For twelve years, the shell of the Drawbridge Inn sat at Royal Drive and Buttermilk Pike as a kind of civic placeholder. Everyone who lived here knew the shape of it from the interstate. Nobody had a reason to stop.
That corner is about to become the busiest address in Fort Mitchell, and the shift is not just about a building coming out of the ground. Three separate decisions moving through City Hall this summer — the Gateway bond agreement, the Royal Drive reopening, and a widened-sidewalk plan running the length of Dixie Highway toward Beechwood Road — are quietly relocating the city's daily center of gravity a mile east of where residents have thought of it for decades. If you already live here, the practical question is which of your weekly routines are about to change, and which restaurants and streets are worth rerouting through while the work is happening.
What Is Actually Going On Those 26 Acres
The old Drawbridge site is now called the Fort Mitchell Gateway, and it is a full mixed-use build rather than a single anchor tenant. Brandicorp, the Bellevue-based developer running the project, has put total planned investment above $200 million, with vertical construction expected to start in fall 2026. The site sits directly on the I-71/75 corridor at a spot the state's traffic study clocks at roughly 19,843 vehicles a day.
Here is what is going in, from north to south across the parcel:
- The Ormsby, a seven-story, 203-unit age-restricted community for residents 62 and older, with an attached 48-bed health center. St. Elizabeth Healthcare is partnering with Dallas-based Greenbrier Development on the project. It is named for Maj. Gen. Ormsby MacKnight Mitchel, the Civil War engineer the city itself is named for.
- Two St. Elizabeth medical office buildings flanking the senior community.
- Restaurant and retail space along the Royal Drive frontage, still being shaped by the site's Tax Increment Financing structure.
The Kenton County Planning Commission approved the master plan back in August 2024. What changed in late July 2026 is that Fort Mitchell signed an interlocal agreement with the Kentucky Bond Development Corporation, a nonprofit conduit issuer set up by the Kentucky League of Cities, to move bond financing forward. The face value cap on that issuance is $250 million. In plain terms, the money is now real, and the schedule the developer has been quoting is the schedule the city is now underwriting.
Royal Drive Reopens, And Your Mental Map Of Buttermilk Pike Changes
Royal Drive has been closed at the Gateway site since December 13, 2024. For anyone who used it as a cut-through to Buttermilk Pike or as a back way out of the office parks, that closure has meant nineteen months of rerouting through the Dixie Highway signal or the Buttermilk ramp. The city expects the reconstructed road to reopen this summer, once the last utility work wraps.
The bigger change is what the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet is planning at the interchange itself. Because the Gateway sits so close to I-71/75, the state required a full traffic impact study and is planning a double-diamond redesign at Buttermilk Pike. If you have driven the diverging-diamond configurations at Dry Ridge or in Northern Kentucky's I-75 corridor, the pattern will be familiar. Left turns onto the interstate ramps happen without crossing oncoming traffic, which is the point.
For residents who use Buttermilk Pike to get to Kroger, Fort Mitchell Country Club, or the Beechwood campus, the practical takeaway is that the intersection is going to feel unfamiliar for a while and then settle into something that clears faster than the current setup does. The construction sequencing is not fully public yet. Watching the August 17 council meeting agenda is the fastest way to find out.
The Sleeper Story Is Actually The Sidewalk On Dixie Highway
The Gateway will draw the headlines. The decision that will change how Fort Mitchell feels day to day is the sidewalk plan.
A short demonstration block of widened sidewalk went in on Dixie Highway earlier this year, and Mayor Greg Pohlgeers has been clear at council that phase two, if it moves forward, will extend the widened walk all the way down Dixie Highway to Beechwood Road. The intent, per the mayor's own framing at the May 2026 council meeting, is that walkers, scooter riders, and e-bike riders can share the surface without pushing anyone into the grass strip.
That is a real shift for a city where Dixie has functioned primarily as a car corridor with a narrow pedestrian afterthought.
Not every resident is sold. Lori Evans of Pleasant Ridge Avenue came to the May council meeting to point out that a similar widening project had been voted down by residents eleven years ago. The mayor's response was that the current project has a specific grant behind it, and that phase two will trigger public hearings before it starts.
There is a related question on Beechwood Road itself. During the same budget conversation, council discussed possibly eliminating on-street parking on Beechwood Road when it gets resurfaced, in order to make room for wider sidewalks on that stretch too. No engineering has happened yet. If you live on Beechwood or use its curb parking for school events, that is the meeting to show up for when it lands on the agenda.
Pair the widened Dixie sidewalks with the Gateway's new restaurant and retail frontage a mile to the east, and you can start to see the shape of a walkable spine that Fort Mitchell has not really had before. It is the first time in a long time that "walking to dinner" is a plausible sentence in this part of Kenton County.
Where To Eat While The Cranes Are Up
The construction is going to make certain approaches annoying for at least a year. Rerouting your weeknight dinner through streets that avoid the Royal Drive and Buttermilk work zones is not a hardship — the city's dining bench is deeper than it gets credit for.
A few reliable options, grouped by where they sit relative to the work:
North of the Gateway, on Dixie: Greyhound Tavern has been a Fort Mitchell fixture for decades and runs a Sunday brunch buffet that leans hard on fried chicken and goetta. Fort Mitchell Public House at 2053 Dixie Hwy is the neighborhood pub side of the same corridor.
Deeper into the older commercial pocket: Camporosso for Italian, Behle Street by Sheli for a slightly more polished evening, BRU Burger Bar for something quick with kids in tow. Oriental Wok, which Mike and Helen Wong opened in November 1977, is close to its 50th year in the same space and is one of the longest-running independent restaurants in the metro.
A little further out for a Thursday-through-Saturday night: Grandview Tavern runs live music several nights a week and keeps a real bourbon list.
If you are the sort of resident who reflexively drives out to Crestview Hills or Newport for anything above a burger, this is the summer to test that assumption. The construction is going to make the drive-out feel further, and the walk-to options inside Fort Mitchell are quietly better than they were three years ago.
What To Watch Through Fall
Three specific dates and moments are worth marking:
The August 17 council meeting is where the next round of Gateway financing detail is expected. Royal Drive's actual reopening will happen sometime in that same window. And the Veterans Day Parade on November 11, which runs from the Beechwood Swim Club at 247 Beechwood Road to Beechwood Schools, will be the first big civic gathering to move down the newly widened stretch of sidewalk if the demonstration block is any indication of the finished product.
None of these are showy on their own. Taken together, they are the moment Fort Mitchell stops being a city organized around the old Dixie Highway trolley grid and starts being a city organized around a walkable Gateway corridor with a real front door on the interstate. If you own a home here, that is worth understanding before the moving trucks and cranes make it obvious.
If you are thinking about how these changes might affect the value or livability of your specific block, or how a Gateway-era Fort Mitchell might reshape what your next move looks like, Laura Zembrodt is happy to walk through it with you. Schedule a consultation whenever the timing is right.
