Buckingham Companies is proposing constructing a 17-building apartment complex with 578 units on 50 acres of land located on the northwest corner of Main Street and Five Points Road.
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An apartment complex proposal east of Interstate 65 in Greenwood was green-lit by the city council Wednesday night despite opposition from nearby residents.
The Greenwood City Council voted 6-3 to approve rezoning approximately 30 acres of land on the northwest corner of Main Street and Five Points Road for a 17-building, market-rate apartment complex proposed by Indianapolis-based Buckingham Companies. The land is currently zoned residential medium, or RM, and would be rezoned multi-family, according to city documents.
City council members Ron Bates, Bradley Pendleton and Michael Williams voted against the rezoning. The plan commission previously had given the apartment proposal an unfavorable recommendation in a 6-2 vote last month.
The complex would have 578 units to be built in two phases, with the first phase of 374 units being built closest to the intersection. If the first phase is successful, the second phase, 204 units, would be built on the north end of the property. An additional section of the property to the west has also been set aside for future single-family homes, said Eric Prime, an attorney representing the current land owner, Robison CRF LLC, and Buckingham Companies. The developer is responsible for CityWay, a mixed-use development in downtown Indianapolis that includes The Alexander Hotel, a YMCA and upscale apartments.
During Wednesday’s city council meeting, James Daniel Robinson, whose family owns the property, asked the city council to approve the proposal. His family carefully considered many proposals from developers in the past, and this one seemed most appropriate for the area, Robinson said.
“The quality of the proposal we have received from the Buckingham Companies and their history of thoughtful, high quality, well-designed properties is to us a natural extension of the development occurring east of Greenwood and of the quality befitting the surrounding properties,” he said.
Several nearby residents expressed concerns about the project and its impact on the area, however.
Gary Miller, who was representing the East of I-65 Property Owner’s Association, told the council that the city shouldn’t leapfrog from single-family homes to apartments in the area. With the passage of the Unified Development Ordinance in 2020, officials made it residential medium, and it should remain that, he said.
“Now the developer wants to disrupt and put in 578 apartments in a single-family zoned land,” Miller said. “… Only the developer wants these apartments, the neighbors do not.”
Dannette Morgan, another Clark Township resident, said the area had been beautifully developed so far with the current layout and zoning. Apartments are not the best use, she said
“It’s supposed to be single-family, or a little bit smaller lots, and that’s the way it should develop,” Morgan said.
She also asked the audience to raise their hands if they were opposed to the complex. More than 20 hands were raised.
Later on Wednesday, city council member David Hopper asked the developer why apartments are needed in the city. Prime told the council that there is high demand for apartments in the city, particularly for people who do not want the maintenance hassle of having a yard, he said.
“Buckingham was bullish on Greenwood. They’ve done their market research; they believe that these apartments will be sold very quickly and that they will stay on those timelines and be on phase two in a timely fashion,” Prime said.
Hopper also asked how Johnson County’s Interstate 65 tax increment financing, or TIF, district factored into the choice of area. He said the TIF suggests that county officials want warehouses and distribution facilities near I-65.
The land is the last furthest east parcel on the north side of Main Street before the TIF district. The TIF put up constraints for what the city can do for expansion and annexation, Prime said.
Prime also said that the area was chosen because it has three ways for people to come and go from the area — Five Points Road to County Line Road, Main Street to Graham Road and Main Street, he said.
“In terms of traffic flow, they thought that particular parcel made a lot of sense,” Prime said.
Council member Bradley Pendleton expressed concerns about the city approving another apartment complex when there are already over 2,000 apartment units under construction and development within city limits.
Prime said part of the reason for the large number of units under development across the city is due to the city’s zoning ordinance before 2020. There was a provision that required 100% brick masonry on all multi-family developments, which was an impossible standard to meet, Prime said.
“It put a complete stop on all multi-family development in Greenwood. When the new UDO came in … that backlog, the demand that’s out there is (now) being serviced,” Prime said.
Despite the developer saying they did not intend to use vinyl siding, Hopper asked for an amendment to the rezoning ordinance to ensure that they did not use it. The amendment passed unanimously.
In other business, the city council unanimously agreed to modify some of the commitments they imposed on an apartment complex near Indy South Greenwood Airport in July.
The Garrett Companies, a Greenwood-based real estate developer, came before the city council this past summer to rezone approximately 16 acres of land located at 374 N. Emerson Avenue from industrial to residential multi-unit complex zoning for an apartment complex on the site.
The complex, dubbed Oliver Springs, will consist of 22 two-story residential buildings with 236 units and a one-story clubhouse, city documents say.
On Monday, Ken Kozio, a representative of The Garrett Companies, asked the city council to remove a commitment requiring the developer to place an eight-foot berm between the complex and the Maple Grove neighborhood to the south and instead put an eight-foot privacy wall.
As the developer began to work with neighbors to avoid conflicts, they discovered that seven sheds had been built by residents near the property line. Two of the sheds were along the property line, while five were built on The Garrett Company’s property, Kozio said.
The berm would conflict with the sheds and would also require the developer to remove many trees from an already established dense tree buffer that extends about 30 feet onto the apartment property. Building a privacy wall will protect the sheds and the trees, he said.
The wall will also provide a level of privacy for the neighbors to the south, Kozio said.
Council member Michael Williams, who originally proposed the berm, asked if the developer would be able to commit to not removing any trees from the buffer. Kozio told the council The Garrett Companies couldn’t because there could be potential conflicts that would require the trees to be removed. However, the developer does not plan to remove any trees in the area and could commit to replacing any that did get removed, Kozio said.
