Home Place's Redevelopment Plan Advances; Illinois Street Townhomes Draw a 3-3 Vote

According to You Are Current, six members of the Carmel Plan Commission's Committee of the Whole sat down on January 6, 2026, to weigh in on 27 new townhomes proposed for Illinois Street, just north of 106th Street. Three said the project made sense. Three didn't. Commissioner Adam Campagna called the plan "forced," arguing there was no comparable for-sale product anywhere else along the U.S. 31 corridor in Carmel. Commissioner Dubbie Buckler, who said she typically opposes higher-density projects, thought this one worked. The tie went nowhere fast. The proposal moved to the full City Council, which held a first reading and public hearing on February 16 and referred the matter to its Land Use Committee for further review.

Split votes happen in zoning fights all the time. What makes this one worth a buyer's attention is where it happened: Home Place, the small pocket of Carmel around 106th and College that spent most of the twentieth century trying not to become part of Carmel at all.

Home Place's Annexation History

According to a Yahoo News report, Home Place was platted in 1914 by the Orin Jessup Land Company, which bet that College Avenue would grow into U.S. 31. Meridian Street got the federal highway instead, growth moved west, and the area stayed a quiet cluster of homes, a general store, and a filling station for decades. Entrance signs in the neighborhood today trace its roots back to 1832, when the community was still known as Pleasant Grove.

Home Place never incorporated. A group called Concerned Citizens for Home Place filed petitions against annexation in Hamilton County Superior Court in 2005. A federal judge cleared the way for the annexation in November 2016, and it became official on March 1, 2018, the city's 57th annexation and the one that finally brought all of Clay Township inside Carmel's borders.

The Yahoo News report quoted Mark Rutherford, an attorney who has lived in the area since the 1970s, asking whether Home Place would become "more like Carmel, which is not that eclectic?" The identity he was describing still shows up on the ground. Where Midtown has the Sun King restaurant, Home Place has Jimmy B's Eatery and Pub, a smoking-allowed neighborhood bar that has sat at the corner of College and 106th for just over 20 years, on the site of the old Home Place Tavern before it.

What the Old Housing Actually Costs

The businesses along College Avenue read like a neighborhood that built itself slowly and kept what worked. Rosie's Gardens, a family-run garden center at 104th and College, has grown to more than 14 acres of retail space over 40 years. Cuts on College Barbershop and Versed Skateboard Shop sit nearby. The Pleasant Grove Cemetery, established in 1837, is maintained by the Greater Home Place Neighborhood Association. Kids in the area attend Orchard Park Elementary, and residents can reach the Monon Trail directly from 96th Street.

The housing stock matches that pace: ranches and cottages built decades ago, not the custom subdivisions that define the rest of Carmel's west side. That's part of why Home Place has stayed one of Carmel's more accessible entry points even as the city's overall numbers climbed. Citywide figures for the spring of 2026 put Carmel's median sale price somewhere between $550,000 and $582,000, depending on which snapshot you use, with single-family homes averaging closer to $650,000 and condos closer to $392,000. Inventory that spring was tight enough, under one month of supply by one estimate, that sellers across most of the city held real leverage.

Home Place's older stock sat below that citywide median long before anyone drafted a plan to change it.

The Plan's Two-Year Path, Adopted in a Season

Carmel's Comprehensive Plan, adopted in December 2022, called for a series of subarea plans across the city. Home Place was chosen as one of the first. Starting in April 2024, the city worked with Yard & Co., a Cincinnati-based urban growth firm, on a parallel community vision document called "This Is Home." Residents Robin Scobell and Lindsay Fanning served as project ambassadors through the process, and the draft was unveiled at a May 3, 2025 block party in a new pocket park at 106th and College. That same day, the city dedicated a stainless-steel roundabout sculpture by Indianapolis artist Ryan Feeney, its red-tailed hawk facing south, its base ringed with railroad ties honoring the old interurban line.

Out of that process came 106th & College, Inc., a new Main Street America affiliate formed in 2025 to focus specifically on the business district, a gap the neighborhood association had never been built to fill. As You Are Current reported, Mike Hollibaugh, Carmel's director of community services, described the relationship-building itself as an achievement, calling it consistent with "the mayor and her vision of wanting to listen to the residents."

The formal Subarea Plan moved on its own track. Its initial Plan Commission hearing came on July 15, 2025. It was refined across four committee meetings, approved by the City Council with revisions on May 18, 2026, and ratified by the Plan Commission on June 16, 2026. Among its recommendations for the business district:

• Regular community events, including food truck rallies and a music series
• A "First 16 Feet" grant program to help fund facade and public-space improvements
• Beautification and connectivity work along the 106th and College corridor
• Guidelines for what the plan calls village-scaled infill development

That last line is the one worth sitting with, because a project already testing it was proposed months before the plan was even finalized.

The Test Case Already in the Pipeline

Pulte Homes brought its Illinois Street Townhomes proposal to the Carmel Plan Commission for a public hearing on October 23, 2025. The plan called for 28 three-story townhomes across five buildings on a 4.4-acre parcel near 106th and Illinois Street, later adjusted to 27 units. Attorney Jon Dobosciewicz, representing Pulte, told the commission the units would carry an anticipated price range of $500,000 to $550,000. Square footage wasn't disclosed at the hearing. The site plan included more than 40 percent open space, tree preservation along the southern edge, and garage doors facing inward to limit visibility from Illinois Street.

That's the project that split the committee 3-3 in January and moved to a divided Council in February. By spring, one Carmel councilmember's newsletter to constituents described the project still moving forward, with an expected groundbreaking around November 1, 2026.

How the Proposed Price Range Compares with Carmel Resales

This is the part that should catch a buyer's attention. In a market as tight as Carmel's was that spring, with inventory under a month of supply and most homes selling close to asking price, new construction usually has room to price above the resale median. It's new. It's turnkey. Builders typically charge for that.

Pulte's $500,000 to $550,000 band for brand-new, three-story, for-sale townhomes sits at or below the low end of the same citywide resale window reported for that spring. It sits well below the average price of an existing single-family home in Carmel.

The project's pricing is only part of the picture: the committee vote wasn't unanimous. Residents raised concerns elsewhere in the corridor about stormwater and encroachment tied to a separate expansion at the nearby Restoracy of Carmel senior care campus. None of this reads like a neighborhood where redevelopment is a foregone conclusion. It reads like one where each project still has to win its own argument, in public, one hearing at a time.

What to Check Before You Assume the Upside

If you're looking at a property in Home Place, a few things are worth confirming before you price in any of this:

• Whether the specific parcel sits inside the business corridor the Subarea Plan targets, or on a residential side street the plan treats differently
• The age and condition of the home's core systems, since much of Home Place's housing stock predates the inspection standards buyers expect in Carmel's newer subdivisions
• What's actually funded versus what's still aspirational. Illinois Street has a builder, a price, and a target groundbreaking date. The grant program and event programming in the plan are earlier in that process

A Few Straight Answers

Is Home Place still legally separate from Carmel? No. Annexation became official on March 1, 2018, after a legal fight that started with resident petitions in 2005.

Buying into a neighborhood mid-transition means reading the paperwork as carefully as the porch. If you're weighing an older home in Home Place against new construction a few blocks away, or trying to figure out what a specific parcel's zoning actually allows, Morton Homes Realty can walk the plan and the parcel with you before you write an offer.

This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.