Drive down Mill Street through Gahanna's Creekside District this month and you'll notice the gaps before you notice anything else. The two-story building that used to hold the Keating Law Firm and the old Gahanna Convention & Visitors Bureau office is gone. So is the single-story warehouse building at 169 Mill Street, the commercial building at 153-155 Mill next to The Residences at Creekside, and two more structures across the road toward Walnut Street. Five buildings, cleared in a matter of weeks this past July. Grass has already been seeded over the lots to hold the soil until something else happens.
Most people who live near Creekside have drawn the obvious conclusion from that gap: construction is coming. It isn't, not yet, and understanding why is more useful than watching for cranes that aren't showing up on schedule.
What actually happened this summer
The demolition wasn't the redevelopment. It was the cleanup that had to happen before the redevelopment could even apply for permits. The Gahanna Community Improvement Corporation, a nonprofit that's been quietly assembling parcels along Mill and North High streets since 2022, used an Ohio Department of Development brownfield remediation grant to fund the teardown, the same kind of state cleanup dollars that turn long-vacant commercial buildings into buildable land before a developer ever touches them.
The city council vote that made all of this possible happened back on November 17, 2025, when members approved a development agreement with two Columbus-based companies, developer Connect Real Estate and investment firm Benson Capital, alongside the CIC. The vote was 6-1. Councilmember Nancy McGregor cast the lone dissent, citing concerns about the loss of existing parking, a detail that turns out to matter more than it sounds like it should.
Councilmember Jamille Jones argued the opposite case at that same meeting:
"No store wants to go into an empty mall, no business wants to come into an empty Creekside. And the kinds of businesses that can truly sustain the area simply will not come if Creekside remains what it is today."
That's the case for the $100 million project in a sentence. Whether it convinces you or not, the vote happened, the state grant paid for the teardown, and the lots are empty. What comes after that is where the timeline gets slower than the visible progress suggests.
Why the towers aren't close
The development agreement gives Connect Real Estate and Benson Capital up to three years to substantially complete phase one, and that clock doesn't start until all governmental and financing approvals are in hand. As of this summer, they weren't. City staff have been explicit that no ground gets broken until traffic studies, utility reviews, and further permitting clear, and those reviews were still pending when the demolition wrapped in July.
That's a meaningful gap between what you can see from your car and what's actually locked in. The empty lots are real. The seven-story buildings planned for either side of Mill Street, the boutique hotel, the coworking space, the parking structure, all of that is still working through engineering and approvals that haven't concluded. If you're expecting scaffolding by spring, the city's own answers to residents don't support that expectation yet.
The thing that's actually starting first
Here's what will change Creekside before any private building does: a separate, city-led flood mitigation project tied to conversations the city has been having with FEMA since 2020. It's aimed at the Creekside parking garage and the plaza built alongside Big Walnut Creek, and it's scheduled to begin this fall, not years from now.
The work itself is unglamorous compared to a hotel announcement. A clay cap goes in along the creek bank to keep water out of the garage structure. Sections of the garage get reconstructed. Temporary flood wall systems, sized for a 100-year flood event, get deployed ahead of high water rather than built permanently into the landscape. None of it changes the skyline. All of it is what actually starts moving dirt in Creekside this year.
The city has said the garage stays open through construction, with only smaller sections affected at a time, and that a full funding strategy and construction schedule were still being finalized as of this summer. If you're the kind of person who parks in that garage for dinner at Three Creeks Kitchen + Cocktails or a Saturday morning at Cafe Creekside, this is the project that touches your routine first, months before the private development breaks ground.
The parking detail nobody's connecting
McGregor's dissenting vote was about parking, and the numbers back up why she raised it, even if the picture is more mixed than a single vote suggests. Phase one of the private project will be fully self-parked through a new above-ground garage built as part of that phase, which means the apartments and retail going in first won't draw down the existing supply in the district. That's the part that should ease concern.
Phase two is different. According to the city's own published answers to residents, phase two would eliminate the municipal parking lot at the corner of High and Town Street, a lot that currently serves the district. That's not scheduled to happen for years, since phase two doesn't start until phase one is finished, but it's the detail that explains why a councilmember voted no on a project everyone else called a win. The self-parking promise applies to the first building. It doesn't apply to the lot that disappears later.
What's actually on the calendar this fall
If you want to see where this goes without waiting for a news release, the city is holding a public conversation about it in person. Here's what's confirmed for the next few months in and around Creekside:
- October 9, 4 to 7 p.m., Creekside Plaza. An open-house style conversation with city staff about the future of Creekside, open to anyone with questions about the flood mitigation timeline, the plaza redesign concepts, or the private development. Email questions ahead of time to [email protected] if you'd rather not wait in line.
- The Holiday Lights Celebration, held annually in the Creekside District, returns this November with the tree lighting, a parade, and Santa's arrival, followed by nightly displays through early January. The city hasn't said whether garage or plaza construction will affect any part of this year's event, which is one of the open questions worth asking at the October 9 session.
- December 5, noon to 3 p.m., Gahanna Historical Society. A Victorian Christmas event, a smaller and separate gathering that isn't affected by any of the Creekside construction planning since it's held at the Historical Society grounds rather than the plaza itself.
The city has said plainly that it doesn't yet know which events might be affected once the flood mitigation construction schedule firms up, which is one more reason the October 9 open house is worth attending if you have a stake in how the district functions this winter rather than in 2029.
What this actually tells a Gahanna resident
The headline version of this story is a $100 million redevelopment. The version that matters if you live near Mill Street is quieter: the empty lots you're driving past are the result of a state cleanup grant, not a groundbreaking, and the real near-term disruption is happening underground and inside a parking garage, driven by a flood mitigation plan that predates the towers by five years. The apartments, the hotel, the rooftop dining people have started talking about are still waiting on traffic studies. The clay cap and the flood walls are not.
That distinction matters for anyone who parks at Creekside on a Friday night, walks the plaza during Holiday Lights, or just wants to know what "under construction" is going to mean for the next twelve months versus the next four years. The city has committed to communicating disruptions to businesses and the public as the flood mitigation schedule solidifies. Until then, the most reliable read on what's coming is the FAQ the city itself maintains at gahanna.gov, updated as recently as this summer, and the October 9 open house is the closest thing to a direct line to the people making these calls.
Creekside has been the center of Gahanna's identity for a long time, and it's about to go through a stretch where the changes that matter most to daily life won't be the ones that photograph well. Knowing which project is actually moving, and which one is still filing paperwork, is the difference between planning your fall around real disruptions and reacting to gossip about cranes that haven't been ordered yet.
If you're watching Gahanna's Creekside District because you're thinking about what a changing downtown means for property values or timing a move in this market, that's a longer conversation, and it's one The Agency Real Estate Group has with Gahanna buyers and sellers regularly. Reach out when you're ready to talk specifics.
