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Bakers Corner, west of U.S. 31 along 236th Street, has just 48 houses and ample amounts of farmland. Still, as hard as it is to imagine looking at it, the tiny community could be Hamilton County’s next boomtown.
Last year, the county announced a $45 million plan to extend sewer and water utilities to Bakers Corner. An additional $20 million from the state will allow Hamilton County to create a regional utility district and continue adding utilities north for four miles along U.S. 31 to 276th Street where the Indiana National Guard is constructing a new armory.
The project to service Bakers Corner and the new armory is expected to be completed by the end of 2024.
“It’s always been thought that if water and sewer could be brought to the area, that would be the next growth spurt and economic development corridor,” Hamilton County Commissioner Mark Heirbrandt said.
The Hamilton County Regional Utility District initially will be limited to areas east and west of U.S. 31 between 236th and 276th streets.
But eventually, the district operated by Hamilton County Utilities will likely have a service area bounded by 216th Street to the south, Devaney Road to the east, the Hamilton County/Tipton County line to the north and Six Points Road to the west.
The economic development effort coincides with the Indiana Department of Transportation’s ongoing plan to make U.S. 31 a free-flowing highway from Indianapolis to South Bend by eliminating stoplights and building interchanges at key intersections. Interchanges are under construction at 236th and 276th streets.
County officials and real estate leaders expect change to come rapidly in Bakers Corner as companies and developers take note. It’s happening even as the utility expansion installed by Orleans-based Reynolds Construction LLC continues.
“If you haven’t heard what Bakers Corner is, you’re going to soon find out what it is,” Heirbrandt said. “We’re meeting with two or three developers every single week. And people that said they’d never sell their property? They’re all selling.”
Housing and business
Bakers Corner is an unincorporated community in Adams Township about 7 miles north of Westfield. The area got its name from members of the Baker family who served as postmasters at a post office that operated there from 1873 to 1900.
While southern Hamilton County cities Carmel, Fishers, Noblesville and Westfield have experienced rapid growth in recent decades, the northern part of the county remains largely agricultural. However, areas along U.S. 31 between Indianapolis and Kokomo could become prime areas for development in the coming years.
“Westfield is short on land, particularly for industrial, and Carmel is full, so it just makes sense as you work your way north from [Interstate 465] that it’s going to develop,” said Craig Kaiser, a real estate agent with Carmel-based Coldwell Banker Kaiser Real Estate.
Heirbrandt foresees a variety of housing developments, mixed-use developments, supermarkets, office space and manufacturing cropping up in the Bakers Corner area and points north.
He anticipates an agriculture industry hub along U.S. 31 at 276th Street near Atlanta-based Beck’s Hybrids. The Indiana Economic Development Corp. previously designated 80 acres of land in the area for ag businesses.
Kaiser said he expects convenience stores, gas stations and fast-food restaurants to be built near the interchanges. He is also seeing attention from industrial, medical and residential real estate companies interested in building along the corridor.
“The demand we’re finding is kind of surprising to me,” Kaiser said. “We’ve had a huge response of people who were interested from 236th all the way up to Reynolds [Farm Equipment] at 276th in obtaining land for businesses because now it’s so handy with 31 being [like] an interstate.”
Hamilton County would need about 1,000 new houses constructed in the Bakers Corner area and paying utility bills to break even on the cost of running services there. Heirbrandt said the area already has 1,100 houses committed and more are on the way.
Creating a utility district allows the county to control the types of development that take root along U.S. 31.
“There’s a lot of different things that could happen along that corridor, but we want to be able to control what goes in there and make sure that we’re working with our citizens to make sure that we maintain that comprehensive plan that we developed,” Heirbrandt said.
Marty Wessler, CEO of Indianapolis-based Wessler Engineering, which has worked to plan the utility district, said homebuilders such as Carmel-based Lennar Homes of Indiana LLC and Carmel-based PulteGroup of Indiana Inc. are eyeing the Bakers Corner area for large residential developments.
He imagines areas that are currently unincorporated could have 200 to 500 residential permits per year for the next 10 years.
“And that’s just the start,” Wessler said. “The interest is just exploding.”
Heirbrandt said longtime landowners who previously said they would not sell are now banding together to combine properties to add value.
