For the past year, the conversation downtown has been about the hotel. Sixteen rooms. A $7.8 million combined investment. Tax abatements up for a council vote. If you've lived in Powell long enough to have an opinion about parking on Olentangy Street, you've probably heard something about it by now.
Here's what almost nobody mentions in the same conversation: the block already changed without it. Powell got its first rooftop bar in April. A coworking campus with a restored historic home opened in March. A locally owned Italian restaurant that's been quietly building a following for years is still there, still full on Saturdays. The hotel is still a rendering. Everything else is not.
What's Actually Open on Olentangy Street
COhatch's 14,000-square-foot campus at 50 and 60 East Olentangy Street opened to members on March 2, 2026, according to the company's own announcement. It's the company's 38th building restoration nationally, which matters less than what's actually there: coworking space, private offices, event rooms, and the Middlebury Member House, a restored historic home on the property built for weddings and private gatherings.
The part that changed how the block feels on a Friday night sits on top of it. Lani Rooftop Lounge opened to the public on April 9, 2026, offering globally inspired small plates and craft cocktails on an indoor-outdoor rooftop above the coworking space. Local coverage from 614NOW called it Powell's first rooftop bar and noted it's one of only about ten in all of Central Ohio. That's not a marketing line, it's a genuine rarity for a suburb this size, and it's why the lounge has become the thing people mention first when they talk about what's different downtown.
A few doors down, Novella Osteria at 170 West Olentangy Street was already there before any of this started, and it's worth separating from the new-opening story for exactly that reason. It's a locally owned, chef-driven Italian restaurant with a "less is more" philosophy, and it's built a genuine following, rated 4.8 stars across nearly 1,200 OpenTable diners. If you're new to the block, Novella is proof that downtown Powell didn't need a redevelopment plan to produce a restaurant people already loved. It's the baseline the new openings now get compared against.
Where Cava Fits, and Why It's a Different Trip
Cava opened its Powell-area location at 9711 Sawmill Parkway in early August 2026, according to NBC4's reporting on the opening. The company said the location is projected to employ between 25 and 40 people.
Worth knowing if you're mapping out where to actually walk to: Sawmill Parkway is not the same trip as Olentangy Street. It's a few miles from the historic downtown core, closer to the Liberty Township line, and it's a car errand rather than a walkable stop. So when people say Powell "got a Cava," that's true, but it's not part of the same corridor that got a rooftop bar and a coworking campus. Downtown is one story. Sawmill Parkway is another. Conflating them is how you end up disappointed when you walk from Lani expecting to find a Mediterranean bowl next door.
What's Announced but Not Confirmed
Khaab Indian Kitchen & Bar announced plans in early 2026 for a location at 230 West Olentangy Street, building on the success of its Bexley restaurant. The press release promised a spring 2026 grand opening with traditional recipes and a contemporary bar program. As of the most recent local reporting, the opening date had not been finalized. That's a meaningful distinction if you're the kind of person who plans a weekend around what's actually serving food, not what a press release said six months ago.
The bigger unconfirmed piece is the hotel. Transform Construction submitted plans to Powell's Development Committee 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 presentation, made at a November 5, 2025 council meeting, put the combined investment at roughly $7.8 million. City officials were weighing 75 percent property tax abatements over 15 years for both sites, which would save the developer about $190,000 on the restaurant project and roughly $1.5 million on the hotel.
Powell's economic development administrator, Sean Hughes, made the case for the project in plain terms at that meeting:
"Why more restaurants? Quite simply, it's because our residents want them. They want to see more choices and restaurants here in our downtown in particular, and Powell in general."
That's a fair read of what's already happened. But it's also worth remembering that as of the most recent reporting available, this was a proposal under review, not a project with a shovel in the ground. If you've been holding off on a downtown dinner plan because you heard "there's a hotel coming," you might be waiting on something that hasn't cleared its own council vote yet.
The Infrastructure Nobody Photographs
The reason downtown Powell feels different to walk through now isn't only the businesses. Public work has been running alongside the private development the whole time. Sidewalk construction, on-street parking additions, and utility upgrades have been coordinated along East Olentangy Street to support walkability, and the city has plans to extend Scioto Street with new public parking attached. None of that makes for an exciting headline, but it's the reason you can actually get from the coworking campus to the rooftop lounge to Novella's front door without dodging traffic or hunting for a spot three blocks away. Infrastructure is the least photographed part of a downtown revival and usually the part that decides whether people actually show up.
What This Actually Means If You Live Here
If you're a longtime Powell resident, the practical shift is this: downtown now supports an entire evening in a way it didn't two years ago. Coffee or coworking during the day, dinner at Novella or eventually Khaab, drinks on a rooftop that didn't exist before spring, all within a few blocks that are finally built for walking between them. That's a genuinely different pattern of use than what the corridor offered before COhatch's campus opened, and it's happened faster than most of the public conversation has caught up to.
The hotel might still come. The tax abatement math the city presented, built on the state's estimate that an overnight visitor spends roughly $327 a day, suggests the project could generate meaningful economic activity if it's fully occupied over 15 years. But that's a projection attached to a proposal, not a confirmed addition to the block. The rooftop bar, the coworking campus, and the Italian restaurant with the loyal following are not projections. They're open now, and they're the reason downtown Powell already reads differently than it did a year ago, hotel or no hotel.
If you've watched this stretch of Olentangy Street change and you're wondering what it means for property values or the right time to make a move in Powell, that's a conversation worth having with someone who's tracking it block by block, not just watching the headlines. Connie Sadowski works this market daily and can walk you through what these changes mean for your specific street. If you want a clearer read on where your Powell home stands today, start with a free home valuation and get a number instead of a guess.
