Drive Cleveland Avenue past Heritage Park this month and you'll hit chain-link around Everal Barn. Cut over to Spring Road and Millstone Creek Park still has fencing around part of its parking lot. Try to run the Ohio to Erie Trail near the old train station and you'll find detour signs pointing you onto Cleveland Avenue instead. Head south to Walnut Ridge Park on Walnut Street and the whole park, playground and shelter included, is roped off behind construction fencing too. Four separate parts of town, four separate "closed for construction" notices, and if you've lived here through this whole stretch of 2026, you've probably assumed these are four unrelated projects that happened to land in the same year.
They're not. Look at what's actually being built behind each fence and a pattern shows up that the city's own project updates don't spell out directly: most of what's closed in Westerville right now isn't cosmetic. It's water. Floodplains, wetlands, and the small streams that feed into Alum Creek, the same watershed the city pipes in to supplement Hoover Reservoir's supply during high-demand summers. The one closure that isn't about water, Everal Barn, is closed for an entirely different reason, and knowing which is which tells you a lot about why some of these sites reopened weeks ago while others won't be usable again until next year.
The one that's genuinely just a renovation
Everal Barn and Homestead, the 1890s bank barn on Cleveland Avenue that's spent the last few decades as Westerville's go-to wedding and reunion venue, closed to reservations on March 1, 2026, and won't take bookings again until winter 2027. According to Westerville Parks and Recreation, this one really is about the building itself: new insulation to protect the historic structure, a full flooring and lighting refresh, updated HVAC, and ADA-compliant restrooms and warming kitchens on both levels. A mid-July progress update in The Westerville News reported that Elford Construction had already installed new flooring on the lower level, run conduit for lighting and HVAC, and was finalizing a siding subcontractor. No creek runs through this project. It's a historic building getting the mechanical systems it never had, and it's the one closure on this list with a firm, single-year timeline: closed through 2026, back in 2027.
The two that are actually about the creek
The other closures read differently once you know what to look for.
Behind the Westerville Community Center, crews spent part of this summer restoring a two-acre wetland along Alkyre Run. The reason the city gave for the project matters more than the acreage: Alkyre Run flows directly into Alum Creek, which the city has identified as its primary drinking water source. The restoration, funded in part through a federal grant routed through the Ohio EPA, involved native plantings, invasive species removal, and regrading to improve how the site handles floodwater. Work began in May and was budgeted at roughly six weeks, which puts completion in late June, well ahead of where we are now.
Across town at Walnut Ridge Park on East Walnut Street, the same logic is playing out at a larger scale. Demolition started in April 2026, and the park has been fully closed, including its playground and shelter, ever since. The project isn't a simple resurfacing job. The city is realigning Walnut Ridge Run to create what it calls a functional floodplain, alongside rebuilt ballfields, a new basketball court, a consolidated parking lot, and new boardwalks through the reconstructed trail sections. As of the most recent city update, construction is expected to continue into fall, and the park stays closed until the rebuilt trails and shelter are confirmed safe for public use.
Two different parks, two different budgets, but the same underlying work: correcting how water moves through the ground before it reaches Alum Creek.
What actually reopened while you weren't looking
Here's the part that's easy to miss if you've stopped checking. Two of the four closures on this list have functionally cleared.
The Ohio to Erie Trail segment between Old County Line Road and Electric Avenue, which had been torn up for a pavement upgrade and new flashing beacons at five street crossings, was scheduled to reopen by mid-August. That date has passed. If the project held to schedule, and the city's tracker gave no indication otherwise, this stretch should be walkable and rideable again right now, with the detour routes through Alum Creek, Cleveland Avenue, and Polaris Parkway trails no longer necessary for most trips.
Millstone Creek Park's playground tells a similar story with a slight asterisk. The playground itself, including the new universally accessible design with a slide, net climbing features, and ramped mounds, was structurally finished by midsummer. The holdup was the parking lot, which the city targeted for paving by mid-August. If that held, most of Millstone Creek is open right now. The one piece still catching up is the adjacent nature play area and wetland path, which the June parks board report placed on a September completion timeline, so a few final touches there may still be in progress as summer turns to fall.
| Site | Status as of late August 2026 |
|---|---|
| Everal Barn and Homestead | Closed for interior renovation since March 1; not booking again until winter 2027 |
| Walnut Ridge Park | Closed since April; construction continuing into fall |
| Alkyre Run Wetland Restoration | Six-week restoration began in May; on track to have wrapped by late June |
| Ohio to Erie Trail (Old County Line to Electric Ave) | Targeted to reopen by mid-August; should be clear now if the schedule held |
| Millstone Creek Park Playground | Playground itself finished by midsummer; nature play area targeted for September |
What was never closed at all
While all of this has been sorted out fence by fence, the two biggest outdoor draws on the east side of town never stopped operating. Hoover Reservoir, the 2,800-acre lake that Columbus built as a water supply facility and now shares with paddlers and anglers, has been open the entire time. Hoover Adventures still rents kayaks and canoes by the hour with several self-guided routes through the coves. Aloha SUP runs paddleboard rentals and lessons on the water through the warmer months, and the Hoover Sailing Club still teaches its adult and youth classes. For anglers, the reservoir's ten-horsepower motor limit keeps it quieter than most central Ohio lakes, and it has built a real reputation for catfish, with blue catfish stocked since 2011 now growing past thirty pounds, alongside a rebounding saugeye fishery and a strong population of both black and white crappie.
The Alum Creek Trail's northern section, the seven-mile stretch running from Westerville down toward Easton, was never part of this year's construction list either. It's the section locals actually use most, passing Heritage Park, First Responders Park, and Astronaut Grove along the way, with a connection point to the Westerville B&W trail near the north end. If you've been avoiding the trail system altogether because of the detour signs near the train station, that avoidance only needed to apply to one specific segment, not the whole network.
Why this is worth tracking if you live here
None of this is dramatic news. It's closer to the kind of thing you'd only notice if you'd been driving past the same fences for six months without knowing why they were up or when they'd come down. But the pattern is real: this year's Westerville park closures split cleanly into water infrastructure work with multi-month timelines and one historic building getting new bones, and two of the four have already cleared while a third works through its final phase this fall.
The city is also using this year's closures to shape what comes next. Its longer-range Parks, Recreation and Open Space plan, branded Wander Westerville, is collecting public input through the fall, including a planned feedback booth at the Uptown Fourth Friday event on September 25. If Walnut Ridge Park's floodplain work or Everal Barn's timeline affects a route you walk regularly, that's the venue for saying so before the next round of decisions gets made.
If you're weighing a move to a Westerville address near this side of town, or you already live here and want a second read on how a specific park or trail closure affects a property you're watching, Ayana Realty Group knows this stretch of Central Ohio street by street. Contact us and we'll walk through it with you.
