Two Hilliards, One September: What's Actually Worth Your Weekend This Fall
August 6, 2026
August 6, 2026
For years, the second Saturday of September in Hilliard meant one thing: you walked down Main Street to Old Hilliardfest and ran into every neighbor you had. That festival is gone. What replaced it, and what's happening a mile east of I-270 at the same time, tells you almost everything about where the city is heading.
This post is for people who already live here and want the September calendar without the fluff. It's also an argument: Hilliard is now two social centers running in parallel, and this fall is the first time you can really feel it.
Old Hilliard's anchor weekend is intact, just under a new name and a shorter clock. For the Love of Hilliard was born from a collaborative effort between Destination Hilliard, the City of Hilliard, and local businesses to fill the gap left by the cancellation of Hilliardfest, and this year it runs Saturday, September 12, 2026, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. in Downtown Hilliard. The structural change from the old festival is worth understanding before you show up: as opposed to things happening on the streets in Old Hilliard, all activities and vendors are set up on the properties of participating businesses. That means fewer closed streets, more foot traffic through actual storefronts, and a passport-style loop rather than a single midway.
If you want the concrete draw, it's the Shop Local Passport, which asks you to visit participating brick-and-mortar businesses, collect stamps with purchases, and earn an exclusive event tote; gather five or more stamps and you're entered to win gift baskets filled with Hilliard merchandise and gift cards.
The next day is the city's own event, and it's a different animal entirely. The Fall Festival is at Roger A. Reynolds Municipal Park on Sunday, September 13, from 1 to 4 p.m., with showtimes at 1:30 and 3:00. What's actually on the ground:
Two events, two locations, one weekend. If you have kids, Sunday is the day. If you want to actually spend money in Old Hilliard and see who's still running the counter there, Saturday is the one that matters.
Here is the thesis nobody is stating out loud: Hilliard's dining center of gravity is moving from Main Street to Trueman Boulevard. Not entirely, and not overnight, but decisively.
Consider what's landing at TruePointe this year. TruePointe is a $250 million project from Hilliard-based developer Equity Commercial Real Estate Solutions, a 27-acre development set to include apartments, a hotel, retail stores, office space and restaurants. The tenant list has quietly filled in: alongside Medley Kitchen, TruePointe houses food concepts like Qahwah House, Smoked Lick BBQ, Drunch Eatery + Bar, Old Scratch Pizza and Teriyaki Madness.
Medley Kitchen is the one to watch. Culinary Collectives, led by restaurant industry veteran Derek Bush, unveiled the name and additional details for its highly anticipated new and first brick-and-mortar restaurant, Medley Kitchen, set to open later this fall at the TruePointe development in Hilliard. Bush, a graduate of Ohio State University's hospitality management program, brings more than 20 years of industry experience to the concept, including about 12 years with Cameron Mitchell Restaurants. The format is a genuine departure for the west side: the chef-driven menu will feature shareable small plates inspired by tapas, dim sum and mezze, giving guests the opportunity to mix and match dishes while exploring a variety of global flavors. It will initially operate for dinner service only and is expected to employ more than 50 staff members.
"TruePointe continues to evolve into an exciting destination for dining and entertainment, and we're thrilled to become part of that energy," Bush said in the June 17 announcement.
Behind Medley, another chain is queued up. Teriyaki Madness, a fast-casual restaurant specializing in Seattle-style teriyaki, plans to open a new location at the TruePointe mixed-use development in Hilliard, slated to open in the third quarter of 2026. The pattern is clear: within a 27-acre footprint you'll have coffee (Qahwah House), pizza (Old Scratch, out of Dayton), barbecue (Smoked Lick), Seattle teriyaki, brunch-and-bar (Drunch), and a chef-driven small-plates concept, all walkable from apartments and a hotel.
If TruePointe is filling in from empty, Old Hilliard is filling in from vacancy. The most concrete example: a mixed-use development featuring an Italian restaurant, along with retail and residential space, is in the works for Downtown Hilliard, with the Hilliard Development Corporation entering into an agreement allowing local real estate firm The Westwood Collective to purchase and redevelop the former Chase bank property at 4056 E. Main St.. The building had been sitting empty since the former Chase bank on East Main Street closed last year when the bank relocated within Hilliard to a newly constructed branch at 4199 Parkway Lane. Project 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 space on the ground floor and a limited number of luxury apartments on the upper level.
That's the trade Old Hilliard is making: fewer street festivals, more sit-down. The infrastructure supports it too. Old Hilliard's designated outdoor refreshment area runs year round now, with DORA hours noon to 9 p.m., every day. If you've been in the area a while, that year-round schedule is newer than most residents realize, and it's the reason a Thursday summer evening on Main Street feels different from three years ago.
The two big weekends aren't the only thing worth showing up for. The Hilliard Ohio Historical Society is doing more this fall than in any year I can remember, tied to the country's 250th and the Society's own 60th.
If you have out-of-town guests visiting, the walking tour on the 19th is the single best thing you can do with two hours in Hilliard. It costs less than lunch and it will change how you look at your own commute for a week.
Two things are happening at once. Downtown Hilliard is trading a decades-old street festival for a business-anchored community day and a slower, restaurant-and-residential rebuild of Main Street. TruePointe is compressing a whole dining district into 27 acres of new construction on the east side, with Medley Kitchen serving as the credibility play — a chef with real Columbus pedigree willing to open his first brick-and-mortar out there rather than in the Short North.
For a resident, the practical takeaway is simple. You don't have to pick a side, but you should know which one you're driving to on any given night. Old Hilliard is where you go when you want to walk between three places on the same block and run into someone you know. TruePointe is where you go when you want dim-sum-adjacent small plates and a hotel bar in the same parking structure. That's a real choice Hilliard didn't offer five years ago, and September 2026 is the month it becomes visible.
If you're thinking about what your own block looks like in that shift, or whether the house you've been in for a decade fits the way you actually use the city now, that's a conversation worth having in person. The team at Home Connections Group lives and works in these neighborhoods, and we're happy to talk through what's changing on your street specifically. Let's Get You Home.
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