Westfield City Council rejects West Fork Whiskey’s 26-acre development plan

West Fork District (provided rendering)

The Westfield City Council on Monday night voted 4-3 to reject a plan by West Fork Whiskey Co. to develop a new housing and commercial district around its distillery north of Grand Park Sports Campus.

West Fork and Columbus, Ohio-based homebuilder M/I Homes Inc. had proposed building more than 100 town houses, a whiskey-aging warehouse, a pond, an outdoor concert venue, a dog park and a commercial development on about 26 acres east of the intersection of East 191st Street and Horton Road.

West Fork, which announced the project in March, previously spent $11 million to open a 35,000-square-foot facility featuring The Mash House restaurant, a cocktail lounge, a 5,000-square-foot event center, an education facility and production equipment that debuted in August 2022.

The original plan for West Fork’s residential and commercial development would have included as many as 160 town houses, but the revised plan called for 110 and council members discussed decreasing the number of residences to 105. Over the past five months, the amount of proposed commercial space tripled during multiple revisions of the plan, West Fork co-founder David McIntyre told council members.

McIntyre said a gas easement on the site created difficulties in proposing even more commercial space along 191st Street. He added that commercial space in the middle of the development was not feasible.

“I know there are some of you that still do not like this project,” McIntyre said. “Some of you still want there to be even less residential. To that, I would say that is not economically feasible. Some of you may simply not like townhomes. To that, I would argue that it’s important to have housing diversity in our community. Some of you may think that there needs to be more commercial on this site. To that, I would say me, too.”

A majority of councilors ultimately voted to reject West Fork’s plan following discussion that began when Councilor Noah Herron noted that the concept plan included in the packet presented to council members differed from one approved last week by the Westfield Advisory Plan Commission.

Councilors Jon Dartt, Herron, Chad Huff and Kurt Wanninger voted against the plan, while Joe Duepner, Victor McCarty and Patrick Tamm voted in favor.

Mayor Scott Willis was displeased about the problem with the documents and called the process “very discombobulated” and “a moving target since it came before us.”

“There’s been iteration after iteration. We have drawings that don’t match wording. This has been a complete disaster,” Willis said. “I think the project, in itself, from the city’s perspective, is appropriate, but I hope we don’t repeat this again, because this is not how we do development in Westfield, and I’m not happy that here we are in this meeting, we still have documents that aren’t lining up.”

Brothers Blake and Julian Jones partnered with McIntyre to start West Fork Whiskey in a warehouse at West 86th Street and Zionsville Road in Indianapolis in 2014. They moved operations three years later to a renovated former grocery store at Bellefontaine and East 16th streets in the Kennedy King neighborhood, which continues to operate as a tasting room.

In January, the craft distillery inked a deal with an investment firm to secure up to $18 million in capital, allowing for expanded production and accelerated growth.

That partnership with Indianapolis-based Ouabache Investments involved an initial investment of $3 million that could grow to support more production contracts and additional real estate development to accommodate increased production.

McIntyre told IBJ that West Fork still plans to “activate that site” adjacent to its Westfield facility.

“Part of our goal from us moving to Westfield is to have a much more cohesive … district, a very cohesive site plan that has West Fork Whiskey as the anchor tenant and is a live, work and play environment,” McIntyre said. “The ‘live’ part seems to be the biggest issue right now with the negative feelings toward townhomes.”