By Ann Craig-Cinnamon
Barely a day goes by that there’s not an announcement about a new business moving to Fishers, a retail store leasing space or new development going up somewhere.
Just in the last few weeks, we have heard news of Jarden Corporation leasing the empty Sony manufacturing space; Fishers Marketplace is leasing space at a rapid rate having signed leases with Aurelio’s Pizza, Zaxby’s, Graeter’s Ice Cream, City Barbeque, Bagger Dave’s Legendary Burger Tavern, Which Wich, Popeyes and Taco Bell; The Depot in downtown Fishers has signed Dottie Couture,Brixx Wood Fired Pizza to leases; Wyliepalooza Ice Cream Emporium has opened on Allisonville Road; Culver’s opened a new store on Olio Road; Bento Café has opened next to Fresh Market; Infinity Chiropractic and Pinnacle Chiropractic have recently leased space; Mr. Tea and Mrs. Spicy just opened on east 96th Street; Passione Pane Italian restaurant and Little Caesar’s will soon be at 116th Street and Brooks School Road.
Reports have it that the new Meyer Najem building going up in the Nickel Plate District downtown has had such a great response that its original plan of offering space for Launch Fishers start-up businesses may not happen after all.
Soon the Yeager building will likely begin construction at 116th and Lantern and the Switch at the site of the old train station now that there’s been Economic Development Commission approval.
Tim Gropp, the Assistant Director of Economic Development for the Town of Fishers says the town has seen consistent and steady growth over the past few years.
Kurt Meyer, who is President and CEO of commercial real estate company Baseline, Inc. and also the President of the Fishers Chamber of Commerce, says Fishers is definitely seeing a growth spurt.
“There’s no question that in the height of the recession or depression, however you want to define it, (for many in the commercial real estate business it was a depression) construction came to a halt; people were not out developing; people were not out leasing, many places were just dead in the water. Definitely, it has come back and it has come back in segments. The industrial segment was the least affected and the first to come back. Office has come back. Retail and land were probably two of the most affected parts of the downturn and retail has come back. There are still some vacancies around. Land is coming back slowly. Development overall is still not on pace where it was back in the late ‘90s and early 2000s but it’s certainly better than it was,” says Meyer.
Meyer says he thinks the reason Fishers has seen so much growth is because leadership has been more focused on economic development in the past five to seven years.
“I’d say our attitude has changed a bit. I think there was a period of time when we had leadership at the top that basically said ‘we are Fishers and they’ll come’ and that wasn’t necessarily the case when times were bad and they didn’t think we had to offer economic incentive and clearly we do, that’s just the way business is,” he says and adds that it is well-planned growth.
“You see many times that when these economic upticks occur and development is reignited, communities are so anxious to get something going or jobs or the development of that corner that’s been blighted or whatever, that they don’t look long term. We have generally had a really long-term perspective in Fishers about how we want to see this community develop. And I think it’s kind of a perfect storm that’s happened with good leadership, with that good long-term perspective on what we want to see and now with the economy humming along at a better pace, we’ve got some incredible growth going on now.”
