Rural Zionsville residents aim to preserve way of life

The breeze and the birds are the only sounds along the gravel road on the north side of Zionsville. A few cows saunter around on the west side of the road, while a rabbit hops off the opposite way into the tall grass.

Zionsville’s historic rural landscape is valued by the people who live there, but they fear they might lose their quiet way of life as development accelerates along the U.S. 421 corridor.

“When we found our home, we didn’t know a place like that existed in Zionsville,” said Christy Wright, who lives nearby along County Road 180 South.

A $700 million residential and recreational development planned on the land where the rabbit hopped away became a flash point in recent months over the encroachment of development into historically rural areas of Boone County.

After nine months of negotiations with town planners and neighbors who formed the group Save Rural Zionsville, Westfield-based Henke Development Group LLC received approval in April from members of the Zionsville Town Council for Bradley Ridge.

It’s a 350-acre nature-focused project that will have 290 single-family houses priced from about $700,000 to more than $3 million, along with a clubhouse and trails.

Henke Development Group originally planned for 410 single-family houses and town houses, but the company decreased the number and eliminated town houses from the plan after more than 300 residents organized against the development.

“We really appreciated all the input and feedback, and in all of our developments, we like to work with all the families surrounding the development,” said Brad Henke, who handles development and brokerage for Henke Development Group. “We had really good, productive conversations with [Save Rural Zionsville’s] team.”

The Bradley Ridge site is bordered by U.S. 421 to the east, County Road 200 South to the south, County Road 950 East to the west and County Road 100 South to the north. Two of the roads—County Road 950 East and County Road 100 South—are gravel and will likely be paved in the years to come.

The property is bisected by a mile of Eagle Creek and has three riparian corridors, rolling hills, 140 acres of woods and 100 acres of floodplain. It was previously owned by Charles “Buck” Bradley, who worked as general counsel and senior vice president for Eli Lilly and Co. during a 27-year career with the Indianapolis-based drugmaker.

Bradley died in 2018 at age 95, and Henke Development Group purchased the property in 2020.

Henke said his family’s company is beginning work on layouts and engineering.

“We’ve been really excited to work on that project,” Henke said. “It’s a really neat property and neat area in Zionsville.”

Bradley Ridge is Henke Development Group’s third major residential development in Zionsville after the company reshaped Westfield with its Chatham Hills and Grand Park Village projects.

Henke Development Group, founded by Steve Henke, is still developing Holliday Farms, a 600-acre golf community west of U.S. 421/Michigan Road, between Willow Road and West 146th Street. The project is expected to be completed over the next decade with eight planned neighborhoods and a Pete Dye-designed golf course that opened in June 2021.

And the company is developing Promontory of Zionsville, a 321-acre private lake community bounded to the west by U.S. 421, the east by County Road 1000 East and the north by County Road 200 North.

A 35-acre lake will be the focal point of Promontory, which also will include equestrian fields, stables, walking paths and open space. It will have 80 houses ranging in cost from $1.5 million to $4 million.

“It’s really just a beautiful property,” Brad Henke said. “And we were very fortunate to come across something with the lake as an amenity like that.”

Long process

Residents began organizing to influence the Bradley Ridge project as soon as Henke Development Group proposed it last summer.

Wright said neighbors got together “the old-fashioned way” by communicating via letters in mailboxes, followed by in-person meetings in living rooms where they identified specific skills and talents. The group Save Rural Zionsville, which has orange yard signs posted throughout the area, grew to 325 members.

Tim McElderry, who last year became the first Democrat elected to the Zionsville Town Council in 36 years, represents rural northern Zionsville and said people’s reasons for not wanting Bradley Ridge fell into several categories.

Some residents just did not want a large subdivision in the area, while others felt strongly about the impact on animals, the environment, schools, noise and light pollution.

“I don’t know of that many other communities that could have hundreds of families come together and marshal their own resources to try to remonstrate against development,” McElderry said.

Amanda Sperl, who resides on County Road 200 South, grew up in Zionsville and later lived in Chicago and Indianapolis before moving back to the Boone County town. Sperl and her husband moved to their current house in 2018 because they wanted to provide a rural, outdoor lifestyle for their two sons.

“I felt claustrophobic when I was in the neighborhood in Pike [Township],” Sperl said. “I needed a little bit more space, and so did he, and so that’s why we moved out here.”

Sperl used to walk with her children to a farm stand, but she said County Road 200 South has become too busy. She worries about the impact Bradley Ridge will have on the area.

