Ask most people why Central Avenue feels different lately and you'll get the same answer: new businesses. A pub here, a brewery there, a record shop that wasn't around a few years back. That's true, but it undersells what actually happened. Walk the four or five blocks that make up downtown Barboursville and you'll notice something the "new businesses" framing misses: a lot of these storefronts share an owner.
That matters more than another list of grand openings, because it changes what the revival actually is. It isn't a dozen strangers independently betting on the same three blocks. It's one family building something on purpose, plus a handful of separate operators who decided to bet alongside them.
"Six new businesses have opened on these two streets downtown in the past two years, and that was during the pandemic. It's been 30 years since all the storefronts on these two streets have been full."
That's Mayor Chris Tatum, quoted in The Herald-Dispatch, describing the start of the turnaround a few years ago. The Village's own downtown page still describes major renovations underway in one of the corridor's anchor buildings, which tells you the fill-in never really stopped.
One Family, Three Storefronts, One Beer
Here's the part that's easy to miss if you're just scrolling reviews: 1861 Public House, Köerber Beer Company, and Oscar's Breakfast, Burgers & Brews are all Jason Beter's businesses.
1861 Public House sits on Central Avenue and leans into the neighborhood's Civil War history, since one of the first land battles of the war was fought in Barboursville in 1861. A few blocks away on Brady Street, Köerber Beer Company is the family's brewery, where Jason's son Noah, who had just graduated from Marshall University when the family started planning the brewery, taught himself commercial brewing from the ground up before the taproom opened. And Oscar's, the breakfast-and-burger spot Beter also owns, underwent a ten-week renovation that added a full kitchen, a longer bar, and roughly twenty more beers on tap, with breakfast now served all day.
The three places aren't just under one roof of ownership. Köerber's beer is what's actually in the taps at all three locations, the taproom, 1861 Public House, and Oscar's. So when you order a pint downtown, there's a decent chance you're drinking the same batch no matter which door you walked through. Beter has said as much himself: he's not trying to reinvent anything, he just wants people to be proud that the beer was brewed in their town.
He's also been candid about the ambition behind it. In talking about what he's building, Beter has pointed to Lewisburg, the walkable Greenbrier County town known for its shops and restaurants, as the model, saying flatly that he'd rather people ask why go to Lewisburg when they can come to Barboursville. That's not modest, but it does explain why the three businesses feel connected instead of scattered.
If you haven't been to Köerber on a weekend afternoon, the brewery also runs a recurring market worth putting on your calendar. On the last Sunday of every month from April through October, the taproom hosts more than twenty local vendors alongside its regular beer list, a standing date rather than a one-off pop-up.
The Other Half of the Corridor
The Beter family's footprint explains a lot of what's changed downtown, but not all of it. A few storefronts down, Christopher's Eats has its own origin story that has nothing to do with the brewery scene. It was started by brothers David and Jeremy Adams alongside their cousin, Chef Christopher Dixon, who trained in Orlando before working in restaurants in Florida and Baton Rouge. The three had been talking about opening a place since 2012, with the specific goal of bringing jobs back to the Huntington-Barboursville area.
Orbit's Record Shop is another independent addition, tucked into the corridor and recommended by the Village's own visitors bureau as one of downtown's must-stops. Bruno's Spotted Hare and Olde Library Tavern round out a strip that now has enough going on to actually plan an evening around, something that wasn't true on Central Avenue for a long stretch.
Put it together and the corridor's comeback has two engines, not one: a family that decided to concentrate its bets in a few square blocks, and a set of independent owners who looked at the same empty storefronts and saw the same opportunity.
Fall Fest Isn't on Central Avenue, and That's the Point
If you're new enough to town that you're picturing the Village's biggest annual event happening on those same downtown blocks, it's worth correcting that now. Barboursville Fall Fest doesn't happen on Central Avenue. It happens out at the fairgrounds on Farmdale Road, and this year it runs September 17 through 19, 2026.
That separation is actually useful to understand, because it means Barboursville has two distinct centers of gravity rather than one stretched thin. Central Avenue is where you go on a random Tuesday for a burger and a Köerber pour. Farmdale Road is where the whole Village shows up once a year for something bigger.
This year's Fall Fest lineup gives residents a reason to actually plan around it:
- Thursday, September 17: The parade kicks off the weekend, per the Village's official Fall Fest page.
- Through the weekend: Carnival rides and vendor booths run across all three days, with pre-sale wristbands valid any day of the event.
- Saturday, September 19: The festival closes with a headline performance from Eddie Montgomery, performing as Montgomery Gentry. Montgomery has continued touring under that name since his longtime partner, Troy Gentry, died in a helicopter crash in 2017, and this booking marks a return to West Virginia for him after headlining the Charleston Sternwheel Regatta a couple of years back.
Fall Fest isn't the only tradition on the Village calendar. Civil War Days, the Fourth of July celebration, Outdoor Movie Nights, the Christmas Parade, and the Tractor Show all show up annually too. But Fall Fest is the one that pulls in a national touring act, which is a different scale of event than anything downtown can host on its own.
Why This Adds Up to More Than a Few Openings
Barboursville has plenty of highway-oriented retail growth too, out along Mall Road near Huntington Mall. But Central Avenue's turnaround is a different animal: concentrated, family-driven in large part, and stitched together by relationships you can actually trace, an owner, his son, his beer, his three storefronts, plus a handful of independent operators who decided the bet was worth making alongside him.
And a few miles away, the Village still throws its biggest party of the year somewhere else entirely, on its own separate patch of ground, with its own separate draw. Understanding both halves, the corridor and the fairgrounds, is the difference between visiting Barboursville and actually living here long enough to know how the pieces fit.
If you're already part of this town, you probably knew some of these threads separately. Maybe you didn't know they all traced back to the same last name, or that the fest you go to every fall happens on the opposite side of the Village from the pub you go to every other Friday. That's the kind of detail that only shows up when you've actually paid attention to the place, which is exactly what we try to do at Impact Realty Group. Whether you're weighing what your Barboursville home might be worth in today's market or just want to talk shop about the neighborhood, get your free home valuation and let's have that conversation.
