Latest news with #FishersCityCouncil
Indianapolis Star
17-06-2025
- Business
- Indianapolis Star
Bioscience firm moving from California to Fishers
A California-based pharmaceutical company will relocate to Fishers, citing lower state taxes among several reasons it chose Indiana. Economic Development Director Megan Baumgarten told the Fishers City Council on June 16 that 1Elevan Bio Pharmaceutical would bring 120 jobs to the city in the next 10 years and was seeking 10-year tax abatements on property taxes to refurbish a vacant industrial building at 12001 Exit Five Parkway. The council approved the tax break in a 9-0 vote. CEO Darrin Carrico of 1Elevan said the decision to leave San Diego was, in part, because 'state taxes are much more favorable' in Indiana. 'It's business-friendly overall,' he said. But other factors were just as important, including the skilled workforce with 'incredible talent,' proximity to universities and a FedeEx hub and the life science hub that Fishers has created, Carrico said. 'It's very unusual to have collaborative,' efforts within the same city, he said Baumgarten said 1Elevan, which makes peptides, will invest $10 million to upgrade the building and expects to hire 35 people by the end of 2027 The city has recruited several medical companies to its 75-acre Fishers Life Science & Innovation Park near 126th Street and east of Interstate 69.
Indianapolis Star
13-06-2025
- Business
- Indianapolis Star
Apartment complex, Topgolf-style clubhouse, planned at Gray Eagle Golf Course
A long-dormant plan for an apartment complex and clubhouse with two-level driving range at Gray Eagle Golf Club appears ready to tee off. The Fishers City Council was scheduled to consider an economic development agreement with builder J.C. Hart that would provide up to $7.75 million from the city for construction costs at 126th Street and Brooks School Road, a plan first announced in 2021. A hearing is set for June 16 at Fishers City Hall and Art Center. J.C. Hart wants to build a $50 million, 151-unit rental complex aimed at people 55 and older in a combination of apartments, townhouses, and cottage homes. The project will have a pool, pickleball and bocce ball courts, a clubhouse with an exercise room and lounge. J.C. Hart Senior Vice President of Development Todd May said the project is geared toward older residents but not restricted to them. 'The layout of the homes are meant to appeal to them,' May said, citing first-floor master bedrooms in the townhomes as an example. When the development was planned five years ago, that appeal also included pickleball courts, he joked. "Now everyone plays pickleball,' he said. 'This has been a long, long process.' The development will be a 3-story apartment building with 101 units and 48 cottage-style homes or townhouses. The golf clubhouse will be rebuilt with a 28,000-square-foot restaurant attached to the driving range with multi-story netting to catch balls, similar to a Topgolf layout, May said. A practice green, bathrooms, and improved irrigation and drainage systems will be added to the course. The city will issue bonds to help mostly with infrastructure improvements. They will be paid over 25 years by property taxes collected from the apartment and clubhouse through a special Tax Increment Financing District. May said the delay was because it took longer than expected to secure a loan for the project. Possible tenants, he said, have been lining up anyway. 'We have a long list of people waiting to reserve a unit,' he said. 'There is a real demand in Fishes for something like this.' May said the wait was worth it because it saved the golf course. Gray Eagle owner RN Thompson wanted to close the course in 2018 because it was losing money and too expensive to keep repairing. Instead, Thompson planned to replace the course with housing. Residents in subdivisions on the course fought to save it and various projects were proposed but rejected before J.C. Hart and Thompson agreed on this one, with the city's assistance. 'We worked hand-in-hand with the residents on this development and I'm excited to see this project continue to move forward,' Fishers Mayor Scott Fadness said in a written statement. 'This will bring even more vibrancy to this area while preserving its long-term sustainability.'
