How Tourism Officials & City Leaders Are Gearing Up for Spring 2026
By the time the weather warms up next spring, Johnson County residents will have three additional options to venture out to the southern part of the county to dance, drink and dine.
Trafalgar, Edinburgh, and Bargersville are all in the midst of adding new outdoor venues to their respective downtown spaces, with Bargersville being first to open its new plaza and bandshell this past summer.
For Festival Country Indiana Executive Director of Tourism, Ken Kosky, these projects have been a long time in the making. County tourism officials collaborated with a consultant to develop a shared vision that would connect all municipalities in the county, attracting visitors while engaging current residents to explore their own communities.
“You can’t call yourself ‘Festival Country’ if you don’t continue to grow that idea,” Kosky says. “When we started this process, we found that we already have live music in many of our communities, so it seems like everywhere you turn, people are already engaging in live music.”
Kosky says that realization drove the festival board to approve $200,000 in funding to help Edinburgh and Trafalgar create outdoor music venues. At the same time, Bargersville already has an outdoor venue in Umbarger Plaza, and city officials say a second one is in the works.
Creating new spaces is part of the central idea of bringing in more tourism dollars to Johnson County.
“If you have a central gathering point that’s outdoors, even people who are driving by that may not have known what’s going on may stop in,” he says. “These venues encourage residents and visitors alike to get in the habit of coming down to their outdoor venue of choice during the warmer months of the year and enjoying an outdoor concert, hang out with friends, and go to some food trucks.”
Ultimately, Kosky would like to see these spaces transform into hosting events year-round. But, baby steps.
“We’ve brought ice-skating to our communities for the past three years,” he says. “The first year it was in Franklin at the DriveHubler.com Amphitheater. Last year, it was in downtown Edinburgh, and this year it’s at Johnson County Park from December 13-21.”
Kosky says their ultimate goal is to build a permanent ice-skating rink and then host a winter market and ice carving festival similar to Carmel’s successful Christkindlmarket.
Trafalgar’s new outdoor venue is being constructed near the Johnson County Public Library branch and the Connection Pointe Church satellite campus. Edinburgh’s new plaza will be in a former parking lot site downtown.
“Earlier this year, we purchased a property adjacent to downtown,” says Edinburgh Executive Director for Economic Development Sarah Drybread. “It’s one of the key gateway locations right across from the library. It had been a doctor’s office for decades, but when that practice relocated, the half-acre parcel became available. It’s already connected to where we host many of our downtown celebrations, like the Fall Festival, Firecracker Festival, and Holiday Lighting Celebration.”
Drybread says the planning began last year after Edinburgh hosted ice skating in December.
“It became clear that we needed a year-round downtown hub,” she says. “A place for outdoor concerts, festivals, and family-friendly activities that would support our local businesses and attract new ones.”
Edinburgh also received a grant from the IU Center for Rural Engagement and joined their Rural Placemaking Studio. Over the past year, the city has worked with architectural students from IU’s Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design, who developed a conceptual design for the new plaza.
“We knew we wanted an amphitheater-style space, plenty of room for our farmers market vendors, and a way to honor our local history, particularly the Blue River Dam,” Drybread says. “When the dam was removed in October 2024, we salvaged its original stones, which once played a key role in Edinburgh’s economy back in the 1880s. The plan is to repurpose those stones as amphitheater-style seating around the plaza — both a tribute to our heritage and a functional design element.”
Drybread says the addition of a plaza to Edinburgh will capitalize on the inroads the town has already made to attract visitors and re-engage locals.
“We’ve got Johnson, Shelby, and Bartholomew Counties,” she says. “We’ve got residents across all three counties, but we also have some major attractions in each of those with the Timbergate Golf Course, the Edinburgh outlet mall, and our sports complex in those counties as well.”
Drybread believes these projects are a catalyst for something bigger for Johnson County as a whole.
“I’d like to see a more regional approach to entertainment,” she says. “I can see our whole county doing a big outdoor concert series where you’ve got a month of rotating bands and something every single weekend in a different part of the county for people to experience.”
The Festival Country website paints an already active picture — it currently lists more than 2,500 events annually just in Johnson County alone. Kosky says additional concerts will boost those event numbers in the years to come.
“People are actually shocked there are so many options now,” he says. “Basically, events are happening every weekend and even most weeknights.”
Word-of-mouth is also spreading.
“It’s always great when we see more visitors from places like Carmel, Cincinnati, and Columbus,” Kosky says. “They stop by the visitor center in downtown Franklin and say, ‘Wow, we’re blown away by how much there is to do and the great vibe you’ve created here.’ In addition to everything we’ve talked about, anyone who has been to downtown Franklin recently has probably spotted our Instagram-worthy alleys we’ve created with local artists.”
Franklin hosts Artcraft Alley, the Intersection Mural, Kuji Alley, and Veterans Alley, which reopened back in September.
More information about upcoming Johnson County events can be found on festivalcountryindiana.com.
