'We did not like Carmel.' Home Place, annexed 5 years ago, strives to maintain identify

Lilacs bloomed in May 1991 when Dianna Glass purchased her house in the Home Place neighborhood in what is now the city of Carmel. A symbol of spring.

Back then, Glass drove through Home Place prior to closing on the house. She saw people walking down the street, talking to one another and waving hello to neighbors. The friendly neighborhood and the fragrant purple flowers near her home were signs to Glass of where she was meant to live.

“It had a feeling of community, and I really appreciated that,” she said.

Five years ago, Carmel annexed Home Place after a lengthy and divisive court battle. Residents there are still adjusting with how to maintain the area's identity amid the affluent city's aggressive growth and redevelopment strategy.

More: 12 years later, Home Place agrees to Carmel annexation

More: Carmel Mayor Jim Brainard has a $60M plan to kick-start economic growth in Home Place

Home Place, stretching from 111th Street to Interstate 465 and Pennsylvania Street to Westfield Boulevard, has historically been a quieter, rural area made up of working-class people and families, residents say. It's a contrast to wealthier and newer areas in Carmel, like City Center and Midtown.

Whereas in Midtown, people can drink and eat at bustling restaurants like the $5 million Sun King, Home Place residents head down the street to Jimmy B’s, where smoking is allowed inside and pork tenderloins and wings are served.

Many Home Place neighbors, like Glass, have lived in the community for decades, another contrast. Carmel has grown to roughly 100,000 people by attracting a large influx of residents due to its highly-rated schools and many amenities.

Prior to 2018, Home Place was unincorporated, the last bit of Clay Township the city hadn't annexed.

Over time, the city has brought more infrastructure work into the neighborhood and more transformative Carmel multistory redevelopment projects, like those in the city’s downtown, are inching closer to Home Place.

Home Place's character

White picket fence-style signs with black lettering at entrances to the Home Place neighborhood tell visitors the community was settled in 1832.

A man named Isaac Sharp at that time owned a log cabin, long since gone, at the corner of today’s intersection of 106th Street and College Avenue in the heart of the community. It became a school and a meeting location for residents of what was then called Pleasant Grove, according to the Carmel Clay Historical Society.

A small cemetery, founded in 1837, and historical plaques near it remind visitors today of Pleasant Grove. The cemetery is maintained by the Greater Home Place Neighborhood Association.

The area became known as Home Place after 1914 when the Orin Jessup Land Co. purchased land in the area, according to the Historical Society.

At Jimmy B's Eatery and Pub, it's dark and smoky inside. The neighborhood staple has been at its location at the southwest corner of College Avenue and 106th Street for just over 20 years. Before that? It was Home Place Tavern, across the street for decades earlier.

People either hate Jimmy B’s or love it, often because of the smoking inside, said owner Brenda Beauregard. She now lives in Florida and comes back to Home Place about four times a year.

The area has always been special to her because “you just knew everybody,” she said. Some Jimmy B's patrons have their names on chairs in the bar, she said. Customers have become family.

“We’re getting kids of the people that hung out across the street at Home Place Tavern,” she said. “Their parents came in there and now we’re getting their children.”

Just south of the bar on College Avenue is Rosie's Gardens where pottery, decorative water fountains and plants and trees of all colors and sizes cover close to 12 acres.

The garden center has been in the Home Place community for 40 years. Kevin Hughes and his wife bought an acre of the property and started selling Christmas trees, he said. It grew from there.

Decades later, Rosie's isn't leaving Home Place any time soon, Hughes said. In fact, they continue to see opportunity.

The business has future plans to expand with more parking, a new store and additional storage.

"It's going to be a couple years long project, but we had great backing from the neighborhood," Hughes said. "That part is great."

Home Place's annexation

Brainard took office in 1996 at a time when much of Clay Township was rural land outside city boundaries.

Home Place was the last of 56 successful annexations that Brainard initiated during his time in office. And it proved a challenge.

“Anybody who lived in Home Place, we did not like Carmel,” Beauregard, of Jimmy B's said. “Carmel didn’t do anything for us.”

The Carmel City Council in November 2004 voted to annex Home Place and southwest Clay Township, the two remaining properties before Clay Township and Carmel shared the same boundaries.

In 2005, the group Concerned Citizens for Home Place, remonstrators against Carmel’s annexation, filed petitions against the annexation in Hamilton County Superior Court. Some issues involved higher taxes, but a lot of concern centered around the neighborhood's identity.

“A lot of people thought that with Carmel coming in, they would lose a lot of control over the area,” said Mark Rutherford, an attorney who has lived in the area since the 1970s.

Rutherford said Home Place has always been "eclectic" compared to the rest of the city and neighbors worried that would go away.

