Inside INdiana Business is reporting that the city of Westfield has announced a $25 million residential and commercial development in the city’s downtown. Union Square at Grand Junction is the result of a partnership between the city and Carmel-based Old Town Companies. Plans for the project include retail shops, restaurants, market rate apartments and condominiums. Construction on the development is slated to begin in 2020 and will continue in phases over the next three to five years.
In an interview with Inside INdiana Business, Westfield Mayor Andy Cook said the project is part the city’s overall effort to revitalize its downtown, an effort several Hoosier cities are also undertaking.
“We’re all trying to develop a community and that phrase is overused a lot, but what it means is you create unique places such that people, and predominantly for us, families will want to locate,” said Cook. “This is what our family of folks here in Westfield have said. ‘Hey, we want a gathering place for festivals, for music, for ice skating, a place for our kids to play.’ Of course, on the other side of town, we have Grand Park that is enticing a huge market of restaurants and hotels, primarily that serves our million visitors a year to Grand Park. So our people kind of want their own gathering place and what better place to locate it than in our old downtown district.”
The city says the announcement is the kick-off of an input-gathering process for the project. Old Town will work with business owners and the Westfield Lions Club to find relation options within the project or other locations. The firm will also work with the Downtown Westfield Association, Grand Junction Task Group and community stakeholders to host a series of community workshops in July to gather public comments on the development plans.
Cook says the Union Square project continues efforts that are a decade in the making for downtown Westfield, including the $35 million Grand Junction Plaza, a six-acre park that will feature greenspace, trails, an amphitheater and an ice-staking rink. He says that effort, construction for which will begin this summer, came with the hope that it would bring private investment to the downtown area.
“It’s been a long time coming, I think especially for the Grand Junction group because we’ve been very successful involving our citizens and the Grand Junction Task Group has a dozen or more private citizens,” said Cook. “It’s all about attracting people and it’s all about creating economic growth in the downtown area. We’ve already seen that economic growth coming to the city and all the restaurants, along with some shops beginning to come and we haven’t even opened the Grand Junction Plaza yet. So, the private sector is telling us we’re on the right path.”
Old Town Partner Justin Moffett says the firm’s goal with Union Square is to create a small village architecturally with buildings that look as if they’ve been there for 100 years.