Indianapolis Star
13-06-2025
- Business
- Indianapolis Star
Apartment complex, Topgolf-style clubhouse, planned at Gray Eagle Golf Course
A long-dormant plan for an apartment complex and clubhouse with two-level driving range at Gray Eagle Golf Club appears ready to tee off. The Fishers City Council was scheduled to consider an economic development agreement with builder J.C. Hart that would provide up to $7.75 million from the city for construction costs at 126th Street and Brooks School Road, a plan first announced in 2021. A hearing is set for June 16 at Fishers City Hall and Art Center. J.C. Hart wants to build a $50 million, 151-unit rental complex aimed at people 55 and older in a combination of apartments, townhouses, and cottage homes. The project will have a pool, pickleball and bocce ball courts, a clubhouse with an exercise room and lounge. J.C. Hart Senior Vice President of Development Todd May said the project is geared toward older residents but not restricted to them. 'The layout of the homes are meant to appeal to them,' May said, citing first-floor master bedrooms in the townhomes as an example. When the development was planned five years ago, that appeal also included pickleball courts, he joked. "Now everyone plays pickleball,' he said. 'This has been a long, long process.' The development will be a 3-story apartment building with 101 units and 48 cottage-style homes or townhouses. The golf clubhouse will be rebuilt with a 28,000-square-foot restaurant attached to the driving range with multi-story netting to catch balls, similar to a Topgolf layout, May said. A practice green, bathrooms, and improved irrigation and drainage systems will be added to the course. The city will issue bonds to help mostly with infrastructure improvements. They will be paid over 25 years by property taxes collected from the apartment and clubhouse through a special Tax Increment Financing District. May said the delay was because it took longer than expected to secure a loan for the project. Possible tenants, he said, have been lining up anyway. 'We have a long list of people waiting to reserve a unit,' he said. 'There is a real demand in Fishes for something like this.' May said the wait was worth it because it saved the golf course. Gray Eagle owner RN Thompson wanted to close the course in 2018 because it was losing money and too expensive to keep repairing. Instead, Thompson planned to replace the course with housing. Residents in subdivisions on the course fought to save it and various projects were proposed but rejected before J.C. Hart and Thompson agreed on this one.
Indianapolis Star
06-05-2025
- Business
- Indianapolis Star
Fishers, Carmel don't think renters deserve single-family homes
Hamilton County cities are scapegoating Wall Street so they can award affluent buyers and existing homeowners with exclusive access to single-family houses and keep away unsavory renters. City officials in Fishers and Carmel argue it's necessary to ban renters from subdivisions where single-family homes hit 10% renter-occupied. It's every American's right to treat shelter as a financial instrument, they argue. If we can't all leverage hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to purchase a home in hopes that it behaves like a mutual fund, are we even a country? 'That's been a part of the middle class kind of American Dream for a long, long time,' Fishers Mayor Scott Fadness said, per Fox59. "We're just simply trying to put policies in place that would protect it.' First Fishers, now Carmel The Fishers City Council on April 21 unanimously approved a 10% rental cap. Now, Carmel is taking up the crackdown on renters, with City Council President Adam Aasen echoing Fadness. Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle. 'There are a lot of people who are renting, who want to buy, and they just can't find homes for sale,' Aasen said, per IndyStar. 'When they do find reasonably priced homes ... they're outbid by a corporate investor who wants to turn it into a rental.' The problem, in this view, is that Wall Street firms are treating homes as investments, making it more difficult for individual buyers to … treat homes as investments. Briggs: The Braun-Beckwith plan to abolish Carmel Wall Street isn't the actual target here. Fishers and Carmel are making a qualitative distinction between homeowners and renters as resident classes. Proponents of single-family rental caps say homeowners take pride in their properties while renters neglect them, causing houses to fall into disrepair and dragging down neighborhood values. City officials avoid directly disparaging renters by blaming the ills on out-of-town landlords. This is where the logic gets tortured. The pro-rental cap theory is that investors are making housing unaffordable by bidding up prices and buying all the homes while simultaneously causing property values to fall by letting them go to hell. So, which is it? Are the investors causing prices to go up? Or down? Wrapping your mind around these mutually exclusive claims can feel a little like circling the roundabout at 96th Street and Allisonville Road until you crash. Ban, baby, ban! The most generous interpretation of these 10% rental caps is to view them as a response to bad landlords letting properties fall into disrepair and forcing tenants to live in poor conditions. This is a real problem, and I've reported on it extensively. I can't believe I have to say this next part, but I guess I do. The solution to bad landlords isn't to ban rental housing. That's like saying the solution to drunken driving is to bring back Prohibition. Instead, cities should enforce housing codes and penalize landlords that violate them. Of course, Indiana doesn't let cities do that. When Indianapolis tried to crack down on derelict property owners in 2020, the Indiana General Assembly responded with strict legislation preventing cities from regulating landlords. Briggs: Mike Braun got suckered into a tax-cut promise he couldn't keep Landlords hold all the power in Indiana, and neither tenants nor cities can do anything about it. It is ironic, then, that the Indiana General Assembly in April briefly considered a measure that would nullify rental caps like the one Fishers passed and Carmel is considering. Cities want to ban rental housing because the legislature bans them from regulating landlords, so now lawmakers want to ban cities from banning single-family rentals. That about sums up the relationships between municipalities and state government in Indiana. 10% caps make the housing problem worse Of course, this isn't a story about landlords or Wall Street. Homeowners don't want to share neighborhoods with renters, so Fishers and Carmel are codifying their preference and justifying it by tapping into the moral panic over institutional property owners. This obsession is disingenuous. Based on Carmel's figures, only about 2% of the city's housing stock is owned by institutional investors. Investors are neither juicing nor destroying home values. They're one out of a hundred factors influencing housing economics. If you want to look deeper, then we can also talk about how building costs are rising and interest rates are higher than they used to be. Lending approvals are tightening, making homeownership available only to people with high incomes, down payment cash and excellent credit. As I wrote in March, the average homebuyer age hit 56 last year, according to the National Association of Realtors. Increasingly, the only single-family housing option for young families is renting. Fishers and Carmel are making desirable single-family subdivisions inaccessible to those families — something they might want to be wary of as Hamilton Southeastern Schools is suddenly soliciting students from outside of the district to combat falling enrollment. Housing is unaffordable because we don't have enough of it. It's that simple. Restricting the pool of people who can occupy homes in Fishers and Carmel will reduce the incentive for builders to construct new housing, because there will be fewer people who qualify to live in them, exacerbating the supply problem while pushing renters into communities that value them, like Brownsburg. If you don't want renters, fine. Just say that. Don't ban them and pretend you're doing it to protect the American Dream. The only thing Fishers and Carmel are protecting is homeowner exclusivity.
