Nocterra Brewing turns eleven this week. The celebration started today at the Depot Street taproom, the same spot where a race called the Quitter's Run wrapped up its looping 3.2-mile course through downtown Powell yesterday, with distances ranging from an eighth-marathon to a six-hour ultra for anyone determined enough to keep circling back to the beer garden. Tomorrow the anniversary tour moves to Nocterra's Marysville location. None of that is new information if you already live within walking distance of Depot Street. What's changed is what's now within that same walking distance.
Cross the block from Nocterra's beer garden and you land on East Olentangy Street, where a rooftop bar has been operating above a coworking campus since April. Keep walking and you'll pass storefronts still working through zoning paperwork for a boutique hotel that isn't built yet. That gap, between what's already open and what's still a line item on a City Council agenda, is the part of downtown Powell's makeover most residents haven't fully clocked. The corridor didn't get one long, gradual facelift. It got a cluster of finished projects landing within about five months of each other, sitting right next to a second cluster that's still just proposals.
What actually opened while the headlines still said "coming"
Powell's downtown redevelopment has been a recurring news item since 2024, when COhatch broke ground on a coworking campus at 50 and 60 E. Olentangy St. For most of that time, "downtown Powell redevelopment" meant renderings, zoning meetings, and press releases about future plans. That changed this spring. COhatch's coworking space opened to members in March 2026, and on April 9 the rooftop bar on the third floor, Lani Rooftop Lounge, opened to the public. It's a Hawaiian-inspired concept with a menu built around globally influenced small plates like tuna tartare, smoked fish spread, and wagyu meatballs, led by culinary director Lingo Quichocho alongside Columbus-based head chef Michael Gadd. The space includes a patio, a main dining room, and what the operators call a sky room, with panoramic views over the corridor it now sits above.
That's a finished, operating business. Compare it to the other headline project in the same news cycle: a proposed boutique hotel and two restaurants at 147 and 173 W. Olentangy St. Those plans went before Powell's City Council Development Committee back in November 2025, with the developer, Transform Construction, seeking a 75 percent property tax abatement over 15 years on a combined investment of about $7.8 million. As of this month, that project is still a proposal working through the city's approval process, not a business you can walk into.
Here's the split, laid out plainly:
| Project | Status as of August 2026 |
|---|---|
| COhatch coworking campus, 50-60 E. Olentangy St. | Open since March 2026 |
| Lani Rooftop Lounge (COhatch's third floor) | Open to the public since April 9, 2026 |
| Khaab Indian Kitchen & Bar | Announced for a Powell location, no opening date confirmed |
| Restaurants and 16-room boutique hotel, 147 & 173 W. Olentangy St. | Proposal before Powell City Council since November 2025, tax abatement still pending |
Khaab Indian Kitchen & Bar, building on its original Bexley location, announced a Powell expansion earlier this year, but there's no confirmed opening date attached to that announcement yet. If you've been holding off on treating downtown Powell as a real weeknight option because you're waiting for "the redevelopment" to finish, you've been waiting for the wrong piece of it. The rooftop bar is done. The hotel is still paperwork.
The corridor's calendar filled in faster than its skyline
New buildings get the headlines, but the more telling change is how much is now happening on a recurring basis within a few blocks of each other. Nocterra's beer garden on Depot Street runs a weekly Run Club every Thursday at 6:15 p.m., organized with Columbus Running Company and open to any pace or ability level. Wednesdays bring trivia. Tuesdays bring bingo. None of that is brand new this year, but it's worth noting because it means the corridor already had a built-in evening habit before COhatch and Lani gave it a second one.
Just under three weeks from now, on Sunday, September 13, downtown Powell hosts its Street Market & Business Expo, an event pulling more than 60 local vendors into the streets from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., with proceeds benefiting the Powell-Liberty Historical Society. It's the kind of event that used to be the ceiling of what happened downtown on a given weekend. Now it's one entry on a longer list that includes a rooftop bar's dinner service and a brewery's anniversary tour.
Village Green Park, a few minutes' walk from all of this at 47 Hall Street, remains the anchor for anyone with kids in tow, with a playground, a pond, walking paths, and an amphitheater that hosts the Powell Community Band. One honest caveat if you're planning a visit this week: the splash pad is currently closed for maintenance, so if that's the draw, check the city's events page before you make the trip.
Walk it once and the change is easier to feel than to explain. Park near Depot Street, and in under five minutes on foot you pass a brewery that's been open for eleven years, a coworking campus that opened five months ago, and a rooftop bar that opened four months ago, before you ever reach the block where the hotel is still just a rendering.
What this means if you already live here
The mistake is treating downtown Powell's transformation as a single, still-unfinished project. It's actually two separate tracks moving at very different speeds. The track that involves construction crews and City Council votes, like the boutique hotel proposal, moves the way government approvals always do: slowly, with tax abatement negotiations and committee meetings that stretch for months. The track that involves an operator signing a lease and opening the doors moves much faster, and that's the track that's already produced a rooftop bar, a coworking campus, and an expanding restaurant scene, all functioning today.
If your mental model of downtown Powell is still "under construction," it's about a year out of date. The corridor between Depot Street and Olentangy Street now supports a full evening out, from a race that finishes at a beer garden to a rooftop dinner with a view back down at that same beer garden. The hotel will get built eventually, on its own government timeline. Everything else already has.
For Powell homeowners who've watched this shift from a front porch a few blocks away, it's worth knowing which parts of the story are locked in and which are still speculative, especially if a neighbor asks what's actually changed. Now you'll know the difference between what's open and what's just an agenda item.
If you're weighing what a home near this corridor is actually worth now that the rooftop bar and coworking campus are running rather than proposed, the team at The Oracle Group tracks these shifts block by block across Powell and the surrounding suburbs. Start Your Home Journey with a conversation grounded in what's actually open, not just what's been announced.
