For almost two years, the fountains at the Buxton Inn have sat dry. If you've walked down Broadway on a summer evening, you know the courtyard by its absence more than its presence: the scaffolding that came and went, the side entrance that stayed roped off, the sense that the oldest building on the square was somewhere between a renovation and a decision nobody had made yet. That decision got made in April. The building is reopening this month. But the inn coming back is not quite the one that closed.
Two Years on the Market, One Number That Kept Falling
The Buxton Inn's kitchen fire in October 2022 damaged rooms and structure across the complex, not just the kitchen it started in. The Schilling family, who had owned the property since 2014, spent roughly a year and a half rebuilding before the Tavern bar reopened in April 2024, with its 14 renovated guest bathrooms and new furniture throughout. Even then, the restaurant itself stayed closed. Five months later, in September 2024, the Schillings put the whole five-building complex up for sale.
What happened after that is the part most residents didn't see up close. The complex, five buildings and 25 guest rooms on more than an acre of Broadway frontage, was priced at $5.85 million by the summer of 2025. It sat. By this past February, the asking price for the hotel and its four adjacent houses had been cut to roughly $2.8 million, according to reporting from The Reporting Project, Denison University's local news outlet. That reduction is what finally drew multiple offers. Brandon Hess of Shai Hess Commercial Real Estate, who brokered the sale, confirmed the deal closed in April to a group most of Licking County had never heard of before this year.
That's a two-thirds drop from list to sale range on a building most people in Granville would tell you is priceless. It isn't a knock on the Buxton. It's a reminder that a 214-year-old inn with three of its 25 rooms in the actual 1812 building, and the other 22 spread across four historic houses next door, is a specialized asset. Not every buyer wants to run a boutique hotel with a fire scar and a courtyard that needs fountains reactivated. The ones who do, apparently, wait for the price to catch up to the reality of the job.
A Different Kind of Owner Walks In
The buyer is New England Development Co., a Worthington-based firm that previously owned the Worthington Inn, another century-plus hospitality landmark it eventually sold to a group that brought in Wolf's Ridge Brewing to run the restaurant. New England Development describes itself as a boutique, family-owned firm with mixed-use, commercial, residential and hospitality projects stretching from Ohio to Hawaii, Texas and Florida.
That's a meaningfully different operating model than what the Buxton has had for most of its recent history. Orville and Audrey Orr bought the inn in 1972, when it was in rough enough shape that demolition was a real possibility, and spent 42 years restoring it before selling to Bob Schilling's group in 2014. Schilling, whose Columbus firm Urban Restorations specializes in historic renovation, kept that hands-on approach going for another decade, block by block, bathroom by bathroom. New England Development runs hospitality properties across state lines as one piece of a broader portfolio. Granville Village Manager Herb Koehler called the Buxton "one of our keystone attractions, and part of what brings people to Granville" when the sale was announced, and credited Schilling for holding out for a buyer who would keep the inn intact rather than parceling it off.
What that means in practice: the Buxton is moving from a family-run preservation project to a professionally managed hospitality asset with sister properties elsewhere. That's not a downgrade. It's a different kind of attention, and it shows up in what's actually being built right now.
What's Actually Changing on the Property
Kevin Showe, the new owner, told NBC4 that construction has been underway since April 1. The scope goes beyond a paint job:
- New entry stairs at the main house
- Upgrades to the garden room
- Reactivation of the half-dozen fountains scattered around the courtyard
- A reimagined courtyard designed for formal outdoor dining, not just cocktail-hour overflow
- Changes to the interior dining rooms aimed at accommodating more upscale private events
The inn's own site describes the courtyard as being rebuilt around "fountains, outdoor tables, music, seasonal food and drink," and frames the interior dining experience as more refined without becoming formal in tone. Read plainly, the Buxton is repositioning itself less as a walk-in tavern and more as an event and destination-dining property, the kind of place built for a rehearsal dinner or a milestone birthday as much as a Tuesday night out.
Mark September 23
The reopening has a date, and it's close. On September 23, the Buxton will hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony with Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, followed by a gala benefiting the Granville Historical Society. Attendance for the gala is capped at 200 guests, and tickets go through the inn directly.
The inn's own announcement kept it simple: "Big news from the Buxton. Mark your calendars." Behind that line is a team that's been quietly rebuilding the restaurant, growing staff, and preparing a new website, according to the same post.
What This Means If You're Just Walking Past
Here's the part that actually affects daily life on the square this fall. The restaurant is not open yet. As of now, the Buxton's own site states plainly that dining details, including hours, menus and reservations, will be shared as plans are confirmed. If you want to be first in line when tables open, the inn has a dining list you can join through its site rather than waiting to find out by driving past and checking the door.
Guest rooms are a different story. All 25 rooms across the five houses remain bookable now, so if you've got a relative in town for a Denison weekend or a wedding at Bryn Du Mansion, lodging hasn't skipped a beat during any of this.
Expect more foot traffic and event parking around Broadway once the courtyard and upgraded dining rooms are fully online, especially on weekends. A property built for "more upscale events," in Showe's own words, tends to draw more private bookings than a casual tavern did, which means more cars, more evening lights, and probably more live music drifting across the square on a Friday than Granville has heard from that corner in a couple of years.
The ghost stories, the Lincoln and Harrison visits, the Underground Railroad ties in the Tavern room: all of that stays exactly as true as it was before the sale. What's changing isn't the inn's past. It's who's stewarding it next, and what kind of place it becomes now that the fountains are running again.
If you're weighing what's happening around your own corner of Granville, from the square to the neighborhoods just off it, Shannon Lists Homes tracks these shifts as part of knowing the village, not just its listings. Reach out anytime you want a read on what's actually changing nearby.
