"I think good, good for me. More, I think more business," Agron Dennika told a WHIO reporter back in May, sizing up the news that Bellbrook was about to let people carry drinks down Franklin Street. Dennika owns Veli's Pasta & Pizza, which happens to sit wedged between a brewery and a pub. A few blocks away, longtime resident Ruth Toht saw it differently. "I don't think it's a good idea," she said, worried about parking and the traffic that comes with blocking off a route through the middle of a small town.
Both of them were right to have opinions, because on June 22, 2026, Bellbrook City Council passed Resolution 2026-R-19, officially creating Downtown Bellbrook's first Designated Outdoor Refreshment Area. If you've watched a DORA work in Fairborn or Dayton or Centerville, you already know the basic idea: a mapped zone where adults 21 and up can buy a beer or a glass of wine from a permitted business and walk it outside, as long as it's in the right cup. What most residents haven't clocked yet is what this particular zone is actually built for, and it isn't the crowd at SummerFest.
What changed on Franklin Street
The zone itself covers 48 acres, running along West Franklin Street from Dot's Market on the west end out to Washington Mill Road on the east, with Bellbrock Park pulled into the boundary on the north side. Inside those lines, from noon to midnight, seven days a week, you can now carry a drink from a participating business without breaking any rules. That last part matters: this isn't a festival-weekend exception. It's a standing, everyday zone that happens to exist through the entire year, whether or not anything is happening downtown that day.
The rules that come with it are specific:
- Drinks must be poured into an official DORA-branded cup, capped at 20 ounces
- Only beer, wine, and mixed drinks from permitted businesses qualify, no outside alcohol
- The zone runs noon to midnight daily, though the city can adjust hours around special events
- As of passage, three businesses hold the qualifying permits: Blueberry Café, McIntosh's Pub, and Bellbrook Brewing
Three permits, across 48 acres. That gap is the whole story.
A zone built for businesses that aren't there yet
Councilmember Ernie Havens has been talking about downtown Bellbrook's potential for years, not just this summer. Back in 2022, describing an earlier wave of small business openings on Franklin Street, he told the Dayton Daily News that "some nice private restaurants have wanted to come to Bellbrook, but they felt like the city didn't really want them." That comment wasn't about the DORA. It didn't need to be. It's the same problem the DORA is meant to solve.
When council debated the resolution in June, Havens framed it as a signal more than a perk: "If we don't at least try these things, it says the opposite," he said, referring to what happens when a city refuses to experiment with the tools other towns already use. Resident Jenn Leclaire agreed, telling council she'd "seen so many positive things come from a DORA" elsewhere and wanted the same for Bellbrook. Meghann Naveau backed the idea too, but pushed council to think through the hours given how many kids move freely through downtown on any given afternoon.
None of that debate was really about whether three permit holders would overwhelm 48 acres. It was about what a walkable, outdoor-drink-friendly downtown signals to the restaurant that hasn't opened yet. A DORA is the kind of amenity a city can point to when it's trying to convince a chef or a brewer that Bellbrook is worth the lease. According to the Dayton Daily News, the DORA is the third piece of a downtown strategy that's been building for a while: the city already reworked its Community Reinvestment Area, which covers most of downtown, and established a Community Entertainment District specifically aimed at drawing new restaurants and service businesses. The DORA isn't a standalone idea. It's the next domino.
That's also why Bellbrook joining Fairborn, Dayton, and Centerville as a DORA city matters more than it might sound. Those towns didn't create their zones because they already had a critical mass of bars and breweries lining up. They created the zones first, then let the foot traffic and the permits catch up. Bellbrook is running the same play, a few years behind, with a downtown that's smaller and quieter than any of the three.
SummerFest is the loud part, not the point
None of this means SummerFest is irrelevant to the story. The Bellbrook Lions Club's 79th Annual SummerFest runs Friday and Saturday, August 14 and 15, at the old Sugarcreek School on 51 S. East Street, with carnival rides from Ego Midway, food trailers, and a beer and wine tent with live music, according to the Lions Club's own festival page. Saturday's parade cuts straight through downtown starting at 4 p.m., which means the same Franklin Street corridor that just became a DORA is about to see its heaviest foot traffic of the summer, less than two months after the ink dried on Resolution 2026-R-19.
The festival's own beer and wine tent runs under separate event permitting at the old Sugarcreek School site, so don't expect SummerFest itself to be the DORA's christening. What you should expect is a parade route and a crowd of neighbors moving through the exact stretch of Franklin Street where the new rules apply, for the first time since they went live. If you want to see what a slow Tuesday afternoon inside the zone looks like compared to a Saturday with a parade blocking the street, this weekend is your comparison point.
The Bellbrook Lions Club has served the community since 1946, and this year's SummerFest is its 79th. The festival still funds Bellbrook youth programs that reach more than 350 kids a year, along with scholarships and donations to the police and fire departments. That's the kind of civic continuity that makes SummerFest feel like a fixture rather than an event. The DORA is the opposite: brand new, untested, still waiting to see if it does what a handful of council members hope.
What this actually looks like for someone walking downtown
If you're heading to SummerFest or just running errands on Franklin Street this month, here's the practical version. Grab a drink from Blueberry Café, McIntosh's Pub, or Bellbrook Brewing, make sure it lands in the branded cup, and you can walk it as far as Washington Mill Road or up into Bellbrock Park without anyone stopping you, any day of the week, between noon and midnight. Dennika's read on it is straightforward: sitting between a brewery and a pub used to just mean good smells drifting into his pizzeria. Now it might mean actual foot traffic carrying a drink from next door.
Toht's concern about parking is worth taking seriously too, especially on a weekend when a parade is already rerouting traffic through the same blocks. Whether the DORA creates real congestion or just a few extra people lingering outside Dot's Market with a to-go cup is something residents will be able to judge for themselves after a summer of actually living with it, not from a council chamber debate in June.
Bellbrook has always built its year around two fixed points, the Sugar Maple Festival in spring and the Lions Club SummerFest in August. We've written before about how those two events anchor the town's rhythm in our Bellbrook community guide. What's different this year is that the second of those anchors now falls inside a zone the city is using to make a pitch to businesses that haven't signed a lease yet. Whether that pitch lands probably won't be obvious this weekend. But if you're walking Franklin Street with a drink in a branded cup for the first time, you're not just enjoying SummerFest. You're part of the test case.
If you've got questions about what's happening in downtown Bellbrook or anywhere else in the area, I'm always happy to talk through it, no pressure, no sales pitch attached. Reach out to Donte Scott to schedule a free, no-pressure consultation.
