For a long time, the honest answer to "what's new in Hilliard" was Old Hilliard, First Responders Park, and the Franklin County Fair. The Main Street block was quiet in a nice way. TruePointe was mostly a rendering on a fence. If you wanted a real night out, you drove to Dublin.
That answer is expiring. Between the Chase bank redevelopment on East Main Street and the first tenants signing at TruePointe on Trueman Boulevard, Hilliard is turning into a two-district town in the span of a single year. This post is a resident's-eye tour of what has opened, what will open by year end, and what to actually do on the weekends between now and the first frost.
Main Street is quietly reinventing itself
For years, Downtown Hilliard's food scene was a handful of dependable spots and one long-running smokehouse. That stopped being true in June. Harvest Pizzeria announced a new location planned for downtown Hilliard, taking over the space at 3987 Main St, a historic property that most recently housed Legacy Smokehouse, which closed last month after nine years of operation. If you have eaten at the German Village or Clintonville locations, you already know the format: wood-fired pizzas, a real beer list, a room that fills up on a Friday. The Hilliard restaurant will mark the sixth location for Harvest Pizzeria, which first launched in German Village in 2011 and has since expanded to Clintonville, Dublin, Bexley, and Granville.
Two blocks east, a bigger change is under way. A mixed-use development featuring an Italian restaurant, along with retail and residential space, is in the works for Downtown Hilliard, after The Westwood Collective entered an agreement to purchase and redevelop the former Chase bank property at 4056 E. Main St. Plans call for a sit-down Italian restaurant to move into the former bank building and for a mixed-use building to be constructed on the adjoining parking lot, with dining and retail on the ground floor and a limited number of luxury apartments on the upper level. The developer has local roots, which matters for pacing. The Hilliard-based company owns and manages several commercial and residential properties throughout Hilliard and central Ohio, and founder Andy Warnock has said it is meaningful to invest in the community his family calls home.
Read those two projects together and Main Street stops being a preservation exercise. It becomes a restaurant row with residential upstairs, which is a fundamentally different animal.
TruePointe is no longer a rendering
The east side of the city has been the "someday" story for three or four years. TruePointe finally has enough signed leases to sketch what a Saturday night there will feel like.
The anchors are stacking up faster than most residents realize:
| Tenant | Type | Opening window |
|---|---|---|
| Old Scratch Pizza | Neapolitan pizzeria and beer hall | Late summer or fall 2026 |
| Teriyaki Madness | Fast-casual teriyaki bowls | Q3 2026 |
| Culinary Collectives concept | Chef-driven full service | Summer 2026 |
| Hilton Home2 Suites | Hotel | Under construction |
| Apartment community | 360 units | Under construction |
The pizza tenant is the one to watch. Founded in 2016, Old Scratch Pizza currently has four locations in southwest Ohio, including restaurants in Dayton, Troy, Beavercreek and Centerville. Hilliard is its first crack at central Ohio. The restaurant will feature a full-service bar and a spacious patio, and is set to open in late summer or fall of 2026, alongside the initial launch of the TruePointe development.
The chef-driven concept from Culinary Collectives is the wildcard. Behind the concept is restaurant group Culinary Collectives, owned by Derek Bush, who has more than 20 years of hospitality experience, including leadership roles with Cameron Mitchell Restaurants and the Ohio State University's Hospitality Management program. That is not a suburban-mall pedigree. The team has said the goal is a rotating menu that mixes comfort food with refined technique, which is the sort of promise you have to see on a plate to believe, but the résumé is real.
Fast-casual is filling in behind them. Teriyaki Madness is slated to open in the third quarter of 2026 within TruePointe, a 60-acre development on Hilliard's east side that includes office space, a Hilton Home2 Suites hotel, restaurants, cafés, coworking space, and a 360-unit apartment community, designed as a walkable destination with public gathering areas, green space, trails, sidewalks, and parking garages. Sixty acres with a hotel and 360 apartments is not a strip center. It is closer in scale to a small Bridge Park, and it is happening on the opposite side of I-270 from Old Hilliard, which changes the geometry of the city.
