If you walk or bike the Heritage Trail out of Old Hilliard, you already know the rhythm of it. Center Street Market and Crooked Can Brewing at the start, First Responders Park across the way, then a flat mile and a half of asphalt until the covered bridge and the caboose replica at Homestead Park tell you you've made it. It's a pleasant, familiar loop. Forty-three acres, a fishing pond, a playground, a place to turn around and head back for a beer.

That loop is about to get a lot more interesting, and not because the city finally found money for a trail project. Hilliard City Council had the first reading on an ordinance that would send 333 acres of conservation land into Metro Parks' hands, growing Homestead from 43 acres to 376. Metro Parks' own website already lists the bigger number, which tells you how far along this actually is even before the vote.

Where 376 Acres Actually Comes From

The land isn't one clean parcel. It's a patchwork, and the patchwork is the interesting part.

Two pieces are city-owned parcels that Hilliard has been sitting on for years: about 46.6 acres at 4643 Elliott Road, and roughly 23 acres off Barbeau Lane, right next to the existing park. The city acquired both as required conservation open space tied to the Tarlton Meadows subdivision, and it's keeping a small 2.2-acre sliver of the Barbeau Lane tract for a water tower.

The rest, the bulk of the 333 acres, is coming straight from M/I Homes. It's conservation acreage inside the builder's Hill Farm and Hill Farm II developments west of Homestead, land that includes the headwaters of Clover Groff Run. Under the deal, that acreage transfers directly from the builder to Metro Parks rather than passing through the city at all.

That's the detail worth sitting with. This expansion isn't a trail-budget line item. It's the byproduct of zoning rules in the Big Darby watershed that require new subdivisions to set aside conservation open space, land that eventually finds its way to the park district. Homestead just got nine times bigger because a builder was required to preserve land it couldn't develop, not because Hilliard wrote a check.

The Contrast With the Trail Projects You've Actually Heard About

Compare that to the extensions the city has been talking about for years. The plan to push the Heritage Trail another two miles into Plain City proper has a sign on the trail promising it, and Plain City's own trailhead project on its end was targeted for completion by the end of 2024. The southeastern extension toward Quarry Trails Metro Park and the Scioto Trail, listed in city planning documents as Project T-148, was programmed for construction in 2026, with a note attached that the schedule could shift depending on grant funding and coordination between Hilliard, Columbus, and the county engineer's office.

Those are the projects that show up on a capital improvement plan and move at the pace capital improvement plans move. The Homestead expansion moved differently. It rode in on a subdivision's zoning requirements and reached the council floor in a fraction of the time. If you've been waiting on the Plain City extension or the Quarry Trails connection, this is a useful data point: watershed-driven conservation transfers appear to be outpacing the grant-funded trail projects that get the press releases.

What This Actually Adds to Your Walk

The map attached to the ordinance sketches out three trail segments Metro Parks would take on:

• The existing Heritage Trail south of Hayden Run Road
• A new connector running west from Homestead Park
• A further extension through the Hill Farm land to Scioto Darby Creek Road

None of that is built yet. The land has to finish transferring first, and the city's own timeline has the Barbeau Lane parcel changing hands by the end of 2026, with the broader wetlands, prairie restoration, and trail work described as a multi-year build-out rather than a next-season addition. If you're picturing new mileage this fall, that's not the timeline. What you're getting instead is the land itself locking into permanent park status now, which is what makes the eventual trail work possible later.

In the meantime, Homestead keeps doing what it does well: the covered bridge, the two barns, the 2.5-acre fishing pond, the 0.8-mile paved loop that ties into the main trail. The dog park back at Heritage Trail Park near the Old Hilliard trailhead, four acres split for big and small dogs, is still the better bet if your walk this week is about the dog more than the mileage.

The Ordinance Isn't Law Yet

Worth saying plainly: this hasn't passed. The first reading happened, and Hilliard ordinances require a second reading and public hearing before council votes, with the next regular council meeting set for September 28 at the Municipal Building on Municipal Way. If you have opinions about how a nine-fold expansion of your neighborhood park should be developed, that meeting is where public comment happens before anything is final.

Close Out the Season While You're Out There

If you're already planning a walk to see the news for yourself, time it around what's ending this week. The Hilliard Farm Market at the Hilliard United Methodist Church parking lot on Scioto Darby Road runs its final Tuesday of the 2026 season on September 22, tomorrow if you're reading this on publish day. Four to seven p.m., the usual produce and local vendors, then it's done until next May.

Old Hilliard itself isn't going quiet for fall. Center Street Market keeps its full vendor lineup running daily, Crooked Can's taproom and patio stay open into the evening, and Coffee Connections is still the reliable stop if you want something warm before or after the trail. None of that needs the park expansion to be worth a visit. But if you've been meaning to see where the caboose and the covered bridge are before the land around them changes shape, the next few weeks of cooler weather and thinner crowds are a good window.

The bigger story here isn't really about acreage. It's about which mechanism actually grows a trail network in a fast-building suburb: not just the city's own budget, but the conservation requirements baked into every new subdivision going up around it. Hill Farm won't be the last development in the Darby watershed, which means Homestead likely won't be the last park to grow this way either.

If you're curious how projects like this connect to what's happening across other parts of Hilliard, or just want someone who pays attention to this stuff to talk through what a neighborhood is actually doing right now, that's the kind of local read we build our work around at Home With Hood & Neidenthal. Start Your Home Journey with us whenever you're ready to talk about more than the trail.