Drive out the Coltrane gate, turn onto Covell, and within four minutes you can be at a brand-new mountain bike trailhead or standing in front of a construction fence that will soon be a Whole Foods. Neither of those sentences was true a year ago. For residents inside Fairview Farm's four gated entrances, the practical footprint of daily life just tightened by about ten miles of driving each week, and the summer of 2026 is when it starts to show.
This post is for the people who already live here. No relocation pitch, no "why Edmond" preamble. Just what actually changed on your side of town, and how to use it before Labor Day.
The trail system that grew up on the east side of Arcadia Lake
Arcadia Lake has always been the closest open water to Fairview Farm, sitting about two miles east on Covell. What most residents used it for was the covered fishing dock, the swim beaches, and the older 6.5-mile Multiple-Use Trail on the west side. That inventory is now outdated.
After six years of dedicated work, the Oklahoma Mountain Bike Association, led by Trail Manager "Turbo Joe" Miller, celebrated the grand opening of more than 15 miles of newly expanded mountain bike trails on the east side of Arcadia Lake on June 6, 2026. The scale of that jump matters. The transformation from a modest 1.5 mile path into a premier trail system was made possible through a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Partnership Handshake Grant and support from numerous community partners.
The new trailhead is the piece to know by name. It's called The Launch Pad, at Post Road and 15th Street next to the Edmond Water Tower, and the project added a pavilion and drop-in platform, picnic areas, changing stations, professional trailhead signage, bridges, boardwalks, and a 300-foot elevated boardwalk overlooking a key trail corridor. The 300-foot elevated boardwalk is the photograph you'll see on Instagram this year. It's also the reason non-riders should still bother going.
A few practical notes for the household that has never used these trails:
- The east-side system is genuinely beginner-friendly. Riders who trained on the older west-side loop describe it as challenging without being overwhelming, 100% singletrack with well-marked forks and loop options that let you exit at .5, 4, 6, 9.5, or 13-plus miles.
- Turbo Joe Miller thanked Cimmaron Construction, Al's Bike Shop Edmond, Thrivent Financial Ethan Hulme, Edward Jones Brian Cohlmia, Son of Thunder Roofing, and Visit Edmond in his opening remarks, which is a useful map of who to call locally if a bike needs work or a fitting.
- After a heavy rain, the sandy sections firm up and ride faster. In August dry stretches, the opposite is true. If you're bringing kids, aim for the morning after a thunderstorm cell has passed through.
The other trail worth knowing about is the older, quieter one across the lake. The lake's most-used trail is the Multiple-Use Trail, approximately 6.5 miles one-way from the park office to Spring Creek Park, designed for mountain bikers but also used by hikers, cross-country runners, and nature walkers. That's the one to use when The Launch Pad parking lot is full on a Saturday morning.
What's actually going in at I-35 and Covell
The corner of Interstate 35 and Covell has been a construction site for so long that most residents have stopped reading the signage. In March, the pace changed.
The Edmond City Council approved a $17 million incentive for the Legacy at Covell development on Monday, March 23, 2026, in an effort to drive sales tax revenue and attract retailers to the site on the northwest corner of Interstate 35 and Covell Road. That vote is the reason the crane count went up in April. Whole Foods is expected to open within 12 to 14 months at Legacy at Covell, and incentive payments from the city will begin as tenants secure certificates of occupancy.
Here is the tenant list as it currently stands, pulled from filings and marketing materials, with the ones that matter most for a Fairview Farm household flagged:
- Whole Foods Market — the second location in the OKC metro area, anchoring the center. Practical result: no more Britton Road runs for someone who does a Whole Foods shop.
- Cooper's Hawk Winery & Restaurant — the first in Oklahoma. Known for wine-driven dining, a Napa-style tasting room, 60 house wines, and a wine club with more than 100,000 members.
- Ruth's Chris Steakhouse — would be Central Oklahoma's first.
