The last Saturday of the Dublin Market ran on September 26, closing out a stretch that started May 2 and brought more than 140 vendors to Longshore Street and Bridge Park Avenue most weekends, presented by The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. For anyone who built a Saturday morning routine around that market, the calendar now looks empty. It isn't. Two other parts of the district, one covered and one on a rooftop, keep running straight through the gap the outdoor market leaves behind, and a look at what filled that indoor space this year says something about how Bridge Park actually replaces a business when one leaves.
What Actually Stops in the Fall
The Dublin Market itself is a seasonal, outdoor operation: farmers, bakers, makers and craft vendors set up along the street from May through late September, rain or shine, with free parking in the Bridge Park garages. That's the piece that just wrapped. The organizers also run a separate fall-themed pop-up called the Harvest Market at Bridge Park later in the season, so even the outdoor vendor circuit isn't fully done for the year, it just switches from a weekly commitment to a one-off event.
What doesn't pause at all is North Market Bridge Park, the indoor food hall at 6750 Longshore Street that opened in 2020 as the historic North Market's second location. It runs year-round, and this year it did something more interesting than just staying open. It swapped one of its anchor tenants, and the way it filled that slot is worth paying attention to if you're trying to understand how this particular food hall actually works.
How North Market Fills a Vacancy
Colo Market & Oyster Bar closed its Bridge Park stall in January, though it still operates its original location at North Market's downtown Columbus building. That left an open seafood spot in a food hall that already has seventeen tenants, including Dos Hermanos, Gallo's Pizzeria, Hoyo's Kitchen and Pasta Ditoni's.
The replacement opened in late May: BBQ & The Pier, serving oysters, fish and chips, and barbecue. It's led by Enis Ndreu, who already runs Holy Crepes at the same Bridge Park hall as well as locations at North Market's downtown building and East Market, and Elvis Lloshi, who spent ten years managing Clintonville's Iron Grill before that restaurant closed in April after more than two decades in business.
That's not a random new brand walking in off the street. It's an existing, proven North Market operator expanding into a bigger stall, paired with someone who just came off two decades of restaurant management experience a few miles away. North Market's own executive director framed BBQ & The Pier as the kind of entrepreneurial growth story the hall wants to see, and the pairing backs that up: when a stall opens up here, it tends to go to someone who already has a track record inside the system, not a first-time concept testing the market cold. For a hall with this much turnover potential, that's a meaningful difference. It means a closed stall here doesn't sit dark for long, and it doesn't reset the food hall's overall quality bar back to zero.
Retail Filled In Too
The same late-summer stretch that saw the Dublin Market wind down also brought Bridge Park its first candy and soda shop. Rocket Fizz opened August 21 at 4482 Bridge Park Avenue, across from the SpringHill Suites hotel. It's the chain's first Dublin location and only its second in central Ohio, joining an existing store in the Short North. The franchisee is Carrie Baker, a Dublin resident and president and CEO of the nonprofit Health Impact Ohio, who built out a family-owned store stocked with more than 450 soda flavors and 80 varieties of taffy. Baker also launched a "Candy & Community" initiative, with the Dublin Education Foundation and the Dublin Scioto High School cheerleading program as its first two partners.
That's a net-new destination that opened in the same month the outdoor market's weekly cadence was winding toward its final Saturdays, not a replacement for anything that left.
The Rooftop Doesn't Run on the Same Calendar
VASO, the rooftop lounge at 6540 Riverside Drive, isn't tied to the Dublin Market's May-through-September window at all. Every fourth Sunday, VASO runs Bubbles & Beats, an R&B brunch and day party, on a schedule that has nothing to do with growing season. This fall it's also running a ticketed Rooftop Pumpkin Patch, leaning into cocktails, food and music instead of closing the rooftop down once the weather turns.
So while the street-level Saturday market goes quiet after September 26, the fourth-Sunday rooftop crowd at VASO doesn't skip a month. The district's weekend foot traffic doesn't drop off so much as it moves from sidewalk vendor tents to a rooftop bar, on a different day of the week.
What's Actually New Right Now
Here's how the pieces line up this fall:
| What | Status | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Dublin Market (outdoor Saturday market) | Season ended September 26 | Longshore Street & Bridge Park Avenue |
| North Market Bridge Park (indoor food hall) | Open year-round, no seasonal pause | 6750 Longshore Street |
| BBQ & The Pier | Opened late May, replacing Colo Market & Oyster Bar | Inside North Market Bridge Park |
| Rocket Fizz Soda Pop & Candy Shop | Opened August 21 | 4482 Bridge Park Avenue |
| Bristol Republic / The Saddle Club | Reopened September 10 | 4495 Bridge Park Avenue |
| VASO Bubbles & Beats | Every fourth Sunday, year-round | 6540 Riverside Drive |
| VASO Rooftop Pumpkin Patch | Running now, ticketed | 6540 Riverside Drive |
| Christkindlmarkt | Opens November 21, runs through December 24 | Riverside Crossing Park |
Two other items on that list are worth a closer look. Bristol Republic, the Columbus restaurant group known for Southern-inspired food and live music, reopened its Bridge Park location on September 10 at 4495 Bridge Park Avenue with a new layout built around two concepts sharing one address: the original Bristol Republic dining room and a new cocktail lounge called The Saddle Club. Owner Brian Swanson, who also runs Bodega, Worthington Tavern and West Palm Cowboy Club through his Experience Hospitality Group, built the space to run dinner service, live music and a separate lounge experience out of the same multi-level building rather than opening a second address elsewhere in the district.
A few blocks over, construction has started on The Ellis, also known as J Block, a new for-sale condo project inside Bridge Park. It's a sign the district is still adding permanent housing stock at the same time its retail and dining tenants keep turning over.
What This Means Once the Weather Turns
None of this is unusual for a mixed-use district to go through. What's notable is the shape of the turnover. When a seafood stall closed at North Market, the hall didn't backfill it with an unknown concept, it moved in an operator who already had a working business one counter over. When the outdoor Saturday market wrapped for the year, the calendar didn't go dark, it handed the weekend off to a rooftop lounge running its own independent schedule. And by the time Riverside Crossing Park needs something to fill the space where summer markets used to be, Christkindlmarkt steps in on November 21 and runs through Christmas Eve, right at the base of the Dublin Link pedestrian bridge.
For anyone weighing whether a block like this stays interesting past Labor Day, that's the answer. The tents come down. The rest of the district doesn't wait for them to go back up.
If you're comparing what daily life actually looks like in a district like Bridge Park against other Dublin neighborhoods, or you're trying to figure out how a spot like this holds its value once the seasonal crowds move on, The Agency Real Estate Group can walk you through what's actually happening on the ground here, block by block.
