For 54 years, the fifth Boone County Jail did exactly what a fireproof, escape-proof building is built to do: hold still. Constructed in 1938 with fortified walls and, according to local historical accounts, a secret tunnel for quick entry and exit, it housed Boone County's Sheriff's department until 1992, when the department relocated and left the building empty.
It stayed that way for years. Then siblings Nicki and Sean Stoller looked at the old cell block and saw a tasting room instead. Boone County Jail Distillery now runs out of that same building on West Washington Street, and on a Friday or Saturday night you can walk from there to Klooz Brewz and over to Four Finger Distillery and call it a downtown bar crawl without ever getting in a car.
That's not a one-off renovation story. It's a pattern that shows up across the square once you start looking for it.
Lebanon didn't build a new downtown. It reopened the one it had.
The old jail itself is doing double duty. That same historic building on the Courthouse Square is also home to Chabella's Social Block Eatery, a fusion restaurant and cocktail bar that opened inside the jail's walls rather than in new construction, blending bold flavors and handcrafted margaritas into a space still recognizable as a former lockup. Out past the square, the old Scroggins Mill on West Sherman Street now hosts Movies at the Mill, the Lebanon Downtown Association's free Friday-night film series that runs 8 to 11 p.m. The lineup closes out August with a Grease screening on the 28th.
None of this required a developer to clear a lot. The organization behind most of it, Heart of Lebanon, is a nationally accredited Main Street group that runs more than 35 events a year on the square and in the alleys behind it, not by adding square footage but by activating what was already standing. That distinction matters if you live here. A town that grows by building new plazas tends to concentrate its energy in one shiny spot. A town that grows by reopening old buildings spreads it across a whole square, block by block, storefront by storefront.
What that looks like on an actual week
Right now, in the second half of August, the calendar backs this up. On any given week downtown, you can find:
- Tuesdays: The Lebanon City Market sets up on Meridian Street, running weekly from June through September. The same evening, Concerts in the Park brings live music to Academy Square Park from 6 to 9 p.m. Brian James & The Revival plays August 18.
- Wednesdays: Klooz Brewz runs trivia night at 7 p.m., with BOGO wings and a gift card prize sponsored by Fischer Homes.
- Fridays: Movies at the Mill screens at the old Scroggins Mill, free, starting at dusk.
- Saturdays: Conversion Brewing hosts Summer Bands & Brews at Strawberry Plaza on South Main Street. Arthur Buezo plays August 22, and the Blessed Relief Jazz Trio closes the series on the 29th.
Earlier this month, the Lebanon Downtown Association also ran its fifth annual Classic Car Show in the downtown core, drawing a car competition and live music to the square on a single August Saturday. That's five recurring draws spread across four nights of the week, running through buildings and public spaces the town already owned. Nobody had to build a new amphitheater to make that happen.
The square is starting to run out of room
That density has created a problem Heart of Lebanon is now trying to solve, and the solution again involves adapting existing space rather than building new. Most events land on the east side of the Courthouse Square, under strings of catenary lights the organization put up years ago. As the calendar has filled in, that stretch has gotten tight.
This year, Heart of Lebanon partnered with Indiana University's Rural Placemaking Studio to design an expanded event corridor along South Meridian Street, right next to the square. Missy Crulik, the organization's executive director, described the project simply: the goal is more room under the same kind of lighting the town already loves, not a new venue built from scratch. The studio work wraps up this summer with a public open house, and Heart of Lebanon expects to issue a call for proposals on the project later in 2026.
It's worth sitting with the timeline here. Downtown Lebanon went through an $11 million renovation in 2019. Seven years later, the town isn't asking what else to build. It's asking how to make more use of the corridor it already renovated. That's a sign of a downtown that outgrew its own upgrade, which is a different problem than the one most small Indiana towns are trying to solve.
Even the trail is a reuse project
The pattern holds outside downtown too. The Big 4 Trail, the paved path that runs south out of Lebanon toward Zionsville and north toward Thorntown and Colfax, sits on a former freight corridor. The Big Four name comes from the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railway, which operated the line until the tracks were pulled up in 1985. What's underfoot on a bike ride today used to carry freight cars.
The state's Next Level Trails program recently awarded Lebanon a $2,523,430 grant to add 5.8 miles of new asphalt to the corridor. Within city limits, that includes a new 1.4-mile segment connecting the Courthouse Square directly to Abner Longley Park. The rest upgrades a stretch of aging gravel toward Thorntown to asphalt, closing a gap that's been rough on tires for years. Riders who've logged miles on the older sections already know the trade-off: the gravel-era stretch near Thorntown has a reputation for root heaves and overgrowth, while the newer asphalt runs smooth. This grant is meant to close that gap rather than open new ground.
Put it together and you get a small city whose entire recent growth story runs through the same instinct: don't clear land, reopen what's already there. A jail becomes a bar. A mill becomes a movie theater. A rail line becomes a trail. A 2019 renovation becomes the foundation for an expanded event corridor years later. That's a specific kind of momentum, and it's the reason Lebanon's Courthouse Square can support five recurring weekly draws without feeling like it's straining for content.
What that means for the rest of this month
If you're deciding how to spend the next two weekends, the calendar is straightforward. Catch Brian James & The Revival at Academy Square Park on the 18th, get to Strawberry Plaza for Arthur Buezo on the 22nd, and close out the month with Grease at the Mill on the 28th and the Blessed Relief Jazz Trio at Conversion Brewing on the 29th. The Tuesday market on Meridian Street runs through the end of September, so there's no rush there. If you haven't made it to Klooz Brewz on a Wednesday for trivia yet, the wing special alone is worth the trip.
None of this needed a ribbon cutting. It needed a jail nobody wanted to tear down, a mill nobody wanted to demolish, and a Main Street organization willing to keep asking what else downtown was sitting on.
Ryan Radecki and the team at Radecki Realty Group spend a lot of time in Boone County, and we notice these patterns because they shape what a neighborhood feels like day to day, not just what it's worth on paper. If you're weighing a move in Lebanon or curious what a home here is actually worth in today's market, reach out. We're glad to talk through it.