The Hilliard Rome corridor kept moving too
While Main Street and TruePointe grabbed headlines, the retail corridor near I-270 added a tenant that a lot of Hilliard families have been driving to Dublin or Grandview to reach. CAVA's first Columbus-area location is set to open in Hilliard at 1790 Hilliard Rome Rd, the first of three Columbus locations expected to open this year. The Hilliard location will employ between 25 and 40 people. The other two Columbus stores are still coming. Additional expected Columbus locations include Polaris at 1370 Polaris Pkwy and Grove City at 4120 Buckeye Pkwy, with opening dates for those two not yet announced. For a corridor that has been dominated by national chains and quick-service, a Mediterranean fast-casual with a real vegetable program is a modest but real upgrade.
Weekend plans between now and the first frost
The city and Destination Hilliard have loaded the September calendar with things that a resident who already owns a house here would still put on a Saturday. A short list worth writing on the fridge:
- September 11, First Responders Park. The community is invited to join Hilliard Division of Police and Norwich Township Fire at First Responders Park to remember the 9/11 attacks that claimed nearly 3,000 lives in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania.
- Sunday, September 13, 1 to 4 p.m., Roger A. Reynolds Municipal Park. City Fall Fest. Enjoy hayrides, a pumpkin patch, a petting zoo, inflatables and games, face painting, balloon artists, live dog shows, and more, plus live music from Simba Jordan. The dog demos are worth the trip on their own. Performance Dogs of Ohio is headed to Hilliard for the Annual Fall Festival on Sunday, Sept 13 from 1 to 4 p.m., with showtimes at 1:30 and 3:00.
- Tuesday evenings through September 22, Hilliard United Methodist Church. The Tuesday food-truck series runs from 4 to 7 p.m. at 5445 Scioto Darby Rd., with updates on which trucks are on site posted through the season.
- Saturdays and Sundays through September, Weaver Park. The Hilliard Ohio Historical Society Historical Village is open Saturdays and Sundays from 1 to 5 p.m., April 25 through September, 2026. Bring an out-of-town guest here before the season closes.
The Celebration at the Station Thursday series at Hilliard's Station Park runs its final acts through this window too, which is the closest thing Hilliard has to a standing weekly ritual downtown.
Reading the map that is emerging
Hilliard used to be a one-district town. If you were meeting friends without leaving city limits, you were in Old Hilliard. That was the whole conversation. By the end of this fall, the city has three distinct clusters doing three different things:
- Downtown Hilliard on East Main Street, where the Chase bank redevelopment and Harvest Pizzeria are turning a preserved streetscape into a dinner destination.
- TruePointe on Trueman Boulevard, where a 60-acre walkable district with a hotel, apartments, and a chef-driven restaurant lineup is opening in phases through late 2026.
- The Hilliard Rome retail corridor, where CAVA and its neighbors keep the fast-casual bench deeper than it was six months ago.
That is not a small change in daily life. It is a re-mapping of where a Friday night happens. Old Hilliard does not lose. The gravitational center just stops being a single block.
For homeowners who have watched Dublin's Bridge Park absorb regional dining traffic since 2016, this fall is the first time it feels plausible that Hilliard could hold its own residents on weekend nights instead of exporting them across Cosgray Road. Whether that is good news depends on how you feel about traffic on East Main after 6 p.m. Either way, it is worth knowing the map is being redrawn while you were paying attention to school pickup.
If you have been thinking about your own next move
Neighborhood context shapes almost every decision that runs through a home purchase or sale, from pricing strategy to which upgrades will actually return value at closing. If you own in Hilliard and are curious what these openings mean for your address, or you are eyeing a move within the city, Columbus Prime Realty can talk through the specifics with you.
Get your free home valuation and we will follow up with a straightforward read on your street, not a generic market summary.
