By Leeann Doerflein | Daily Journal
Rural Franklin residents are asking a developer to give them a higher berm between the massive commerce park that could soon be nearly 550 acres.
With buildings that could be up to 40 feet tall, a five-foot berm planted with young trees will take years to provide a significant shield from the noise and light of the development, neighbors in the Nyberg subdivision say.
The most recent annexation for the Sunbeam Development Corporation’s development is on the agenda for tonight’s Franklin City Council meeting, and neighbors are making a last-ditch effort to increase the size of the berm. Sunbeam is seeking to add 56 more acres to its 491-acre Interstate 65 Commerce Park in Franklin.
The developer has slowly amassed the acreage over the course of 2020, as more landowners agreed to sell their land. If Sunbeam’s current request is approved by the city council, the park will grow to 547 acres.
The additional 56 acres is contiguous to the 491 acres that have already been purchased by Sunbeam and annexed into the city along State Road 44, east of I-65. The land is sandwiched between Nyberg and land that was rezoned to light industrial last month for Franklin Tech Park.
Sunbeam, which has offices in Fishers and Florida, has developed thousands of acres in central Indiana, including a collaboration with Franklin Tech Park for Johnson County’s first million-square-foot building, which was developed for Energizer.
The new acreage would be added to Sunbeam’s current plans to develop the land into buildings ranging in size from 500,000 square feet to 1 million square feet in the area, said Max Mouser, a site developer working with Sunbeam.
Site plans are still in the works, but an initial plan for 213 acres included four buildings ranging in size from 675,000 square feet to 1.2 million square feet.
Neighbors are grateful Sunbeam has promised to limit entrances to the park to State Road 44 and Jim Black Road, and to never create an entrance from Upper Shelbyville Road. An entrance from that road would have run behind the homes in the eastern part of the subdivision, which connects to Upper Shelbyville Road.
Sunbeam also agreed to build a mound that is two feet taller than the city’s three-foot standard, but that won’t provide enough protection when the development could rise to 40-feet tall several hundred feet south of their property lines, neighbors say.
The mound will also include two rows of trees, one at the property line and another on top of the mound, but those will likely be saplings that won’t offer a high level of protection for many years, neighbors say.
In the last several years, development has crept closer to the Nyberg subdivision in rural Franklin. Now that the development has reached their property lines, they’re hoping for some latitude to maintain some level of the rural lifestyle many of the 40 families have enjoyed for decades.
Melody Miller’s family bought the land her home and the rest of the homes in the subdivision sit on in 1928. She loved to ride horses and search for Indian artifacts as a girl in the days before the land was sold off to create the subdivision, she said.
She enjoys sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch of the farmhouse, and spending time in her backyard horse pasture listening to the sounds of hoofbeats, rustling corn, roosters crowing and dogs barking.
With a bustling, dusty construction site to be followed by a business with potentially hundreds of employees, multiple shifts and a high volume of traffic, she knows that will soon change.
That’s why neighbors want the berm to offer more protection, Miller said.
The berm should be at double the five feet and have mature trees for a more natural look. There’s nothing preventing Franklin from asking the developer for this, as berms near that height are placed around some similar developments in Greenwood that abut neighborhoods, she said.
“If they are going to drop $350 million in this infrastructure ordeal, to me, having a berm of that magnitude is a small price to pay to have amicable feelings between one another,” Miller said.
She will be as happy as she can in this situation will a taller berm, she said.
“Around here, there’s a saying that fences make good neighbors. Well, berms make good neighbors, too,” Miller said.
Cindy Cooper is another resident of the subdivision whose backyard abuts the annexation area. She’s lived there for 20 years and enjoys the quiet solitude of her backyard. With a five-foot berm and saplings to block out the noise and view, that solitude would be history, she said.
Cooper is especially concerned about what will happen to animals buried at the property line, and the shade trees planted there that her family cherishes, she said.
“They’re taking everything and they aren’t doing anything to help us,” Cooper said.
The whole development was an unwelcome surprise that crept toward them slowly, as though to drive the neighbors out of the area, she said.
“It was kind of a blindside. We didn’t know all of this was coming. It is crazy to me they haven’t approved anything, but it’s like there is a blueprint of what my backyard is going to look like in 10 years but I haven’t seen it,” Cooper said.
The least the developers can offer is a berm that provides a higher, more natural barrier, especially for the neighbors with two-story homes, which would have a view of nothing but industrial buildings and parking lots from their upstairs windows, she said.
Cooper also calls for a berm double the five feet that Sunbeam has agreed to, with mature trees and a fence. With that, the families might be able to retain some of the enjoyment of their peaceful backyards, she said.
The neighbors love Franklin and have either grown up here or made it their home. But, as county residents, they don’t have a vote in city politics. Their only hope is that the developer and the city will come to their aid, they said.
“We all just feel they are going to do what they are going to do. We feel like they are not taking into account the families. I feel like all the 40 families of Nyberg feel this way,” Cooper said.
The neighbors don’t have a lot of hope they will convince the city council to turn down this annexation, but they think it is reasonable to ask for more protection.
“We have to change our mindset a little bit because these warehouses are coming,” Miller said. “I’m just hoping that the words that I said to them will make a difference.”
