This evening, somewhere around 5:30, a trophy gets handed out on the eighteenth green at The Club at Indian Creek. Four days of Korn Ferry Tour golf end the way they always do here, with a champion, a check, and a course that goes quiet until next August. Across town and five days from now, a different crowd starts gathering at Ta-Ha-Zouka Park to watch hot air balloons fill with light against the evening sky. In between those two events sits a stretch of Main Street that, three years ago, had a shuttered Italian restaurant sitting empty and not much reason to linger after you picked up your dry cleaning.
That's no longer true. What's changed this year isn't that Elkhorn suddenly got interesting. It's that for the first time, the town's own downtown has enough going on to hold its own against the golf course and the balloon field, rather than functioning as the place you pass through on the way to something better in Blackstone or Aksarben.
The Last Group Of The Week
The 2026 Pinnacle Bank Championship marks the tournament's 10th year on the Korn Ferry Tour schedule, and this year's edition ran the full week: the Sandhills Global Pro-Am on Monday, a practice round Tuesday, the Dormie Network Pro-Am Wednesday, and tournament rounds from Thursday through today. A 156-player field competed for a $1 million purse, with $180,000 going to the winner.
One name in that field mattered a little more to the galleries this year. Omaha native Luke Gutschewski, a 2021 Mount Michael Benedictine graduate and 2025 Iowa State alum, made his third appearance at the tournament, playing the course he grew up fifteen minutes from. Asked about the gap between this tour and the one he's chasing, his answer stuck with the idea that Indian Creek isn't a lesser stage, just an earlier one: "anybody that can play out here can play on the PGA Tour."
Indian Creek has hosted this event since 2017, and the names who have come through it back that up. Scottie Scheffler played here in 2018 and 2019, years before he became one of the sport's dominant figures with multiple major championships to his name. Since the tournament's inception, its contribution to local charities has topped $1.19 million, which is the kind of number that turns a golf week into something closer to a community fundraiser with a leaderboard attached.
If you spent any part of the week near the course and needed a meal that wasn't a hot dog from the concession stand, Approach at Indian Creek has been the answer, serving chef-driven plates built around Midwestern ingredients, open year-round rather than just during tournament week.
Where The Concerts Went
The golf wasn't the only draw. The tournament's Barnato Live & Loud concert series brought Scotty McCreery and Lauren Alaina to the course Friday night, followed by Wyatt Flores and Kashus Culpepper on Saturday, with tee times running as early as 6:45 in the morning ahead of each show. Saturday also carried a Youth Day, with free admission for kids 15 and under, which is part of why this event reads less like a spectator sport for golf diehards and more like a week-long town festival that happens to have a cut line in the middle of it.
Main Street's New Anchor Tenants
Here's where the more interesting story is. For years, if you wanted a scoop of good ice cream after dinner in Elkhorn, you got in the car. Coneflower Creamery, the farm-to-cone shop that built its name in the Blackstone District and later Millwork Commons, has now officially opened its third location at 2625 North Main Street in Olde Towne Elkhorn. It's the kind of business that doesn't relocate lightly, and its arrival downtown is a signal about foot traffic as much as it is about flavor.
Tyler Curnes, who owns Main Street Studios and has watched the district grow since his parents opened their store there in 2006, put the shift in blunt terms when Coneflower's move was first announced: "It's been a huge achievement for the whole downtown community." He wasn't exaggerating the scale of it. Curnes has seen the strip go from around eight businesses to more than 30, a number that changes what a Thursday evening downtown actually looks like.
The other half of this is happening a block over, at 2620 Main Street, where the old Bella Vita Ristorante sat vacant for more than two years after closing in 2023. Chuck Olson, who also owns Main Street Cellar just up the block, took on the 1897 building and split it into two concepts. The main floor is La Vida Nova, meaning "the new life," which its owners targeted for a May opening as part of a summer 2026 rollout. Upstairs, a still-unnamed fine dining restaurant built around a chef's tasting menu is set to follow a few months after, with each space running its own kitchen.
What that means in practical terms: within about two blocks of Main Street, a resident can now string together ice cream, dinner, and wine without leaving Olde Towne Elkhorn.
- Coneflower Creamery — 2625 N Main Street, the district's third and newest scoop shop
- La Vida Nova — 2620 Main Street, occupying the ground floor of the former Bella Vita space
- Main Street Cellar — a block away, under the same ownership as La Vida Nova and its still-unnamed upstairs neighbor
- The fine dining concept above La Vida Nova — not yet named, expected to open later this year with a tasting menu format
None of that existed downtown three years ago. All of it exists now, within walking distance.
The Balloon Festival Ties It Together
Five days from today, the Nebraska Balloon & Wine Festival returns to Ta-Ha-Zouka Park for its 20th year, running Friday the 14th through Saturday the 15th. The festival keeps its format simple: live music from Taxi Driver Amped Up on Friday, Love Town Band and High Heel on Saturday, a Local Wine Showcase pouring more than 60 wines from area wineries, and the hot air balloons themselves launching around 7 p.m. with a Balloon Glow following at 9, weather permitting. For anyone who'd rather not deal with parking near the park, a free shuttle runs continuously from Elkhorn High School to the festival entrance, a detail that matters more than it sounds like it should once the lot fills up.
This is the event where the two threads of the last ten days actually meet. The same crowd that filled the concert lawn at Indian Creek for Scotty McCreery now has a downtown worth stopping in on the way to or from the balloon field, something that wasn't really true even two festivals ago.
The Quiet Version, Every Month
Not everything about Elkhorn's calendar needs a tournament purse or a balloon glow to work. The Monday Night Market runs on the last Monday of every month from April through October, right in the heart of Olde Towne Elkhorn, with local farmers and makers setting up alongside live music, food trucks, and outdoor seating. This year's next one lands on Monday, August 31, and it's worth treating as the low-key version of everything the golf tournament and the balloon festival do at higher volume: a reason to be downtown on a random weeknight, no special occasion required.
That's the actual story of this stretch of August. It isn't that Elkhorn suddenly has more going on. It's that for the first time, what's happening on Main Street doesn't need the golf course or the balloon field to make the evening worthwhile. It can just be dinner at La Vida Nova, a cone from Coneflower, and a walk back to the car past a building that used to sit dark.
If you've been watching this corner of Elkhorn change and you're weighing what it means for your own plans here, whether that's staying put, moving up, or figuring out what a home near this kind of downtown is actually worth right now, the Staci Mueller Group knows this market block by block. Reach out when you're ready to talk about what's next.
