Liberty Food Park gets approval; will be European-style mixed dining, recreation complex

Credit: Nick Graham

Credit: Nick Graham

New dining and entertainment options are headed to Liberty Twp. after trustees here approved preliminary plans for the first facility of its type in the community.

The proposed “Liberty Food Park” would be located across the street from the campus of Lakota East High School and stand on more than three acres at the corner of Wyandot and Lakota Lane.

Once built, the complex would provide indoor and outdoor dining, three sand volleyball and bocce ball courts along with a live music stage, family-oriented entertainment, bar and a variety of eateries.

The single, two-story building will have 13,000-plus square feet of space and sit on what is now an empty lot at the site, a few hundred yards from Cincinnati-Dayton Road.

Developers recently told township trustees, who unanimously approved the early plans, they have built a similar, mixed-use dinning and entertainment facility in the nation of Belize and that their latest venture would bring their first such complex to America.

Developer and Liberty Twp. resident Michael Ewers told trustees about his desire to bring the unusually varied complex to his home community.

“It’s really inspired by markets that have been in Europe for many years. What makes this unique is that it’s going to be very family friendly,” Ewers said.

A half-dozen dining and dessert “concepts” all under one roof will allow the building and its exterior activities “to be a community experience.”

The restaurants are designed to be incubators for new food chefs, who will sign three-year leases so they can later be “cycled out”, said Ewers, and new eateries invited in to maintain the complex’s variety of cuisine offerings for the community.

Ewers said construction of the Liberty Food Park is expected to take about one year with an opening in 2023.

The Liberty Food Park, he said, will be designed to cater to the many young families in the township and beyond who will be attracted, in part, by the multiple food choices allowing all family members to dine at the single location but with each member enjoying different fare.

Trustee Tom Farrell called the complex “innovative and unique.”

“I look forward to having it in Liberty Twp.,” said Farrell.

The promixity to Lakota East and its campus – located across Lakota Lane on the eastern border of the complex - will also provide another after-school outlet for one of the region’s largest high schools.

Fellow trustee Todd Miniear described the facility as “a really cool concept” he predicted will eventually become “a go-to place in Liberty Twp.”

“It’s going to be a really great family spot for Liberty Twp.”

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