Indianapolis Star
22-04-2025
- Business
- Indianapolis Star
'We want to protect our neighborhoods': Carmel tries to limit rentals with latest ordinance
Carmel, following in the footsteps of a Hamilton County neighbor, now has plans in the works to regulate the number of rental homes in the city. 'We want to encourage the American dream of single-family home ownership,' said Carmel city councilor Rich Taylor, while introducing the ordinance Monday evening. 'We want to protect our neighborhoods, and we hope to do that through this ordinance.' Carmel's ordinance would limit rental units to 10% of all homes within any subdivision or the City of Carmel as a whole. The introduction of the ordinance came on the same night that Fishers City Council unanimously passed its own rental cap ordinance, and hours after Indiana lawmakers tried to ban such ordinances. In both cities, supporters have said the ordinances are intended to stop institutional investors from purchasing houses at inflated prices and making them rentals. Taylor shared data from the MIBOR Realtor Association that showed just under 10% of Carmel's total housing stock are single-family rental properties. Of those rental homes, more than one in five are owned by large corporate investors. Adam Aasen, president of the city council, said Carmel is taking a proactive approach and addressing the problem before it grows. 'There are a lot of people who are renting, who want to buy, and they just can't find homes for sale,' Aasen said. 'When they do find reasonably priced homes ... they're outbid by a corporate investor who wants to turn it into a rental.' In addition to the limitations on the number of rental homes allowed in Carmel, the ordinance would also create a rental registry. Before it was passed, Fishers' ordinance faced opposition from some homeowners and renters, who were joined by real estate interest groups. At Carmel's meeting Monday, two homeowners spoke in favor of the city's version of the rental cap ordinance. Jack Russell, president and CEO of the OneZone Chamber of Commerce, told Carmel councilors his organization still had work to do in reviewing the city's ordinance before providing formal feedback, but supported Fishers' version. If passed, Carmel's ordinance would require owners of rental homes to register their properties with the Department of Community Services by Jan. 1, 2026. Apartments would not count towards the city's cap on rental homes under the ordinance and would not have to be registered, Taylor said. Other exemptions include: Short-term rental properties Renting to a legal dependent or immediate family member Owner intends to return to live in the property in less than 6 six months, was relocated by their employer more than 50 miles away, inherited the property, is trying to sell the property or is a deployed member of the military Carmel's ordinance was sent to the city council's Finance, Utilities and Rules Committee, which is expected to meet next month. "One of the biggest bedrocks of the American Dream is homeownership, and that is something I will never, ever, ever apologize for protecting,' said councilor Shannon Minnaar. Rental cap ordinances could still face opposition in the state legislature On Monday morning, language that would have nullified rental cap ordinances across the state was floated as an addition to House Bill 1389. Representatives from the Indiana Association of Realtors, Indiana Apartment Association and Indiana Builders Association, spoke in favor of that language during a conference committee on the bill. But bill author Rep. Jim Pressel, R-Rolling Prairie, said Tuesday morning the language was already removed from the larger bill. 'Sometimes you're testing the water just a little bit,' Pressel explained in an interview with IndyStar. Taylor, a sponsor of Carmel's ordinance, said he expects efforts to nullify the rental cap ordinances to resurface during the legislative session next year. 'We're going to do what we think is right, regardless,' Taylor said. 'I understand these special interest groups have their own constituents to speak out for. We're looking out for the residents of the City of Carmel.'