“I would never let my kids bike on this road,” she said. “The traffic has increased so much in the five years that we’ve been here that we don’t go on the road anymore.”

Wright, who took the lead in organizing Save Rural Zionsville, said the group’s objective for Bradley Ridge was to ensure the development aligned with Zionsville’s comprehensive plan and its amendments, and that it would be compatible with the surrounding uses.

The group focused on four primary areas in negotiations with Henke Development Group: density, conservation, uses of the property and quality of product.

“We came together and activated and got organized on a quick timeline,” Wright said. “We acknowledged that, while we would not get everything we wanted, by working together, we could make a significant impact, and I think we did that.”

Save Rural Zionsville leadership called a vote this spring on whether to accept the developer’s plan or to remonstrate after Henke Development Group agreed to decrease the number of houses to 290, along with the project’s density west of Eagle Creek.

The developer also agreed to include a trail along Eagle Creek that will connect to the future 215-acre Carpenter Nature Preserve (formerly Wolf Run Golf Course). Residents called Carpenter a major victory in preserving the area.

Wright said 38 of 47 households, including eight of the nine households closest to the site, voted to finalize rezoning commitments and accept the project.

“I think that while [Save Rural Zionsville] did not get everything we wanted, Mr. Henke didn’t get everything he wanted,” Wright said. “We found an agreement that was acceptable to both sides and that I think we can feel good about.”

Some residents, though, wish the group had gone further in its opposition.

Sperl, who was involved with Save Rural Zionsville before the residents’ vote, said she thinks the group’s leadership did what they thought was best and she respects their decision, but she wishes they had continued fighting against Bradley Ridge.

“In my opinion, it would have been better to explain the truth of what Save Rural Zionsville really felt and not come to an agreement and be honest with the Planning Commission and the town councilors and say, ‘This isn’t good enough,’ because it might have had an impact and might have made it better,” Sperl said.

McElderry was the lone vote against Bradley Ridge when the Zionsville Town Council voted 6-1 to approve the project. He noted the property was zoned for 156 houses—nearly half the total that will be built—before it was rezoned.

“From a residential standpoint, I’m going to do my best to try to keep things that look rural, rural,” McElderry said. “You’ve got to take your foot off the gas every once in a while with development. Yes, people need a place to live, but put high-density housing in appropriate areas, just not out in the rural spaces.”

What does the future hold?

McElderry added that he thinks Bradley Ridge “opens the door to future development that looks more like it.” He envisions a developer purchasing land along U.S. 421 in Zionsville and wanting to build a development of similar size.

“If you are a developer and … [you] look back on Bradley Ridge and say, ‘Hey, you approved that, so now the door is open,’ now, any good attorney is going to be able to say, ‘Hey, precedent has been set here. You approved this, so you have to approve these future developments,’” he said. “And that’s what we face moving forward. That concerns me a great deal.”

Mayor John Stehr said Zionsville must update its 2003 comprehensive plan, a document that will help guide development in coming years and use it to balance protecting rural Zionsville and leveling the town’s tax base, which is heavily residential.

Union Township, where Bradley Ridge is located, was part of unincorporated Boone County 21 years ago and was not annexed into Zionsville until 2010.

“I think a lot of people here understand that we need to have some commercial growth in our tax base, but the people that live in our rural areas really care a lot about the historic rural nature of where they live, so we want to protect that,” Stehr said.

Wright said Stehr invited Save Rural Zionsville to have a seat on the comprehensive plan update.

“That will be a way for Save Rural Zionsville to impact, hopefully, all future development through town policy, which we think is a great opportunity and we intend to keep Save Rural Zionsville intact moving forward to be that voice of rural residents into that plan,” she said.

Through the process with Bradley Ridge, Wright said, she realized how fast changes are coming to Boone County, particularly with the LEAP Research and Innovation District in Lebanon on the horizon.

“We discovered we were operating in kind of a perfect storm because we learned that the changes coming in Boone County related to the LEAP project are unprecedented,” she said.

Citing residents who remonstrated against plans to develop Wolf Run Golf Club into a housing development after the course closed in 2017, Wright added that Save Rural Zionsville builds on a tradition of civic engagement among residents who want to preserve the town’s natural elements.

“I think that the idea that neighbors can come together and find common ground, it seems almost out of date, and I think what this showed is that it can and does happen,” she said. “There doesn’t have to be a winner and a loser. It’s not a zero-sum game. And I think that this process yielded a positive result because neighbors had that mentality.”•

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated the number of households who voted in a decision on whether to finalize rezoning commitments and accept the Bradley Ridge project. The article has been corrected.