Anyone who drives Buttermilk Pike toward I-71/75 has passed the same 26 acres of chain-link fence and cracked pavement for so long it stopped registering as a construction site and started reading as scenery. The Drawbridge Inn closed in 2012 after 42 years as Northern Kentucky's go-to hotel and convention center. The building came down in 2014. Since then, the lot has outlasted a change in mayors, more than one reworked site plan, and enough delay that most Fort Mitchell residents probably assumed nobody serious was ever going to build there.

That assumption was wrong, but not for the reason most people think. The site didn't sit vacant because developers lost interest. It sat vacant because of a lawsuit between two competing hospital systems, and later because a city street had to be physically relocated before a single foundation could be poured. Both obstacles are now cleared. And the thing going up first is not what anyone expected back when this project was first pitched.

The Lawsuit That Kept the Fence Up

In the mid-2010s, Christ Hospital wanted to build an ambulatory surgical center on the Drawbridge site. St. Elizabeth Healthcare, its Cincinnati-based rival, challenged the plan, arguing the region didn't need another one. In June 2018, a Franklin County circuit judge agreed, ruling that Northern Kentucky already had nine outpatient surgery centers and that each was running under 50 percent capacity. The ruling didn't just kill Christ's surgical center. It stalled the entire Gateway project while the two systems and the city sorted out what would replace it.

The collateral damage was visible from the road. Montgomery Inn's Fort Mitchell location, sitting just off the same corridor, closed during that stretch. The restaurant cited declining sales and pointed directly at the stalled Gateway project as part of the reason it couldn't hang on any longer. A restaurant that had been waiting for redevelopment to bring the corridor back to life didn't survive long enough to see it happen.

By the time St. Elizabeth itself became the health partner on the site's eventual plan, the lot had already cost the neighborhood one long-running local business. That's the part of this story that doesn't show up in a groundbreaking photo.

The Road Was the Real Bottleneck

Even after the legal fight resolved and zoning cleared, the project still couldn't move because of something more literal: Royal Drive runs straight through the middle of the property, and the existing alignment didn't work for anything the developers wanted to build. The road had to be removed, relocated, and rebuilt before construction on either side of it could begin.

That closure went into effect on December 13, 2024. By this spring, the city reported that the roadway structure itself was complete and only final utility work remained, with Royal Drive expected to reopen within a month or two. Fort Mitchell City Administrator Edwin King said sewer and road improvements were finished and the project was on schedule, even after the delays that came before it.

Here's the sequence, compressed:

Once you see the sequence laid out, the fourteen years of apparent inaction make more sense. Nothing was happening because two very specific, very slow-moving obstacles hadn't cleared yet. Now both have.

The Senior Living Tower Goes First. The Restaurants Are Still "Available."

If you remember the earlier renderings of this project, you probably pictured restaurants and a hotel filling in first, since that's what the 2019 and 2023 coverage of the site's plans described. That's not how it's playing out. The first structure to actually rise on the site is The Ormsby, a seven-story senior living community built in partnership between St. Elizabeth Healthcare and Dallas-based Greenbrier Development, led by Bellevue-based Brandicorp LLC. The community is restricted to residents 62 and older and will include 67 one-bedroom units, 136 two-bedroom units, and a 48-bed health center, named for Fort Mitchell's namesake, Maj. Gen. Ormsby MacKnight Mitchel.

Fort Mitchell's city council approved an interlocal agreement with the Kentucky Bond Development Corporation in late July to finance the Ormsby's construction through tax-exempt municipal bonds, a structure that lets the city sponsor the financing without carrying the debt itself. That agreement is what finally unlocks construction that's been ready to go since the November 2024 groundbreaking.

Meanwhile, the retail and restaurant space that residents actually expect to notice day to day, the coffee shops, the sit-down dinner spots, the storefronts that would replace what Montgomery Inn used to be, is still being marketed as available. Brandicorp's own leasing materials list roughly 10 acres along Buttermilk Pike open for restaurant and retail tenants as of this spring. In other words, the part of the project most people are waiting to actually use hasn't been signed yet. The senior living tower got the financing and the groundbreaking first because it had the institutional partner and the bond structure ready to move. The restaurants are still in the pitch-deck stage.

What Changes on Buttermilk Pike This Fall

Vertical construction on the Ormsby is expected to begin this fall, according to the city's most recent update. That's the visible milestone most residents will actually notice: cranes, not just fencing.

There's a traffic piece worth knowing too. The site sits at a corridor carrying an average of 19,843 vehicles a day along Buttermilk Pike, and the state required a full traffic impact study because of its proximity to I-71/75. As a result, Kentucky's transportation cabinet plans a double-diamond interchange redesign to manage congestion once the site is generating regular traffic instead of sitting empty. If you've ever timed your commute to avoid the backup near that exit, this is the fix that's supposed to address it, though it will follow the building phase rather than precede it.

Tonight, Aug. 17, Fort Mitchell's city council meets again at the Fort Mitchell City Building on Dixie Highway, a meeting open to the public. The Gateway project has been a recurring line item at these meetings for more than a year now, one procedural vote at a time, each one a small sign that the thing behind the fence is finally becoming a place.

For fourteen years, the empty lot on Buttermilk Pike was a kind of local shorthand for projects that never happen. What actually kept it that way wasn't a lack of ambition. It was a hospital rivalry that ended up in front of a judge, and a road that had to move before anything else could. Both of those stories are finished now. The next chapter is a crane, not a fence.

We've been tracking this corridor closely because it's the kind of change that reshapes how a neighborhood feels to live in, long before it shows up in any sale price. If you're curious how projects like the Fort Mitchell Gateway tend to ripple through a corridor over time, that's exactly the kind of local read Dwell Well Group keeps close tabs on. Request a Dwell Well Consultation anytime you want a grounded, neighborhood-level conversation about what's actually happening around you, not just what's for sale.