What Actually Changed Around Union Township This Summer
July 23, 2026
July 23, 2026
If you have lived off Clough Pike or Summerside Road for a while, you already know the Eastgate Mall isn't the story anymore. The center of gravity in Union Township has been drifting east for a couple of years, and the summer of 2026 is the first season where the shift is legible on a Friday-night walk. The Civic Center campus is doing the crowd work. The Ivy Pointe corridor is doing the weekday work. And a construction fence on the north side of I-275 is quietly rewriting what the middle of the township feels like when you drive through it at lunch.
This is a post for people who already live here. If you are trying to figure out whether the concerts are worth the parking, whether the walking trail is still a nice loop with the hospital going up next to it, or what actually got approved along Eastgate Boulevard, that is what the next fifteen minutes are for.
The Civic Center campus is running one continuous schedule from late afternoon into the evening, and it rewards showing up early. Here is how a normal summer Friday sequences:
The reason this matters more than a standard events roundup: the market, the food trucks, and the amphitheater are on the same clock now. You do not have to choose. That is the through-line for the rest of the season.
The Ivy Pointe Walking Trail has been on township maps for years, and if you only knew it as the loop next to TQL, you would be forgiven for treating it as an office-park amenity. That is not what it is anymore.
The trail sits on Ivy Pointe Boulevard on just over eight acres, with a paved walking path, a pond, and a restroom facility, and it is designed so that as the surrounding business district grows, the walking path will eventually encompass the entire business district. In 2026 that stopped being aspirational. Union Township led commercial development in Clermont County in 2025, fueled by construction of the new eastern campus for Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and a Veterans Affairs clinic, both in Ivy Pointe. Both projects are on the JEDD 8 parcels north of I-275, which the township lists as JEDD 8, Children's Hospital Campus and VA Campus at Ivy Pointe North.
What that means at ground level: the same paved loop that used to be a lunchtime lap for TQL sales staff is now the pedestrian spine for a small medical campus in progress. If you walk it in the morning before the heat, you can see the entire east half of the township's next decade going up around you. The inner measurement is 1,800 feet, the outer 4,750, so a full outer loop and a half inner is roughly a 5K. That is worth knowing before the sidewalks get crowded.
The obvious take on Union Township in 2026 is "everything is under construction." That is directionally right and analytically thin. The useful version is the ratio.
Clermont County released 2025 permit totals in March. Permits totaled 6,156 last year, up 284 from the record 5,871 in 2024 and 5,780 in 2023, also a record. That is three consecutive record years. The breakdown is where it gets interesting: residential permits totaled 3,986, up 90 from 3,896 in 2024, while commercial and industrial permits totaled 2,170 in 2025, up 206 from 1,964 in 2024. Residential grew about 2.3 percent year over year. Commercial and industrial grew about 10.5 percent. In other words, the commercial pipeline is scaling roughly four to five times faster than the residential one, and Union, Miami, Batavia and Pierce townships are the areas experiencing the most growth in Clermont County, all located near major thoroughfares and commercial centers. If you live near the Eastgate corridor, that is the number that explains why your evening traffic pattern keeps changing.
The Friday concerts are the season's rhythm section. The Fireworks Celebration is its exam.
The Union Township Fireworks Celebration is on Saturday, September 26th, with live bands, Touch-A-Truck vehicles, a Block Party, and a firework show presented by Rozzi's Famous Fireworks, held along Eastgate South Drive in partnership with RJ Cinema Distillery & Taproom, Jungle Jim's International Market, and Crossroads East Side. Read the location again. Not the Civic Center. Eastgate South Drive.
That is a deliberate choice. Eastgate South Drive is the retail spine that connects Jungle Jim's to the movie house to the church, and holding the block party there uses the same public right-of-way the township wants to see programmed on non-event nights. It also lets three of the largest destinations on the east side of the mall share one crowd instead of splitting it. If you are already a Jungle Jim's regular for the international grocery aisles, you have probably noticed the parking lot behaving like a plaza on weekends. September 26 is the version of that with the road closed.
None of these are the story, but any one of them will change a specific block of your week:
Two of those five entries are drive-thru or fast-format food. That is not an accident. It is the same permit story from the previous section showing up as a menu.
The three township parks are doing different jobs this year. Veterans Memorial Park is 25 acres with tennis, basketball, soccer, baseball, sand volleyball, cornhole, a walking track, a playground, a fitness trail, and a fishing pond. That is the utility park. Clepper Park is 50 acres with entrances from Summerside and Barg Salt Run Roads, offering basketball, soccer, baseball, a football field, walking track, fishing lake, playground, and sheltered picnic areas. That is the neighborhood park. Shor Park was dedicated on October 22, 2010, is part of the Clermont County Park District, sits on 56 acres at Tealtown and Schoolhouse roads, and the land was donated by Sylvia Shor in memory of her late husband S. David Shor, with partial funding from Union Township Trustees. That is the destination park.
If you are hosting relatives in August and want a single afternoon that reads as "here is where we live," the honest itinerary is Ivy Pointe Trail before the heat, Jungle Jim's around 11 for lunch and the international aisles, and Shor Park at four when the shade cooperates. The Friday night version of that day ends at the amphitheater.
Union Township in the summer of 2026 has two civic centers. The old one, on the campus with the amphitheater, is still doing the community programming. The new one, on the north side of I-275 around a hospital campus and a walking trail that will eventually loop the whole business district, is where the township is deciding what the next ten years will look like. Both of them are quietly public. Both of them are worth using this month.
If you are thinking about a move within the township or in from another part of Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky and want a read on how these shifts actually price into homes on the east side of the mall versus the Summerside side, Deborah Long works both corridors and is happy to walk you through what the calendar means for the streets you are considering. Schedule a Free Consultation when you are ready.
Stay up to date on the latest real estate trends.
Let Debbie Long guide you through one of life’s biggest decisions with clarity and confidence. From initial consultation to closing day, Debbie’s tailored approach ensures your real estate experience is as smooth and rewarding as possible.
