Why would a mayor spend fourteen years pushing for one particular stretch of Main Street, watch the cranes finally clear the block, and then quit two weeks later?
That is roughly what happened in Bexley this September. On August 14, Continental Development Ventures and the City of Bexley cut the ribbon on The Fitzgerald, the six-story mixed-use project at 2200 E. Main Street that took years of planning, financing, and construction to reach opening day. Less than a month later, on September 9, Mayor Ben Kessler announced he was resigning, effective September 30, to become executive director of the Columbus Partnership's Regional Housing Coalition. In between, on September 12, a new dog-friendly outdoor space called Bexley Yard held its grand opening two blocks away at Cassingham and Main.
Read those three headlines separately and Bexley looks like a town in flux. Read them together and a different story shows up. Kessler wasn't leaving in the middle of something. He was leaving right after it finished.
The Tools He Built, Not Just the Building He Opened
Kessler was elected to Bexley City Council in 2008 and became mayor in 2012, a background rooted in commercial real estate appraisal before he ever held office. Over fourteen years, he did not just advocate for Main Street investment in the abstract. He built the specific mechanisms that made a project like The Fitzgerald possible on a corridor that had not seen a building over four stories in decades.
The financing came through a Tax Increment Financing arrangement, which the city used to fund a structured public parking garage on what had been tax-exempt land owned by Capital University and Trinity Lutheran Seminary. A TIF doesn't hand a developer cash. It lets a city build public infrastructure, in this case a garage open to anyone visiting Main Street, using the future property tax revenue the new development itself will generate. Without that structure, the parking problem alone might have killed a 226-unit building on a three-acre lot.
The second tool was Bexley's Designated Outdoor Refreshment Area, created by city ordinance in 2021. A DORA lets patrons carry alcohol between participating businesses within a defined zone, in Bexley's case Main Street from Alum Creek to Cassingham Road, as long as drinks travel in compostable cups with a wristband. That ordinance sat quietly for a few years. Then it became the reason Bexley Yard could exist at all.
The Building That Was Still Being Signed for
The Fitzgerald sits on the former seminary site and replaced an older apartment building on the same block. What opened in August is a 226-unit complex with 32 different floor plans, ranging from a 563-square-foot studio starting around $1,422 a month to a three-bedroom penthouse near $4,678. Three weeks after leasing began, the building was reportedly around 12 percent occupied and 16 percent leased, with leasing staff noting early interest coming from Bexley residents looking to downsize rather than from outside the city.
The retail plan for the ground floor is anchored by Hudson 29 Kitchen + Drink, the Cameron Mitchell Restaurants concept that already operates in Upper Arlington and New Albany. That space will not open until spring 2027, which means the restaurant everyone associates with The Fitzgerald is still a storefront with paper on the windows for now. Coldwell Banker Realty already occupies office space in the building, and OhioHealth is scheduled to move into a second office tenancy this October.
None of this happened quickly. The project was approved in spring 2024, and construction ran for more than two years before the ribbon-cutting. Kessler was mayor for every part of that timeline, including the public review process and the council votes that made the TIF and the zoning exception possible.
The Patio Testing Whether the Zone Still Works
Bexley Yard is a smaller story but a more immediate one for anyone who actually walks Main Street. It comes from the same team behind The Lion, the coffee-bar-by-day, cocktail-bar-by-night spot that opened at 2511 E. Main St. in 2024. Co-owner Mike Davis has said the new outdoor space grew directly out of customers asking The Lion for more room, and when a vacant lot at the southwest corner of Cassingham and Main became available, the owners leased it.
The space runs on two different clocks. By day it's lattes and cold brew made with milk from regional suppliers including FIEO Farms and Millersburg. At night it shifts to rotating food trucks, with a stated emphasis on Mexican cuisine to meet demand, plus acoustic music. Dogs are welcome under Ohio House Bill 263, a 2018 state law that allows vaccinated dogs in outdoor dining areas as long as the business enforces a sanitation policy. And because Bexley Yard sits inside the DORA boundary, a drink from The Lion can legally travel outside to the patio in the right cup with the right wristband, the same rule that has applied along Main Street since 2021.
Bexley Yard isn't a new law or a new zoning fight. It's a business finding a use for a rule that had already existed for years. That's a small but real signal that the infrastructure Kessler's administration put in place is still generating new activity without him needing to personally push each new idea through.
If you live within walking distance of Main Street, here's what actually changes in the next few weeks:
- The parking garage behind The Fitzgerald is open to the public, not just building residents, which should ease some of the Main Street parking crunch during evening hours.
- Bexley Yard's hours mirror The Lion's, so expect the lot to be quiet in early morning and busiest after dinner through the week.
- You can carry a drink between The Lion and Bexley Yard, but only in a compostable cup with a DORA wristband, the same rule that governs the rest of the Main Street patio zone.
- Hudson 29 will not open at The Fitzgerald until spring 2027, so that ground-floor storefront stays dark for another two to three seasons.
- Applications for interim mayor closed September 18, and City Council votes on a replacement September 30, the same day Kessler's resignation becomes official.
The Handoff, Not the Vacancy
Under Bexley's charter, when a mayor resigns, Council President Jessica Saad becomes acting mayor until council elects a permanent replacement. Saad has said the goal is to appoint a successor immediately following Kessler's resignation, and candidates had to submit a letter of interest and resume by September 18 to be considered. Council plans to vote at its September 30 meeting.
There's some nuance in how long that appointee actually serves. The charter says a council-appointed mayor holds office until the next regular municipal election, and the Franklin County Board of Elections has confirmed that provision points to November 2027, not this fall's ballot. In practice, that means whoever council selects later this month will run Bexley's day-to-day government for more than a year before facing voters, and the elected successor wouldn't be sworn in until January 2028.
Kessler's own list of what he considers finished, not abandoned, is worth sitting with. In his resignation announcement he pointed to building parks and green space, diversifying housing options, and expanding Jeffrey Mansion alongside energizing Main Street, framing the work as a foundation rather than an unfinished project. He put it plainly: the city is "well positioned for its next chapter," a phrase that reads differently once you know the chapter he's describing includes a ribbon-cutting he attended three weeks before announcing he was leaving.
Why the Timing Isn't a Coincidence
The easy read on a longtime mayor resigning right after his signature project opens is that he got what he wanted and left. The more accurate read, based on how Bexley's TIF and DORA mechanisms actually work, is that his job description changed the moment The Fitzgerald opened. A mayor spends years assembling financing tools, shepherding zoning exceptions through council, and defending a redevelopment district against skeptics. Once the building is open and generating the tax revenue that repays the TIF, and once a small business like Bexley Yard can lease a lot and use an existing ordinance without needing a new fight at City Hall, the tools are doing the work he built them to do.
That's a different kind of transition than a mayor leaving mid-crisis. It's closer to a project manager stepping off a job once the systems are running on their own. Whether the next mayor keeps that momentum going, or whether Main Street's energy was more personally tied to Kessler than the mechanisms suggest, is the actual open question Bexley residents are watching heading into the September 30 council vote.
For now, the corner of Cassingham and Main has a new patio, a nearly finished apartment building with an empty restaurant space waiting for spring, and a city government about to hand its most consequential redevelopment era to someone who wasn't in the room when any of it got built.
If you're watching how Bexley's Main Street corridor keeps evolving and want a closer look at what that means for property values and long-term livability in the neighborhood, The Nth Degree Team tracks these shifts closely across Central Ohio. Start your home transformation whenever you're ready to talk through what a changing Main Street means for your own corner of Bexley.
