• •
Westfield leaders want the city’s downtown to be more than a place to drive through on State Road 32, so they are setting the stage to make it a destination.

Last month, the city and Indianapolis-based Browning Day unveiled a blueprint for their redevelopment vision for the next two decades. The plan sets nothing in stone, but it provides a road map to guide current and future officials in making downtown a place people want to live, work, eat, shop and explore on foot.

“Even if we build it out exactly how the plan is, it’s still probably a 20-, 25-year plan,” Mayor Scott Willis said. “It’s going to be a living and breathing plan for probably a very, very long time.”

City officials want downtown to complement development around Grand Park Sports Campus to the north, where work is underway to create a district with apartments, retail, restaurants and office space.

While Westfield residents do not want the city to copy Carmel and Fishers, leaders plan to employ a formula similar to the one used by its Hamilton County siblings to remake their downtowns into gathering spaces. That means building a variety of housing types, constructing parking garages rather than surface lots, creating a welcoming environment for local retailers and using tax-increment financing as a development tool.

“[The downtown redevelopment plan] guides the city into better decisions that, long term, we’re going to be able to look back and say, ‘This downtown makes a lot of sense,’” Willis said. “We wanted to spend a lot of time thinking through every parcel that we have in our downtown to make sure that it flows, it fits and it creates a downtown that is uniquely Westfield.”

Browning Day’s Downtown Redevelopment Plan creates six of what it calls “downtown plan areas” north and south of S.R. 32, which is undergoing a reconstruction expected to last through this year.

Along S.R. 32 between Westfield Boulevard and just east of East Street is the “Downtown Core,” featuring multifamily housing, office space, retail shops and recreation. Also straddling S.R. 32, but only east of Union Street, is the “Main Street” area with neighborhood-scale retail buildings.

North of Penn Street, in spaces east and west of Union Street, the plan designates two residential areas. The Union Street corridor north of Penn Street is the “Legacy and Historic Core,” where some of the city’s oldest houses sit.

New development is already underway on the southwest side of S.R. 32 and Union Street in the “Grand Junction District.” That’s where Grand Junction Plaza opened in 2021 and where three other mixed-use developments are either under construction or in the works.

And on the southeast side of S.R. 32 and Union Street, planners envision a nature-focused area centered on a boardwalk trail along Grassy Branch Creek that they say will set Westfield’s downtown apart from other cities and towns in the region. The “Residential Creekside” area would also feature shops and housing.

The Downtown Redevelopment Plan also calls for a “downtown loop” trail that would include a “history walk” recognizing Westfield’s past, such as its role as a stop on the Underground Railroad and as a community founded by anti-slavery Quakers. The downtown loop trail would connect to the Midland Trace Trail.

Curt Whitesell, a member of the Downtown Westfield Association and owner of Greek’s Pizzeria along the Park Street Restaurant Row, said the path along Grassy Branch Creek “would be a showstopper for Westfield.”

“Everybody has a park or a greenway, but we have a neat little creek that can create some pretty cool amenities,” he said.

Christine Pearson, director of quality management for Browning Day, led the process to create the downtown Westfield plan. She said it “is a vision that aligns all kinds of stakeholders along the way, and it guides the investment of the developers that come along.”

“They don’t want to be any neighboring community,” Pearson said. “They want to be Westfield.”

Creating a downtown

Willis emphasized that current residents and business owners will not be compelled to sell their properties, but some people have sold and others are in the process of selling.

“We don’t care if any of our residents downtown ever sell their property, and we’re certainly not going to be forcing people out of their homes or out of their buildings,” he added. “It’s a vision of what can be in Westfield.”

Westfield recently put out a call on social media for “experienced development partners who can deliver projects that can raise the bar for urban living in Westfield.” The city wants developers who can build owner-occupied headquarters and professional services corporations; mixed-use; four- to five-story buildings with structured parking; buildings with green space; and for-sale four-story town houses and stacked-flat residential buildings.

Willis breaks his plan for downtown into four phases around the intersection of S.R. 32 and Union Street. The southwest quadrant is Phase 1, the southeast quadrant is Phase 2, the northeast quadrant is Phase 3, and the northwest quadrant is Phase 4.

