POWELL — The Village Green isn’t the only thing in Powell that could soon look a little different.
City officials are also taking a fresh look at the Powell Festival.
The Operations Committee met Tuesday to review this year’s June 19-20 festival, and assess what it could look like in the future.
Much of the discussion centered on whether Powell Festival should continue its traditional Friday-and-Saturday format or be condensed into a single-day event on Saturday.
Factors considered in that decision are the festival’s general impact, the impact on the city’s businesses, the physical demands on city employees during setup and the city’s cost to put on the event.
The committee took no formal action Tuesday but agreed to continue discussing the festival’s future. Members could make a recommendation to Powell City Council following the committee’s Sept. 15 meeting.
Several committee members also explained that while the intention for Powell Festival wasn’t to make money, the current format has more expenses than revenues.
Parks and Recreation Manager Melissa Hindman estimated that a one-day festival would cost somewhere around $90,000-$100,000 and the hope is to continually get closer to breaking even.
“With regard to [a] Friday and Saturday [Powell Festival], there’s a significant impact to mobilization,” City Manager Andy White said.
“I’m already starting to get a little anxious about Powell Fest 2027, and we’ve still got to go through the winter, but its an impact to the downtown.”
Traffic analysis from Powell Fest ’25 and ’26
Economic Development Administrator Sean Hughes presented a traffic analysis from Placer AI that showed a drop off in visitors from Friday to Saturday.
Overall visitation remained relatively stable year over year, he said, declining from about 16,500 visitors in 2025 to 15,700 in 2026.
The data showed a notable difference between the festival’s two days. Friday visits declined from about 6,000 in 2025 to 4,800 in 2026, while Saturday visits increased from about 10,500 to 10,900, Hughes said.
Visitors also stayed longer on Saturday, with a median visit of about 120 to 125 minutes compared with 86 to 89 minutes on Friday. Hughes attributed the longer Saturday visits in part to the day’s entertainment and fireworks.
Hughes said many festival visitors came from downtown Powell and could walk to the event, while others traveled from areas around Dublin and Sawmill roads. The festival’s reach extended farther into Lewis Center, the Hyatts Road area, Worthington and the Polaris area.
Placer AI data also showed festivalgoers visiting nearby businesses before and after the event. Hughes said Powell Village Winery was the most common place visitors went before arriving at Village Green, accounting for 4.2% of festival visitors.
After leaving the festival, 4% of visitors went to Nocterra Brewing Co., the most common destination identified in the data.
“The big prior destination is local, its downtown, people are walking from it — its the Powell Village Winery.” Hughes said.
Hughes cautioned that those percentages were relatively small. Visits to other businesses before and after the festival were spread across destinations in percentages too small to be significant in the Placer AI data.
He said the findings suggest the festival’s foot traffic does not extend evenly across Powell’s local businesses.
The impact on vendors, downtown businesses and city employees
Hindman then reviewed results from three surveys the city conducted following the festival: one for attendees, one for vendors and one for local businesses.
“This year we had 22 submissions from vendors, all very happy,” she said.
“They did note that they do about 20-25% of their business on Friday and the majority of their business is on Saturday. But for the most part, the vendors were very happy with the foot traffic on Saturday.”
Additional feedback from the festival’s vendors echoed some of the traffic data, particularly about Friday.
“They feel like people don’t shop as much on Friday,” Hindman said. “[They said people] come right at 5 or 6 o’clock for that last band of the night and they’re not really milling around shopping.”
However, Hindman said eight local businesses reacted via the survey and the results were not positive.
Some comments submitted by local businesses said to move the festival to an area with more public parking. Others asked why the city allowed vendors inside the festival that sell the same products as their shop.
Despite 4,800 people coming to the festival on Friday, only three people filled out the public survey.
As for the city employee impact, Hindman said it is a challenge to set up the festival.
“We are not able to set much up just because of this building, city hall, being a business,” she said. “We mainly try to shut it down that Thursday night, then put everything out that Friday and then open up the festival at 5 o’clock.”
That workload comes on top of operating the festival Friday night until around midnight, returning Saturday to do it again and then arriving at 6 a.m. Sunday to clean up Village Green, Hindman said.
“Our parks and recreation staff, I have myself and one other full-time person,” she said. “So between finance and my team, we have about five people that are managing a festival that can bring in upwards of 7,000-8,000 people.”
When Powell Festival returned after the COVID-19 pandemic in 2022, the city celebrated the event’s 25th anniversary by booking a larger musical act, Hindman said.
The original plan was to return in subsequent years to a more community-focused festival featuring what Hindman described as “global entertainment.” Instead, the city continued booking a major headliner for Saturday night.
With that in mind, she explained that while Village Green is great for a community festival, there are safety concerns when this large of a crowd comes to the smaller area.
The city’s financial and first responder impacts
Director of Finance Samantha Borchers also said these trends carried over to sales.
“This year’s Friday was the lowest alcohol sales in the past five years,” she said. “But, 2026 Saturday was the second-highest dollar in alcohol sales. So kind of confirming that Friday drop-off and the Saturday pick-up in activity.”
This was the first year the city did a two-day pass for the kid zone, which correlated with 2026 being the second highest sales dollars for those.
“But you can see in 2026 that the city is basically funding the festival options that we had, so we don’t make any money,” Borchers said.
“I’ll also say that the intention is to be a community festival, to provide entertainment or something fun for the residents to do,” she added. “But, it is kind of subsidized in that way where there’s more expenses than there are revenues coming in.”
Powell Police Chief Ron Sallows explained that while a lot of resources from his staff and other agencies, like the Powell Fire Department and Delaware County Sheriff’s Office, go into Powell Festival, they did not experience any major issues this year.
However, Sallows said his department is fortunate because they are able to plan earlier in the year.
“For about 20 years we’ve done an emergency operations plan, and we coordinate those events with the fire department,” he said. “This year one of the major changes in that operations plan was that Liberty Street was not open for parking.
“We didn’t have any complaints on that at all or any parking issues that we had to deal with, so that went really well.”
Sallows said Powell Fest 2026 “was standard Powell Fest.” The police department didn’t really have any issues other than handling a missing juvenile matter and a domestic incident this year.
