By Daniel Bradley
Indiana Business Journal
McCordsville once consisted of a single blinking stoplight, a neighborhood, one park and a handful of small businesses, all surrounded by farmland. Now, the Hancock County town is booming with a population that has increased by 894% this century.
The town’s location makes it an obvious spot for growth and development. McCordsville is bordered to the west by Indianapolis and Lawrence, to the north by Fishers and Geist, to the south by Hancock County’s warehouse district and to the east by plenty of open land to grow. U.S. 36 and Mt. Comfort Road connect McCordsville to Interstates 69 and 70.
Since 2000, McCordsville’s population has gone from about 1,100 people to more than 11,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Town Manager Tim Gropp said McCordsville has enough housing approved to reach 20,000 residents in the next decade, and the town could reach 40,000 people within 20 years.
“We’re truly farm fields that have developed into a community,” Gropp said.
Now, the town is preparing for its next period of growth. Perhaps the most visible sign of what’s coming is sprouting from a former soybean field at the intersection of U.S. 36 (known through town as Broadway) and Mt. Comfort Road.
Town leaders spent nearly 15 years planning McCord Square, which they envision as a town center for a community that needs a place to gather. Residents are beginning to move into two 111,000-square-foot, four-story apartment buildings called The Jackson and The Lucas.
Combined, the buildings have 205 one- and two-bedroom apartment units and 6,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial space. Hancock Eye Associates, Le Peep, Leo’s Market and Eatery and Rita’s Italian Ice & Frozen Custard have signed on as tenants.
A 36,400-square-foot office building for Greenfield-based utility cooperative NineStar Connect and 15,000-square-foot IU Health Clinic will open later this year near the main entrance along Mt. Comfort Road. An 18,000-square-foot McCordsville Police Department station will also open later this year on the development’s southern edge along County Road 750 North.
A new town hall, a central green with an amphitheater, apartments, town houses, mixed-use spaces, restaurants, shops, water features and parks are planned as future elements at McCord Square. A large subdivision to the east of McCord Square will likely have 500 to 600 houses.
Gropp said McCord Square is the result of the town taking action and creating a vision for its future to avoid simply being a bedroom community.
Residents “want to have their own community and their own sense of place,” he said. “McCord Square is all about creating a town center, creating vibrancy, creating a place to gather, to have events and really a place to circle around and congregate.”
The town of McCordsville, Fishers-based master developer Rebar Development and Greenfield-based Pride Investment Partners are partnering on the 48-acre McCord Square project.
So far, $53 million has been spent on developing McCord Square. Rebar CEO Shelby Bowen said the plan is to continue developing McCord Square over the next decade with about $250 million in investment planned. McCordsville issued a $4 million bond to build infrastructure for the project.
McCord Square is hardly Rebar’s first major project. In recent years, Rebar has developed the $50 million Founders Square and $6.5 million 1300 Block developments in Speedway, the $24 million Levinson in Noblesville and the $20 million Barlow in Plainfield. But the McCordsville project is the firm’s biggest and most unique.
“We hadn’t really gone into a community that really had a blank slate,” Bowen said. “They had a vision. The demand was there. They just really needed a partner to kind of come alongside and get that started.”
In 2022, Gropp left the town of Speedway where he served as economic development director to succeed former McCordsville Town Manager Tonya Galbraith.
During his time in Speedway, Gropp worked with Rebar as the firm built Founders Square and 1300 Block. He also previously worked as assistant economic development director for Fishers before and after the community transitioned from a town to a city.
McCordsville “feels very much like Fishers did when I was there from 2011 to 2017 where you’re really trying to make the right decisions because in a lot of cases, you only get to make them once,” Gropp said.
Building an identity
Galbraith joined the town in 2005 when McCordsville’s population was still roughly 1,200. By 2007, she was thinking about the need for a town center.
“It was always in the back of our mind,” she said. “We needed to think about building a place for our residents to go so they don’t always have to go to Fishers or Indianapolis.”
The Great Recession delayed plans for a town center, but Galbraith said it allowed time to think about how best to manage growth.
“We took that time to break away from [the Hancock County Area Plan Commission], form our own plan commission, adopt our own zoning ordinance, knowing we wanted our own destiny when things did come back,” she said.
As the country recovered from the recession, McCordsville officials got back to work thinking about a town center, all while the community’s population was starting to increase, building permits were taking off and subdivisions started growing.
Galbraith sought advice from Ball State University architecture students about what a town center could look like. Then she went about gathering information from consulting firms like Indianapolis-based The Veridus Group and ideas from developers, including Rebar.