“It doesn’t mean you won’t see projects in each phase, but we just kind of looked at where we knew we had willing sellers, where we had things already happening,” Willis said. “It’s easier to start there and build on that than to start from scratch.”

In the southwest quadrant, four major projects have been completed or are in the works.

The first step toward redeveloping downtown happened four years ago when the $39 million Grand Junction Plaza opened between Mill and Union streets south of Jersey Street. The 6-acre public park hosts civic events like the Westfield Farmers Market and features green space, trails, an amphitheater and an ice-skating rink.

Construction on The Union at Grand Junction, designed by Carmel-based Old Town Cos., is nearing completion on the city block south of S.R. 32 between Union and Mill streets. It will have 196 apartments, a 300-car parking garage, 17,000 square feet of retail space, and a 40,000-square-foot office and retail building.

Tenants at The Union will include Pure Barre, Everbowl, Lake City Bank, BlackSheep Pizza and Cocktails, Stella’s Ice Cream, Woof Gang Bakery and Grooming, and The Spark Coffee. Sun King Brewing Co. is expected to open an 8,700-square-foot taproom and food hall next door to The Union next summer.

Old Town’s $123 million Park & Poplar project will be built on 9 acres along the Midland Trace Trail, south of Park Street and between Mill Street and Westfield Boulevard. Plans for Park & Poplar feature 240 apartments, 56 for-rent brownstones, a three-story building with 60,000 square feet of office space, a three-story building with 29,200 square feet of retail and restaurant space, and a public parking garage with more than 600 spaces.

Last month, Chicago-based Skender Construction LLC broke ground on the $105 million The Grand on Main, which is expected to have 43,500 square feet of retail and restaurant space, Skender’s new Indiana office, up to 225 apartment units, a public parking garage with more than 550 spaces and an art plaza that will be created through a collaboration with Indianapolis-based creative advocacy agency GangGang.

The Grand on Main, formerly known as the Jersey Street project, will be bounded by S.R. 32 to the north, Mill Street to the east, Jersey Street to the south and Westfield Boulevard to the west.

“It really anchors the entry into downtown,” said Skender’s Indiana president, Brian Simons.

Ambrose on Main, in the northeast quadrant at S.R. 32 and East Street, is expected to anchor the east side of downtown.

The $26.2 million project by Fishers-based Rebar Development is expected to feature 87 one- and two-bedroom apartments, 6,000 square feet of plaza and courtyard areas, a 2,000-square-foot rooftop patio, 12,000 square feet of commercial space and a restaurant with outdoor seating.

“It’s a little bit of, ‘If you build it, they will come,’” Simons said. “So, I think some of these first projects out of the gate are setting the table for what’s coming next.”

A long wait

Westfield is one of the fastest-growing cities in the United States, with a population that has increased from 21,000 in 2008 to nearly 63,000 last year, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates.

But much of that growth is everywhere but downtown. Willis noted that downtown has lost population in recent years, and he hears from residents who say there is no place to shop, eat or gather as a community.

He also said work on a downtown blueprint began about five years ago, but “it got off the rails” due to dysfunction between former Mayor Andy Cook’s office and former members of the City Council.

Simons sees pent-up demand to build in downtown Westfield because of the years of inactivity. While Carmel and Fishers were building “another development after another development,” in Westfield, “you had zero developments.”

“I was asked at the [Grand on Main] groundbreaking, ‘Is development bad for Westfield?” I was like, ‘Well, no, the alternative is you don’t do anything, which doesn’t work for anyone,’” he said. “Even though it’s all seemingly booming at once, it’s only booming at once because it hasn’t boomed at all before.”

Whitesell, who also owns WKRP Real Estate, said he has waited years for activity to start in downtown.

“I think it is due time. I know it’s aggressive, but it’s almost like we’re making up for some lost time when we were sitting on our hands and had some other issues to deal with,” he said. “This is exactly why I’ve worked in this market for 18 years.”
Copyright © 2026 All Rights Reserved.