Henke requests 250-acre expansion of Chatham Hills

Henke Development Group LLC wants to grow its mammoth Chatham Hills development in Westfield by 250 acres so that it can introduce office and retail space to the development and make room for more houses.

Chatham Hills, which features a Pete Dye golf course and houses ranging from $500,000 to $1.5 million, already spans some 800 acres in Westfield. The expansion would take it further east, onto roughly 252 acres west of U.S. 31, north of E. 191^st Street, south of E. 203^rd Street and east of Tomlinson Road.

Henke has requested that Westfield amend the existing Chatham Hills Planned Unit Development to reflect its new boundaries.  The new acreage would be split into four subdistricts: Single family, village, campus office and southern. Across those districts, more than 800 new housing units could be constructed. The PUD would permit the following uses in each of the subdistricts:

• In the single-family subdistrict, the PUD would allow for high-density attached and detached single-family home construction.
• The village district would allow for general business—like small restaurants, a bakery or a coffee shop—single-family attached homes, an assisted living facility, a bed and breakfast and parks.

  

• The campus office district would permit for general office uses, general business uses, labs, an assisted living facility, multifamily residential and a trade or business school.
• The southern district would permit general business uses, high density single-family residential, single-family attached, multi-family, an assisted living facility, an educational institution and a trade or business school.

Houses in the development would range in price from $400,000 to $950,000.

The campus office district would begin at the northwest corner of U.S. 31 and 196^th Street. The southern district would be built south of 196^th Street, and the village district would be in the center of the development, surrounding a 12-acre lake. The single-family district would encompass the rest of the acreage, including along Tomlinson Road.

In addition to the 12-acre lake, the developer would dig an eight-acre lake near the intersection of U.S. 31 and 203^rd Street.

Houses would front both lakes, and the larger lake would also have retail and offices surrounding it. A large public park with an amphitheater would be built nearby.

Developer Steve Henke said his company has spent the past few years amassing the land for the project. The development will have a New England feel, he told the Westfield City Council Monday night when introducing the project. “It’s kind of the perfect scenario where with the golf cart community like that you can go outside and turn one direction and you’re going to the clubhouse … go in the other direction and you have the village where you can walk to or ride your bike to or take your golf cart,” Henke said.

The project is slated for a public hearing during the Oct. 7 plan commission meeting. It could go back to the city council for final approval as soon as Nov. 11.