Homestead Park's Expansion Was Built by the Subdivisions Around It

Homestead Metro Park on Cosgray Road has been a compact park for years, at about 44 acres according to 10TV. Metro Parks now lists it at 376 acres, and 333 of those were added in 2026. The Columbus Dispatch reported that Hilliard City Council voted unanimously for the transfer, which makes the park nearly eight times bigger.

The land came together piece by piece from the open space set aside as new neighborhoods were built on Hilliard's western edge. That's why the new park is shaped the way it is. The land runs behind homes and along trails, and the paths to reach it mostly run through those neighborhoods already.

The land came from the subdivisions

In 2023, Hilliard City Council adopted a policy that 70% of the land in new developments has to stay open space. The City of Hilliard points out that this goes beyond the 50% standard used by other communities in the Big Darby Accord.

The city put the parkland together through that requirement and through development agreements with four homebuilders:

• M/I Homes, from Hill Farm and Hill Farm II
• Fischer Homes, from Clover Meadows
• Pulte Homes and Rockford Homes, from Tarlton Meadows

The city credits M/I Homes with assembling much of the land through Hill Farm and Hill Farm II. Metro Parks Executive Director Tim Moloney told 10TV that the land is coming to Metro Parks at no cost. Assistant City Manager Dan Ralley described it in the city's announcement as "the result of years of thoughtful planning and collaboration."

The city's paperwork shows how scattered the pieces are. Hilliard's agreement with Metro Parks lists a parcel of about 46.6 acres at 4643 Elliott Road, plus a parcel off Barbeau Lane next to Homestead and the Heritage Trail. According to Columbus Underground, the parcels are mostly former farmland with some wooded areas. The city's planning memo calls the whole thing a greenbelt along Hilliard's western edge, west of the existing park and toward the Big Darby watershed.

One name, two different kinds of park

If you've been going to Homestead for years, the park you know will stay the same. Metro Parks lists these features at 4675 Cosgray Road:

Pets are allowed on the trails and in the picnic and parking areas.

The 333 new acres won't look like any of that. 10TV describes the current park as active, with pavilions, playgrounds, a pond and walking paths, while the land to the west "will be more natural and quiet." The city's announcement says the new land will focus on conservation and quieter time in nature, possibly with boardwalks and natural-surface trails. Homestead's current recreation will carry on as it is. Moloney gave 10TV a sense of what restoration means here:

"You're going to see some prairies developed, probably some reforestation, probably redevelopment of wetlands that were there long before the farmers came in."

So Hilliard ends up with a busy park of about 44 acres attached to a much larger natural area more than seven times its size. The busy part stays where it is. Most of the growth is open land you can walk or bike into.

The front door is a neighborhood path

Since the land came out of subdivisions, so did much of the trail network around it. Columbus Underground reported that the expanded park would be stitched together by paved trails that are already built. Those paths run through two housing developments and alongside several of the new parcels, linking the Heritage Rail Trail to Scioto Darby Creek Road near Audubon Road.

The city's agreement with Metro Parks names these links:

1. The Homestead connector through Estates at Hoffman Farms and Tarlton Meadows
2. A Hill Farm trail extension toward Scioto Darby Creek Road
3. About 2.4 miles of Heritage Trail south of Hayden Run Road

The agreement lists the Hill Farm route as a planned extension, so the network isn't all paved end to end yet. Most of it is in place, though. According to the city, the transferred land is connected by shared-use paths.

This matters in day-to-day terms. Most Metro Parks have a main entrance, a parking lot and a trailhead. This expansion is spread along the paths homeowners in Hill Farm, Clover Meadows and Tarlton Meadows already use. Someone on the Heritage Rail Trail is already on the network that ties the parcels together, and the Multiuse Trail at the Cosgray Road park feeds straight into it.

What comes first, and when

Moloney told 10TV that work on the prairies, wetlands and forest starts this fall and will take a couple of years. The handover isn't finished either. The agreement gives a deadline of December 31, 2026, for transferring the rest of the Barbeau Lane parcel after a lot split.

The regional numbers show why the conservation side carries so much weight. Columbus Underground reported that this transfer pushes the total land preserved in the Big Darby watershed past 10,000 acres for the first time. Battelle Darby Creek and Prairie Oaks are among the other Metro Parks in the watershed. 10TV noted that The Nature Conservancy calls the Big Darby Creek watershed one of the most biologically diverse aquatic systems in the Midwest. "In the Metro Parks world, in the conservation world, this is huge," Moloney told the station.

For the next couple of years, then, the new land will mostly change slowly as farm fields turn back into prairie and wetland. The paved paths through the neighborhoods give you a way to watch that happen, and the pond, pavilions and play areas on Cosgray Road work the same as before.

The rest of the year in Hilliard

The rest of fall is busy closer to downtown. Hilliard Trick or Treat runs Thursday, October 29, from 6 to 8 p.m. The city's Cram the Cruiser holiday drive starts November 1 and runs through December 6. December 6 is also the city's Tree Lighting, from 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. across downtown and Weaver Park, with a free trolley and horse-and-carriage rides on the list of activities.

If you live near the Heritage Rail Trail or in one of the neighborhoods connected to the new Homestead land, that location belongs in your home's story when you're ready to sell. Nick Vlasidis and The GPS Home Team can show you how we'd present it. Request your VIP home valuation.