Try to plan a Friday night in Ashland right now and you'll run into a decision that didn't used to exist. It's not "what to eat." It's "which Ashland." Do you head downtown, where Winchester Avenue is mid-festival-season and a new hotel restaurant just opened its bourbon bar? Or do you drive out Route 60 toward Cannonsburg, where Camp Landing is drawing annual visitor numbers several times the town's population?
Both answers are correct, and that's the actual news. Ashland spent a long time with one obvious center of gravity. This fall it has two, and they're pulling in different directions for different reasons.
Camp Landing's next chapter
If you've lived here more than five years, you remember when the building out on US-60 was just Kyova Mall, half-dark, one empty storefront after another. It opened in 1988 as Cedar Knoll Galleria and spent the next three decades losing tenants. Sears left in 2014. Elder-Beerman closed in 2018. COVID finished the job, and for a while the power was shut off in parts of the building.
The reason it struggled in the first place is worth sitting with: it was never convenient for people who already lived close to downtown, who had Ashland Town Center nearby and no reason to drive further out for the same kind of retail. A largely vacant mall on the edge of town is a familiar story in a lot of small cities.
That's not what happened here. In July 2021, developer Jason Camp bought the property along with the Glockner family and Boyd County, and rebranded it Camp Landing Entertainment District. Camp Landing's offerings include Malibu Jack's, an indoor amusement center with bowling lanes, a go-cart track, mini golf, laser tag and an arcade, plus a reopened ten-screen movie theater that now sells beer, plus Tap That Sports, a simulated-golf and sports bar that opened with twenty beer and cider taps.
By its first full year, twelve new businesses had opened on the property, ahead of the original plan's pace. Camp has said publicly that the project is tracking toward $50 to $60 million in investment once a planned hotel and sports complex are finished, well past the original $30 million estimate. The sports complex itself is real money and real construction: Boyd County issued a $15 million bond toward a 92,000-square-foot facility, a $19 million project in total, with construction that broke ground in the summer of 2025 and had been slated to finish this past spring. Camp has told local reporters the site pulled in roughly 2.3 million visitors in 2024 and that the completed complex could push that number past 4 million a year. If even a fraction of that traffic sticks, Camp Landing stops being a curiosity and becomes a second commercial district for the county, full stop.
What's new to eat, and where
Downtown's answer to that has mostly been food, and it's been a good year for it.
The most visible opening is Tuscan Prime Italian Chophouse, which took over the ground floor of the Delta Ashland Downtown Hotel. It's an Italian steakhouse with a Bourbon Bar upstairs and a separate Guitar Bar downstairs, built for the kind of dinner where you're not watching the clock. It's the first time in years downtown has had a restaurant aimed squarely at a date night or a client dinner rather than a quick bite.
A few blocks over, Mi Casita Kitchen and Bakery opened in February on 16th Street. Owners German Flores and Ruth Hernandez run it as a full-day spot, breakfast through dessert, blending Mexican and American dishes in a way that's become a genuine neighborhood favorite according to local coverage of the opening.
Out on the Route 60 side, the growth has been faster and more national. A second Slim Chickens opened in May near Gillum's Repair and Service in the Summit area, and Chicken Salad Chick announced in January it's bringing locations to both Ashland and Huntington, developed by franchise owners Tammy and Dr. Rancie Hannah. Together, they add to the area's restaurant news.
A few other names worth knowing if you haven't caught up:
- HUCK, a former food truck that's now a brick-and-mortar spot, drawing early praise for turning a familiar menu into a sit-down experience
- The Delta hotel's presence downtown, which has quietly become a reason for out-of-town visitors to stay overnight instead of just passing through for the day
- The ongoing buildout at Camp Landing, where Tap That Sports and the cinema's alcohol license have both been recent enough changes that longtime residents may not have caught up yet
Four weekends that matter
None of this happens in a vacuum. The fall calendar downtown is unusually stacked this year, and it's worth having the dates in one place.
| Date | Event | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Sept. 10 | Ashley McBryde, Into the Wild Tour | Paramount Arts Center |
| Sept. 12 | Mural Fest and Car Show, plus the Chick-uamegon 5K and 10K | Downtown Ashland |
| Sept. 18-20 | Poage Landing Days | Winchester Avenue, 14th to 18th Street |
| Oct. 2-3 | Red Clay Classic | Ashland area |
| Oct. 10 | Tamarack Health WhistleStop Marathon, Half-Marathon, 5K/10K | Ashland area |
Poage Landing Days is the one to build a weekend around if you haven't been in a while. It's a three-day festival marking the city's founding as Poage's Landing back in 1786, and it's been recognized as a Top 25 Downtown Festival by the Kentucky Main Street Program. It's also just returned to its traditional Winchester Avenue footprint. Road construction pushed it to Central Park in 2024, branded as Poage in the Park for that one year, and it moved back to its original streets in 2025. This year's dates, September 18 through 20, make it a highlight of the fall calendar, alongside the McBryde show, the mural fest, and two run/walk events.
That makes the third weekend in September an easy choice if you're picking one weekend to go downtown this fall.
Two Ashlands, one weekend
Here's the part that's easy to miss if you only pay attention to one side of town. Downtown's momentum is built on things that don't scale easily: a historic festival, a hotel restaurant with a bar built for lingering, a neighborhood bakery. Camp Landing's momentum is built on things that scale fast: national chains, an indoor theme park, a sports complex sized for regional tournaments. They offer different things, giving residents more ways to spend time in Ashland.
For someone who's lived in Ashland a while, the practical upshot is simple. If your mental map of this town still treats Camp Landing as "the old mall" and downtown as "where the festivals are," it's worth updating both halves. Camp Landing is now another destination. And downtown, for the first time in a few years, has a restaurant scene that gives people an actual reason to stay for dinner and not just pass through for the parade.
If you're curious how any of this, the festival calendar, the restaurant openings, the Camp Landing buildout, tends to show up in what a home is worth on a given street, that's a conversation worth having separately. Impact Realty Group knows this market block by block, and getting your free home valuation is a good place to start whenever you're ready.
