Redevelopment panel scraps 2 bids for land in Carmel’s Midtown

The Carmel Redevelopment Commission will wait until next year to sell five acres of property along the Monon Greenway in Carmel’s Midtown area, voting Wednesday to reject both bids submitted in response to an October request for proposals.

Officials had hoped to close on a deal by the end of next month.

As North of 96th reported Oct. 31, two local development teams submitted offers for the land, located about two blocks south of Main Street on the west side of the trail: Barrett & Stokely Acquisitions bid $2.5 million, and Old Town Development LLC’s offer came in at the minimum acceptable price of $1.7 million.

Additional details about their proposals trickled out Wednesday.

Barrett & Stokely pitched a project that would include 24 for-sale residential units, 200 apartments and a 40,000-square-foot mixed-use building anchored by a local bank, CRC Executive Director Corrie Meyer said.

Old Town’s plans for the site—located just across the Monon from its $150 million work-in-progress Midtown project—include 30 to 36 for-sale residential units and a 20,000-square-foot building with an unidentified tenant.   

CRC staff reviewed the projects to determine how well they align with the criteria spelled out in the RFP. Meyer said Old Town’s proposal was “generally compliant,” while “a few items” Barrett & Stokely’s strayed from the guidelines.

The sale notice specified a preference for for-sale residential units and a mixed-use building no larger than 20,000 square feet, for example.

Rejecting the bids starts the clock on a 30-day waiting period, after which the commission can begin to negotiate with the development teams—and any others that express interest—to fine-tune their plans.

“We need to determine our priorities,” Meyer said.

With single-family housing to the north and the more dense Midtown development planned to the east, the property could be used to ease the transition, she said.  

The sale notice spelled out some “permitted uses” for the property, including a rebuilding/redesign of the Monon to fit land-use planner Jeff Speck’s vision for the area.

Midtown is located between Carmel City Center and Main Street.