shaped building beside the fountain sat dark. Milestone 229 had operated there for 14 years before closing at the end of 2024 after lease negotiations with the city fell apart, and nobody replaced it for months.
That changed this spring with the opening of Amara, a Mediterranean restaurant from chef Josh Dalton, the same name behind Speck Italian Eatery, Veritas, and Rosalita's. Dalton didn't go looking for the space. Downtown Columbus, Inc. asked him to come take a look, and by his own account the concept didn't click until he'd stood inside it and pictured what belonged there.
"When it hit me, we should do Mediterranean there, I just thought it just has a perfect feel."
The name took months to land on. Amara means immortal or eternal in Sanskrit, and unfading in Greek, according to Columbus Underground's reporting on the opening. The restaurant seats about 70 inside, with patio seating that looks straight at the fountain during warmer months, and it's serving drinks under the Center City DORA rules, meaning a cocktail from Amara can legally travel with you down the riverfront path.
The detail that stands out isn't the menu. It's the timing. Amara opened deliberately ahead of the fountain's summer reopening, which means the restaurant's entire first season was built around the assumption that foot traffic along this stretch of the Mile would be constant, not seasonal spillover from downtown office workers. That's a bet on the riverfront as a destination in its own right, not an amenity attached to something else.
What already happened, and what's still coming
A few things on the Mile's calendar have already come and gone this summer, and they're worth naming because they set the bar for what's left:
- FountainFest kicked off the season Memorial Day weekend with a stunt dog show and DJ IQ.
- Jazz & Rib Fest ran July 24 through 26, with a new Brass Band Stage added for 2026 and a lineup that included Keiko Matsui, Jonathan Butler, and PJ Morton, plus a tribute to Columbus jazz legend Nancy Wilson.
- Dumpstaphunk played the Scioto Mile Concert Series on August 14, the most recent stop in a free lineup that's also included the Blind Boys of Alabama, the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, and Ruthie Foster.
What's left on the calendar runs through late September. The Columbus Jazz Orchestra plays September 18, the Dan Tyminski Band closes the concert series September 25, and the whole season wraps with CBUS Soul Fest over Labor Day weekend, featuring Stokley and Lalah Hathaway. Full details on the remaining concert dates and festival lineup are worth bookmarking if you haven't already.
There's also a smaller, less-publicized perk running right now. The boathouse near the Main Street Bridge cuts the price of a one-hour kayak or paddleboard rental in half every Friday this month, on top of the complimentary sessions it already runs some weeks. It's easy to miss if you're not already looking at the boat launch as part of your routine, which is exactly the point.
Four parks, one habit
None of this is really about any single event. It's about what the rotating class schedule and the Amara opening both suggest: the people who manage this stretch of downtown are treating the Scioto Mile less like a park and more like a corridor, one that's supposed to pull you from Bicentennial Park north to Topiary and south to Dorrian Green over the course of a normal summer, not just on festival weekends.
If your mental map of downtown still starts and ends at the fountain, the last few months gave you reason to widen it. The free class at Topiary Park this month is the same program you might have skipped in June. The kayak discount at the boat launch has nothing to do with the concert series two blocks away. And the restaurant that sat empty for a year is now the kind of place people plan an entire evening around, patio seat facing the water, drink in hand, walking distance from wherever you actually live.
That's the shift worth noticing. Not that summer came back to the riverfront, but that it spread out.
If you're weighing whether downtown living fits your next move, or you're already here and curious what your home might be worth in a market that keeps building reasons to stay, the team at Columbus Prime Realty knows this stretch of the city block by block. Reach out for a conversation, or get your free home valuation any time you're ready.