- Shake Shack, Texas Roadhouse, Chipotle, Pei Wei, Summer Moon Coffee, First Watch — the everyday rotation.
- Dick's Sporting Goods, PetSmart — also confirmed in the current plans.
For context on how the city is thinking about this, the developer's team told council the location will benefit the city by drawing sales tax from highway travelers, and the project is expected to generate enough revenue for the city to recoup its investment within four to five years. That's the answer to the neighbor who asked at a mailbox why Edmond is paying $17 million for a strip center.
There is a legitimate community-side debate worth mentioning. Lori Dickinson-Black, an owner of Blue Bird Books, Cafe Evoke, Twisted Tree Bakery and La Loba, said that while she is not opposed to the Legacy at Covell development, she is concerned about Barnes and Noble being recruited as a retailer, noting that Edmond already has three independent bookstores: Blue Bird Books, Best of Books and Archive Books. If you already shop the downtown independents, that debate is worth following at future council meetings.
The July and August calendar, without leaving 73034
Fairview Farm sits close enough to downtown Edmond that the LibertyFest week is functionally a neighborhood event.
"From 1776 to Route 66: The Freedom of America Rolls On."
That's the 2026 LibertyFest theme, and it's a good excuse to walk the parade route rather than watching from a driveway. The parade is Saturday, July 4th, 2026 at 9 a.m., with no parking on Broadway from 2nd Street to Ayers after 7:00 a.m., and any vehicle left in that area will be impounded. If you like a curated build-up rather than the crowd of the parade itself, the Edmond History Museum presents Songs & Stripes: Big Band Show on July 3, 2026 at 2:30, 4:30 and 7:30 p.m.
Beyond LibertyFest, the visitedmondok.com calendar for mid-July through August points to a rotation of small, walkable venues worth putting on the family calendar: The Old Icehouse at 21 S Broadway, Frenzy Brewing Company at 103 S. Broadway, and the UCO Jazz Lab at 100 E 5th, all running programming through the last week of July. Festival Market Place on Broadway is scheduled to run weekly through October 31.
None of those are new. What is new is that a resident who used to point out-of-town guests to the Chisholm Creek corridor for dinner now has a genuinely competitive stack of options within four miles of their own front gate.
A resident's Saturday, mapped
Here is what the two-mile radius now supports, in the order most likely to actually happen:
- 7:30 a.m. Coffee and a ride from The Launch Pad at Post Road and 15th Street. Half a mile of warm-up, then the main east-side loop. Home by 10.
- 10:30 a.m. Farmers' produce and a real bakery stop downtown at Festival Market Place on Broadway. Park once, walk the block.
- Late morning. Grocery run. Right now that still means Whole Foods on Britton in OKC. In roughly a year, it means driving four minutes to Legacy at Covell instead of thirty minutes round-trip.
- Late afternoon. A shaded walk on the west-side Multiple-Use Trail off the park office entrance. Kids on scooters do fine on the graded sections near Spring Creek Park.
- Evening. Dinner at one of the downtown Edmond patios, or once Cooper's Hawk opens, an early reservation on the Covell side.
The point of the map isn't the itinerary. It's that the itinerary now exists without I-235, without a downtown OKC parking garage, and without leaving the corner of Edmond that Fairview Farm actually sits in.
What this means for the neighborhood, without overselling it
Two miles of anchor development typically shows up in three ways for existing homeowners: shorter errand loops, more scheduling flexibility for families with school-age kids, and a higher likelihood that guests want to be picked up at the airport and driven straight to your side of town rather than staying near Bricktown. All three are underway. None of them require a home to change hands.
If any of this changes what you'd want out of a home renovation, a landscaping refresh, or a longer-term plan for the property, that's a conversation worth having with a team that already knows this stretch of Edmond in detail. Stetson Bentley works Fairview Farm and the surrounding Covell corridor closely. Book an appointment or request your home valuation and we'll bring what we're seeing on the ground to the conversation.
