If you live in Bexley, you already know the walk. Brassica for a lunch bowl, Kittie's Café for a cinnamon roll, a paperback from Gramercy Books, maybe a late show at the Drexel. The rhythm of East Main hasn't shifted much in a decade. What's happening this fall isn't a wave of new restaurants replacing old ones. It's a single tax parcel getting rewritten at a scale the street has never absorbed before, and the ripple effects will show up quietly, in ways residents will feel before they read about them.
The story of East Main in 2026 lives at one address, 2200 East Main. Everything else on the corridor is context for what that address is about to do to daily life here.
The one address doing the heavy lifting
The Fitzgerald sits on the former Trinity Lutheran Seminary apartments site, land Capital University had owned and no longer needed. Continental Development Ventures, run by Bexley native Frank Kass, took it on after a university RFP process. The Fitzgerald will include about 230 apartments, more than 12,500 square feet of office space and 11,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space, including a proposed new location of Hudson 29 by Cameron Mitchell Restaurants.
For scale, that's a five-to-six story building on a three-acre parcel that until recently paid no property tax at all. The developer requested and was granted Tax Increment Financing to assist with the funding of eligible public improvements, primarily including a structured parking garage which will be open to members of the public visiting Bexley Square and The Fitzgerald. In the instance of this property, which is currently tax exempt as a property owned by Capital University / Trinity Seminary, there are not currently property taxes collected on the site. The parking garage is the detail most residents will interact with first. If you've ever circled the block on a Saturday night looking for a spot near the Drexel, the math is about to change.
The Fitzgerald Bexley is a luxury apartment complex at 2200 E Main Street that said it will begin leasing for spring and summer 2026 shortly, although it declined to set a concrete date. Leasing signage and move-ins are the first thing to watch this fall. The retail bays along Main will fill in behind that timeline.
What Hudson 29 actually changes about the block
Cameron Mitchell's Hudson 29 was announced as a Fitzgerald tenant in June 2026. Plans call for a 5,500-square-foot restaurant with seating for 178 guests, including 42 seats on a covered and heated patio. The target opening is spring 2027, so this fall you'll see build-out, not service.
The specific number that matters here is 178 seats. East Main's existing sit-down dining rooms are smaller. Giuseppe's Ritrovo, The Top Steakhouse, Newfangled Kitchen and Harvest Pizzeria all run on tighter footprints. Dropping a 178-seat contemporary American room onto the corridor doesn't compete with those places directly, it changes the ceiling on how many people can plan to be on the street at 7 p.m. on a Friday. That's a foot-traffic story, not a menu story.
"Guests can expect the same Hudson 29 menu they know and love, paired with a fresh, thoughtfully designed space that reflects the character of the Bexley neighborhood."
That's David Miller, president and COO of Cameron Mitchell Restaurants, in the announcement that Bexley will be the third Hudson 29, joining existing locations in Upper Arlington and New Albany. If you've been to either of those, you have a preview of the room coming to your walking radius.
Summerfest is the stress test
Before any of the Fitzgerald retail turns on, the corridor gets its usual September rehearsal. Bexley Summerfest is scheduled for September 6, 2026. If you've been in town a few years, the choreography is familiar. East Main Street is closed between College Avenue and Pleasant Ridge Avenue from 12:00 pm to 9:00 pm, traffic on College and Pleasant Ridge is not impacted, and Drexel Avenue closes between East Main and Sherwood from 9:00 am to 10:00 pm.
This year the closure runs directly past the Fitzgerald construction fencing. That's worth knowing if you're walking the festival with kids or trying to route around it by car. The Brewfest ticketing area is the only gated portion, and children are permitted inside with a ticketed adult, per the city's Summerfest page. The rest of the day flows across the closed blocks the way it always has.
The Drexel remains the anchor no one is rebuilding
While the block reorganizes around it, the Drexel Theatre at 2254 East Main keeps doing what it has done since 1937. Drexel Theater is a historic Art Deco and Art Moderne theater located in Bexley, Ohio, listed in the National Register of Historic Places on June 8, 2015. A repertory cinema, the theater frequently shows both older and newer films, became a non-profit cinema in 2011 following a leadership change, and is currently owned by the group Friends of the Drexel and managed by the Columbus Association for the Performing Arts.
For residents, the practical fall note is parking. Parking is available in the lot behind the theatre with access from Drexel Avenue, on the north side of East Main, both sides of Drexel Avenue, and nearby side streets. After 6 pm on weekdays and on the weekends, additional parking is available at the Bexley municipal parking lot two driveways west of the theatre and the south side of East Main. Once the Fitzgerald garage opens to the public as part of the TIF-funded improvements, that map gets a new option. Until then, the existing routing stands.
Where to eat on the way to a show
Nothing about the corridor's established rooms is changing this fall. If anything, the incoming density makes it worth revisiting the places you may have stopped noticing:
- Giuseppe's Ritrovo for scratch Italian and a cocktail program that has quietly become one of the more serious on the east side.
- Brassica at 2158 East Main for a fast Mediterranean bowl before an early Drexel screening.
- Newfangled Kitchen at 2258 East Main, still the newest of the sit-down rooms on this stretch.
- The Top Steakhouse if you want the old-school Bexley night out, live piano included.
- Harvest Pizzeria for wood-fired pies and small plates, next door to Brassica.
- Kittie's Café and Cherbourg Bakery for morning coffee, the latter fully gluten and nut free.
- Block's Bagels, a neighborhood institution since the 1960s, for a Sunday routine that predates most of the block.
- Zen Cha Tea Salon at 2396 East Main when you want a quieter table.
- Gramercy Books when the meal is really an excuse to browse afterward.
None of these places need the Fitzgerald to work. They already do. What the Fitzgerald changes is how many people are within a two-block walk of them on any given evening.
The other corridor worth watching
While Main Street gets the headlines, the northern edge of the city is quietly next. The Bexley CIC has acquired property on Cassady Avenue and is working to redevelop that corridor as thoughtfully as we are developing parts of Main Street. This will include streetscape improvements and potentially restaurant or retail spots, in addition to a mixed-use development featuring affordable housing and a new senior center.
That's a longer runway than the Fitzgerald, and nothing dramatic will be visible on Cassady this fall. But if you drive it regularly, the surveying and small acquisitions are worth noticing. The city has told anyone who will listen that Main Street is the template.
What to actually do with all this
The short version for a Bexley resident this fall: walk the corridor once with fresh eyes. Notice which Fitzgerald retail bays have paper on the windows and which don't. Check the Drexel calendar before you commit to a Saturday. Put September 6 on the family calendar and plan a Summerfest route that accounts for the construction fence on the north side of Main. If you've been in the same Sunday routine for five years, it's about to look different by next spring, and the good version of that change starts with knowing what's coming.
When you're ready to talk through what any of this means for your own home, whether you're thinking about selling into a stronger corridor story or looking to buy closer to the walk, Cam Taylor Realtors has spent two decades helping Bexley and central Ohio families make those calls with steady, local guidance. Reach out when the timing feels right.