Interest in the corridor has led to an “astronomical jump” in recent land sale prices, according to Oscar Gutierrez, president of Carmel-based finance company Bondry Consulting.
“Everybody knows that there’s going to be utility there,” Gutierrez said. “They know that there’s a National Guard armory going up.”
Kaiser listed for sale a 20.56-acre property near the intersection of U.S. 31 and 236th Street for just under $3.1 million, a cost of $150,000 per acre.
“When you put water and sewer there, the property value is going to go up, and then you’re going to start seeing developers looking at different types of opportunities that are going to be there,” Heirbrandt said.
Opportunities and challenges
Groundbreaking on a wastewater treatment plant for Hamilton County Utilities is scheduled for Sept. 21 at the northwest quadrant of the intersection of U.S. 31 and 236th Street.
And improvements to 236th Street have already been made going west to Sheridan and east to Cicero.
“The project is transformational in nature,” said Todd Burtron, a planning advisor for the town of Sheridan. “It unlocks the economic development potential of the 31 corridor. It poses many opportunities and equally as many challenges.”
Currently, the land sits outside the planning and zoning control of Cicero and Sheridan, which could both look to expand toward U.S. 31 in the future.
Observers say there’s sensitivity about the types of development that could be approved and how future development could impact each town’s school corporations, fire departments and emergency management services, but also anticipation about what the growth could bring to the area.
“If development occurs and it’s of the residential type, those homes are homes to children that would be attending Sheridan Community Schools,” Burtron said. “What type of pressure does that put on the school corporation that then impacts residential and all property tax rates? These are things that are exciting, but yet they bring challenges. The town needs and wants to be a part of that.”
Hamilton County’s utility expansion in Bakers Corner is funded with $25 million the county received through the American Rescue Plan Act, $10 million financed through bonds and $10 million from the state. To serve Bakers Corner, the county is working with Indiana American Water to pump water from the Sheridan area.
The American Rescue Plan Act had limitations on the types of projects it could fund. While it had restrictions against roads and bridges, it allowed communities to improve and install water and sewer systems and remove old and malfunctioning septic systems—all priorities along the U.S. 31 corridor in northern Hamilton County.
“The county needed a means to facilitate economic development and growth, and they saw that creating this regional utility district was their answer,” Wessler said. “And with the once in a lifetime funding with the ARPA money, it came together very, very quickly.”•
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I applaud Hamilton County for taking the lead on extending utilities this area. However, I do not believe it would be wise to develop this for an extended period of time under county auspices. County government tend to have lower development standards than municipalities, and also are not positioned to provide integrated urban services to urbanized areas. This is what cities are for.
We already see that the county’s vision for this corridor is not appropriate. Gas stations and convenience stores? That’s what they want for a premier suburban corridor like US 31? Contrast with how Carmel put in place its US 31 overlay long ago that turned that into an incredible corporate and medical corridor. Clearly this does not need to be developed as class A office space, but better master planning for long term durable value of the type that a municipal government would provide is critical. I fear the county will simply put in a collection of random warehouses, problematic subdivisions that no city or town would approve and other such uses.
One of the differentiators of Hamilton County has been that it has large suburbs – not necessarily by the standard of Texas or the Western US, but certainly by the standards of the Midwest – that have the scale to do major things and deliver services at the highest level. Carmel and Fishers are now over 100,000 people. Noblesville is en route to exceed that level. And Westfield is now over 50,000 and will keep growing. All of these cities are doing big things like Midtown Carmel, Grand Park, Ikea/Fishers District area, Pleasant Street, the huge new innovation corridor in Noblesville. They are also doing big things in basic infrastructure around streets, parks, fire, police, etc.
The county should be sure to set up the northern half the county to deliver similarly. I would think that in an ideal world, Sheridan and Cicero would grow to incorporate these areas. However, they may be too small and their development cores too distant to take that on right now. Perhaps Bakers Corner could itself be incorporated and boundaries negotiated. Regardless of the direction, incorporating this area and giving them the technical and other needed assistance to get mobilized is the right answer.
The last thing Hamilton County needs is a Center Grove type area of random sprawl development without municipal governance, combined with the “warehouse district” of I-65 in Whiteland. Avoiding this by setting up proper municipal governance should be a key near term to do for the county and the state.
We’ll said.