“Does it become more like Carmel, which is not that eclectic?" Rutherford asked.

Even Brainard said he recognized that Home Place "had more of an identity" than other areas Carmel had annexed.

The legal fight dragged on for just over a decade. In 2017, Home Place residents and Carmel came to an agreement to allow the annexation to proceed. It became official in 2018.

Carmel's work in Home Place

Perhaps the most notable change in Home Place since it became part of Carmel is the roundabout at the main intersection of 106th Street and College Avenue.

Brainard said Home Place needed city services “more than anybody.” The existing and future improvements will help the private sector invest in the neighborhood in the future, Brainard said.

Between 2018 and 2021, Carmel invested about $8.7 million in projects directly benefitting Home Place, according to a summary of projects and funds from the mayor's office.

That work in the neighborhood has included street paving, drainage improvements and installing water infrastructure for 380 homes. Much of the neighborhood was previously on well water, Brainard said.

“We’ve done a lot of work in Home Place, but it’s a lot of work that is in the ground at this point,” Brainard said. “It sets the foundation for what is going to come next.”

After 2018, Home Place was also under Carmel's code enforcement laws, which cracked down on bad landlords and less-than-desirable yards, Brainard explained.

"Junk cars, without tires in the front lawn, it stopped all that," he said.

Whether you agree with Brainard that change has been positive largely seems to depend on your view of his vision for Carmel.

Greg Lentz grew up in the area and attended Carmel schools after moving to Home Place with his family in 1967. He lives just minutes from the original home is family moved into decades ago.

Lentz was appointed by Brainard to serve on the Home Place Advisory Board, a city committee created after the annexation to discuss issues in Home Place. Lentz said the improvements made by Carmel since 2018 have mostly brought positive change to the neighborhood.

"Home Place really tried to keep its identity of being its own little community and for the most part, prosper," Lentz said. "The reality is, you've got a whole new ballgame in terms of just infrastructure access."

Home Place residents that spoke with IndyStar largely said that the infrastructure improvements have been a benefit to the area.

But some are concerned about the potential amount of construction and redevelopment projects planned near the neighborhood.

For example, Carmel is planning to transform the Parkwood Crossing office park at U.S. 31 and Interstate 465 into a neighborhood in the style of Midtown or City Center. It's less than a mile south of Home Place on College Avenue.

More: Carmel to redevelop U.S. 31 office park into City Center-type area

The development project, called Carmel Gateway, will take years to complete. But the project will have 714,000 square feet of office buildings, 3,361 parking spaces mainly in several garages, nearly 90,000 square feet of retail, about 1,200 townhome and apartments and an 87,000 square-foot hotel, all near Home Place, according to initial plans.

Glass said she’s seen the positives of homes transitioning to city water and repaving of streets, but the most negative impact since Home Place has joined Carmel is “the overbuilding.”

“Turning open areas, which give peace and a bit of nature for the betterment of our hearts, minds and emotions, turning them into more concrete jungles with lights, noise and traffic,” Glass said.

And some feel like it's just a matter of time before those types of developments come to Home Place itself.

More: History lost? Mixed-use housing 'blandmarks' taking over downtown suburbia in Indiana

Maintaining Home Place’s identity

The Greater Home Place Neighborhood Association is fundraising for one way to keep the neighborhood's history alive.

Inside a warehouse near 65th Street and Binford Boulevard in Indianapolis, artist Ryan Feeney holds up a clay model of a red-tailed hawk's wing next to the body of the bird sculpture.

Feeney, of Indy Art Forge, is helping the neighborhood association create an art piece for the new roundabout at 106th Street and College Avenue to reflect the uniqueness of Home Place.

The sculpture for Home Place will feature a bronze red-tailed hawk with an eight-foot wingspan, Feeney said. It will sit on top of a railroad lantern with symbols representing the neighborhood’s past.

“It’s about preserving some of Home Place history,” said Sherry Heston, with the neighborhood association. She has lived in the area since 1993. “It’s a wonderful community that you know and love.”

The total cost of the sculpture will be about $266,000. The neighborhood association is currently fundraising after Clay Township and Carmel Clay Parks each gave $100,000 to the project.

It's unusual for a neighborhood to initiate an idea for roundabout art in Carmel. But the sculpture is also unusual for Home Place, as roundabout art is a quintessential part of the city the neighborhood fought joining for so long.

Still, as new developments go up and the neighborhood changes, Home Place residents can point to the sculpture as a symbol of its history. And, of course, of the past meeting the future. Because what is more Carmel than roundabout art?

“I think there will be a great deal of pride from it,” Glass said.

Contact the reporter at 317-779-4468.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Home Place seeks to maintain sense of community as Carmel closes in