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Conner Prairie’s plan to expand west of the White River into Carmel received unanimous approval Tuesday night from the Carmel City Council.
The council voted 9-0 to rezone 260 acres Fishers-based Conner Prairie owns west of the river to the Conner Prairie Planned Unit Development. The land, which is south of East 146th Street and east of River Road, had been zoned mostly for residential use.
The museum’s plans for its west-side expansion focus on food, farming and the environment. The project could take up to 20 years to fully develop.
Conner Prairie announced plans for its “Conservation Campus” expansion more than a year ago and has been tweaking them ever since. Conner Prairie CEO Norman Burns said the 1,046-acre living history museum first began drawing plans for the expansion in 2018.
“It has been a long process, but, literally, this long process is now just the first step. We have so much ahead of us,” Burns told IBJ.
Burns said he could not yet provide an estimated date for when construction would start.
The museum is planning two new sections that would use land Conner Prairie has left largely untouched for decades.
The proposed Food, Farm & Energy Experience District would start just south of East 146th Street. It would include a 70-room eco-lodge and cabins, multiple buildings and exhibits, a restaurant, a historic farm and a modern farm, a solar field, trails, woodlands, prairie, wetlands, a pedestrian bridge and parking. Visitors to the Food, Farm & Energy Experience District would need a ticket.
The Land, Water & Energy Innovation District would be south of the food, farm and energy section. It would feature the White River Education & Ecology Center, an innovation center with 55,000 square feet of office space, a farm-to-table restaurant, commercial buildings and a trail.
The plan approved Tuesday by the city council is smaller than the one presented a year ago. During the lengthy review process, the project’s footprint was reduced from 35% to 15% of the museum’s 260 acres of vacant land. Planners agreed to decrease the size of the eco-lodge from 140 rooms to 70 and to create larger setbacks for buildings away from River Road.
The eco-lodge and cabins will be farther from Prairie Trace Elementary School than originally planned, and a southern entrance to the development was removed from the plan.
The innovation center will be about half the size than was originally proposed. The building will be two stories tall, rather than three stories as previously planned. Retail space was also cut from 20,000 square feet to 15,000 square feet. A wind turbine will not be included in the plan following concerns from area residents.
Conner Prairie will be limited to holding special events in the exhibit area to 36 days per year. The Carmel Board of Public Works will be required to evaluate and approve special events at the site to manage parking and prevent unauthorized parking in nearby neighborhoods. Conner Prairie will have a maximum of 535 parking spaces on the west side of the river.
“A lot of time and a lot of effort went into making this happen today,” City Council President Jeff Worrell said. “It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t smooth. And, frankly, it shouldn’t be.”
Conner Prairie opened in the 1930s as Conner Prairie Farms, after Eli Lilly—grandson of Col. Eli Lilly, the founder of Eli Lilly and Co.—bought the property and restored the William Conner house.
Over the next decade, Lilly moved several historic structures to the site, and the land was a working farm for years. He transferred the property to a charitable trust in 1964 and named Earlham College as trustee. Conner Prairie Pioneer Village (later renamed Prairietown)—which features the loom house, trading post and other structures Lilly had moved onto the property—opened in 1974.
In 2005, Conner Prairie split from Earlham after a prolonged legal fight. In the 18 years since gaining its independence, Conner Prairie has grown from primarily the site of the 1836 Prairietown attraction and 1816 Lenape Indian Camp to encompass multiple outdoor and indoor experiences, including 1859 Balloon Voyage and 1863 Civil War Journey.
Its most ambitious recent project—Promised Land as Proving Ground, which examines nearly 1,000 years of Black history—is partially open. Two of its three buildings are still under construction.
Conner Prairie also announced plans in September for a yearlong transformation of its welcome center. The $33 million project will give the building a new name, the Museum Experience Center, and add immersive exhibit spaces, access to collection items and hands-on learning and play.
Conner Prairie became a Smithsonian Affiliate in 2008, making it part of a network of museums with reciprocal membership agreements.
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