If you searched for the Orange Township Founders Festival this week, you may have landed on a page telling you to head to Evans Farm. That page is out of date. So is the one before it, pointing to North Orange Park. The festival has changed addresses twice in three years, and the confusion is visible in real time: a travel roundup published within the past two weeks had to stop and correct itself mid-article, warning readers that older festival information can create confusion and that listings referencing Evans Farm or North Orange Park no longer apply.
That kind of correction only happens when a local event outgrows its own paper trail faster than the internet can keep up. For residents of Orange Township, that's worth untangling, because the festival's wandering address is really a small window into how fast this corner of Lewis Center is still reshaping itself.
Three Festivals, Three Addresses
The Founders Festival started small. Its first-ever run, on September 30, 2023, took place at North Orange Park, an address with a Delaware mailing designation off U.S. Route 23. It ran four hours, from 2 to 6 p.m., built around bounce houses, food trucks, and a scavenger hunt.
By 2025, the festival had moved to Evans Farm, the master-planned neighborhood that's become the township's new center of gravity. That year's edition, held September 27, pulled in more than 80 vendors and free bounce houses, according to the township's own year-end recap in the Delaware Gazette.
For 2026, the festival has moved again. The official listing on the township's website confirms the new date and location: Sunday, September 27, from 2 to 5 p.m., at North Road Park. Registration for vendors closed on September 11, and the current listing shows the event already full, with a waitlist open for anyone hoping to get in as a vendor.
Three editions, three different parks. That's not a website error. It's a township whose civic footprint is still moving, testing which park has the room and the parking to hold a festival that keeps growing.
What North Road Park Actually Offers
If you haven't been to North Road Park recently, the venue itself has changed shape too. According to the township's park page, North Road Park now has seven soccer fields, a cricket field, and dedicated pickleball courts. Additional parking and a restroom building were added in recent years, and in October 2025 the park gained a new ADA-accessible playground designed for children of varying abilities.
That combination, more field space, more parking, and a brand-new play area, is likely a big part of why the festival landed here this year rather than staying at Evans Farm. A neighborhood pocket park can host a few dozen vendors comfortably. A park built for soccer tournaments and cricket matches can absorb a much bigger crowd without turning the surrounding streets into a parking overflow.
The Fixed Points Around the Move
The festival isn't the only date on Orange Township's fall calendar, and unlike the festival, these have held steady.
- Heroes Not Forgotten 4-Miler, Saturday, October 10, 9 a.m. The community race honors local veterans with a scenic course through the township, custom finisher medals, and proceeds that go toward veteran-focused initiatives.
- Trick-or-Treat, Saturday, October 31, from 6 to 8 p.m. This one used to shift year to year depending on the calendar, but the Orange Township Board of Trustees voted last year to lock October 31 in as the permanent date going forward, so residents no longer need to check every fall to see if it's moved.
- The Market at Evans Farm shifts its hours as the seasons turn. Through the summer it runs Saturdays from 9 a.m. to noon. Come October, the market shifts to a later, shorter fall window of 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., still featuring the same mix of produce, baked goods, flowers, and handmade crafts from local vendors.
None of these required a venue change this year. They're the parts of the calendar you can actually set your watch by while the festival keeps finding its footing.
The Evans Farm Rhythm That Didn't Exist Last Fall
Even though the festival has moved on from Evans Farm, the neighborhood itself hasn't gone quiet. If anything, this is the first fall where Evans Farm has enough going on to fill a weeknight without leaving the development.
Johnson's Real Ice Cream opened its Evans Farm location on March 25, marking the brand's tenth central Ohio shop. The grand opening drew a line for free scoops between 6 and 9 p.m., with the first 50 guests walking away with a Johnson's t-shirt. Fourth-generation owner Matt Wilcoxon has described the Evans Farm shop as a natural next step after strong responses to the brand's Powell locations, and for anyone who used to make the drive to Bexley or Clintonville for a Johnson's fix, that drive just got a lot shorter.
The evenings around it have their own rhythm now too. Keystone Pub in Lewis Center hosts Chris Logsdon every Wednesday from 6:30 to 10 p.m., mixing audience-participation tunes with acoustic rock favorites spanning nearly five decades. Fenders runs live music every Friday starting at 8:30 p.m. CJ's Soulfood books DJ Layne on Fridays from 8 to 10 p.m., alongside karaoke and live performances in a room the owners describe as an upscale nightclub with a family-friendly twist. Over at O'Nelly's Sports Pub & Grill, karaoke night with Max runs every Friday from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m.
Stack those together and a typical Lewis Center week has more anchor points than it did even a year ago. Wednesday belongs to the Keystone. Friday splits between three different rooms depending on whether you want live music, karaoke, or a DJ set. Saturday morning is the market, at least until the fall hours shift it later. None of that existed in this configuration twelve months ago.
A Township Still Finding Its Center
The festival's move from Evans Farm to North Road Park isn't really a story about a scheduling mix-up. It's a sign that Orange Township's public gathering spaces are still catching up to how fast the area around them has grown. A neighborhood that can support seven soccer fields, a cricket pitch, pickleball courts, and a full playground overhaul in the span of a year is not a settled place. It's one still deciding where its center of gravity sits, park by park, season by season.
For residents, that means paying attention to the official township calendar each fall rather than assuming last year's location still holds. For anyone newer to the area, it's a useful reminder that Lewis Center's civic life, its festivals, its markets, its Friday nights, is still being written in real time.
Luxe Home Team keeps close tabs on what's actually happening in Lewis Center and the rest of Central Ohio's fast-growing suburbs, because knowing which park hosts the festival this year is the same kind of local fluency that matters when you're deciding where to put down roots. If you're curious what else is shifting in the neighborhoods around Columbus, reach out anytime for a complimentary market report.
