Nationwide Hotel and Conference Center rebranded, renovated as part of $14M project
July 28th, 2025
Article originally published by The Columbus Dispatch >
By Emma Wozniak
- The Nationwide Hotel and Conference Center in Lewis Center is undergoing $14 million in renovations and will be renamed The Ohioan Hotel and Event Center.
- Renovations include updates to the space’s 193 hotel rooms, ballrooms, event spaces and a new outdoor courtyard.
- The facility, originally a Nationwide employee training center, has evolved over decades and now hosts various events.
The Nationwide Hotel and Conference Center will have a new look — and a new name — by early September, following $14 million in renovations.
Located at 100 Green Meadows Dr. South in Lewis Center at the corner of Powell Road and State Route 23, the 20-acre hotel and event complex will soon be rebranded as The Ohioan Hotel and Event Center, according to a press release from the property’s owner, Nationwide Realty Investors. Brian Ellis, NRI president, told The Dispatch the hotel and event center already has “significant bookings” for October, and he’s confident the renovations will be complete before then.
Ellis said the renovations include not only aesthetic changes to furnishings and fixtures within the ballrooms, event spaces and 193 hotel rooms, but also a new outdoor courtyard connected to the ballroom. According to the press release, the onsite 2,000-square-foot pub will also be “given a refresh” in the fall.
“The space has grown up over many years, over many decades,” Ellis said. “Your experience is not going to be sort of the generic hotel, ballroom kind of space — it’s a one-of-a-kind experience.”
The facility, which dates back to the 1950s, was first used by Nationwide as a training center for its employees in the 70s, Ellis said. Most of the space was made up of classrooms and basic motel accommodations.
In the early 2000s, Ellis said the company wanted to upgrade and modernize the space, resulting in the addition of 119 hotel rooms and the expansion of both the ballroom and training center.
2015 saw another update, this time to create over 70 more hotel rooms and add a 5,400-square-foot fitness center and pool, Ellis said.
Reflecting on the space’s evolution, Ellis said it’s been nice to see what was once a training center with few third-party events be “discovered” by the public and now be used for everything from business meetings to weddings to national conferences.
“I think of it as sort of being hidden in plain sight,” Ellis said. “It’s been around for a long time, it’s had a number of iterations in its life. This is the latest, and I think there’ll be more to come.”