Finally, in 2021, Rebar received Town Council approval to execute the first phase of McCord Square. Construction began the next year.
“It was a 15-year vision. That’s how long it takes,” Galbraith said. “People think, wow, it just came out of the ground. But it didn’t. It took a while as things do, and now it’s really, really taking off because our population is going to support it.”
Town Council President Greg Brewer said McCordsville’s greatest need is a central drawing point. He and other town officials studied the ways suburban communities Fishers, Plainfield and Whitestown developed their communities.
Housing is also a major topic of consideration for town leaders. Brewer said it is important for the town to have a diverse housing product and not just approve single-family subdivisions. That’s why an emphasis at McCord Square is on multifamily units and town houses that will complement the surrounding single-family subdivisions.
In recent years, the town has also approved condominiums, garden homes, senior-living communities and a subdivision of rental houses.
“We’ve really tried to diversify our housing stock to offer just about anything you’re looking for,” Gropp said. “We track that very carefully, and we make sure that our blend and our percentages make sense, and that we’re not overbuilding any one housing stock.”
Single-family house prices in McCordsville are lower than many of its suburban peers on the north and northeast sides. The median price for a home in McCordsville is $383,000, compared to $407,000 in Noblesville, $429,000 in Westfield, $450,000 in Fishers and $535,000 in Carmel, according to Redfin.
Monthly rent in McCordsville for a one-bedroom apartment is comparable to the more established cities in Hamilton County, according to Rent.com. A one-bedroom unit in McCordsville averages about $1,400, while a similar apartment goes for $1,200 in Fishers, $1,400 in Noblesville, $1,500 in Westfield and $1,600 in Carmel.
Brewer said McCordsville has been able to attract residents who want a shorter commute to downtown Indianapolis and who want a less expensive way of life.
“You get all the benefits of Fishers and Geist without having to live there,” Brewer said. “That’s the nice thing. We are very close to a lot of those amenities.”
Planning for the future
Bowen said developers are looking at McCordsville as the next opportunity as cities like Carmel and Fishers fill in.
“There’s been a fair amount of additional demand, both for single-family, townhome, apartments, commercial,” Bowen said. “I think there’s quite a bit of growth now coming out from the east and even to a certain degree, all the way out to Fortville.”
As McCordsville grows, it has some complex infrastructure needs. While the Indiana Department of Transportation has a 15-year plan to widen Mt. Comfort Road from I-70 to the Hamilton County line and add roundabouts along the way, the road remains two lanes through McCordsville.
Town officials also hope to one day build an underpass at the CSX railroad crossing to prevent traffic backups just north of U.S. 36. The project cost two years ago was estimated at $64 million; the town would need assistance from federal, state and county governments to pay for it.
“We’re going to revisit that study, we’re going to update the numbers and we’re going to really start pushing to try to find a way to fund that,” Gropp said. “We desperately need that project.”
Brewer said commercial growth, stores, restaurants and fast-food options are also requirements for McCordsville. A big turning point for the town came in 2017 when Midwestern retail giant Meijer Inc. opened the town’s first department-style store, but more is needed.
“If you need a cheeseburger, you still have to either drive up to 96th Street and Mt. Comfort to McDonald’s or you drive south down to I-70 or you drive into Lawrence,” Brewer said.
If town leaders have their way, what McCordsville won’t have is acres of warehouse and logistics facilities. Gropp said residents still have some ill feelings about the large industrial facilities that were built south of town in unincorporated Hancock County.
Last year, Walmart Inc. opened a massive fulfillment center after more than two years of construction. The 2.2 million-square-foot, three-story facility encompassing 204 acres at 5259 W. 500 N. will eventually employ up to 1,000 people by the end of 2025.
Gropp said McCordsville plans to consider smaller, mixed-use commercial warehousing opportunities of 10,000 square feet to 100,000 square feet. Brewer said McCordsville has areas zoned for industrial and commercial development, and the town will be strategic about what goes there.
“We need to grow and diversify our tax base, but we’re going to do it a little bit differently,” Gropp said. “We’re trying to just create opportunities that make sense for our town and not trying to be anybody else.”
The next big task for McCordsville will be to draft a new comprehensive plan and update its zoning ordinances to guide growth and development over the next decade or more. Gropp envisions McCordsville eventually growing northeast toward the Fortville area.
“They’re growing. We’re growing,” he said. “Someday, we’ll probably grow into each other, and we want to complement them instead of compete against them. We want to offer complementary services and amenities to the surrounding communities and our residents and just be a nice place to live.”
