--- title: How a city comes out swinging — three things the successful ones get right description: Some cities come out of a growth stretch stronger and some stall. Three things the successful ones focus on early — a clear anchor, an easy build process, and commercial alongside rooftops image: https://wkrpindy.com/hubfs/Curts%20Blog%20Pic%201-3.jpg --- [![logo\_wkrp\_nobk-1](https://wkrpindy.com/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/logo_wkrp_nobk-1.png)](https://wkrpindy.com) - [Listings](https://wkrpindy.com/listings) - [Property Inquiry](https://wkrpindy.com/property-inquiry) - [Insights](https://wkrpindy.com/insights) - [Crexi Link](https://www.crexi.com/profile/curt-whitesell-curtwhit) - [Contact Us](https://wkrpindy.com/contact-us) [Contact Us](https://wkrpindy.com/contact-us) # How a city comes out swinging — three things the successful ones get right Some cities come out of a growth stretch stronger and some stall. Three things the successful ones focus on early — a clear anchor, an easy build process, and commercial alongside rooftops [Curt Whitesell](https://wkrpindy.com/insights/author/curt-whitesell) Sep 28, 2026 --- #### **Coming Out Swinging: Three Things Redeveloping Cities Get Right** WKRP Indy Real Estate | Westfield & Northern Hamilton County | September 2026 Plenty of cities are trying to redevelop right now. Some come out of it stronger, and some stall. Watching this play out across Hamilton County and the metro, the ones that succeed tend to focus on the same few things early, and they do it before the market forces their hand. Here are three. **Pick an identity and build one real anchor** The cities that come out swinging decide what they want to be known for, then build something that delivers it. Westfield has Grand Park. Noblesville is building Innovation Mile around sports medicine and technology. Fishers went after corporate headquarters and an event center. Lebanon landed a $13 billion pharmaceutical campus. Each one is different, but the move is the same: one real anchor that gives the city an identity and pulls activity in from outside its own borders. A suburb without an anchor is just houses and a few strip centers, and it competes for the same tenants as every other suburb. The anchor is what gets a place onto a developer’s or a company’s short list in the first place, and it is what the restaurants, hotels, and offices end up organizing themselves around. It does not have to be the size of Grand Park to work. It has to be something the city actually commits to and builds, rather than a line in a plan. **Make it easy to build — clear zoning and infrastructure ahead of demand** Developers go where they can build fast and know what they are getting. Two things make that possible, and the successful cities do both. The first is clear zoning. When the rules for a district are set in advance, a project that fits can move toward permitting without a year of case-by-case rezoning and the political risk that comes with it. Westfield’s new Grand Park District does exactly that. It replaced the area’s one-off PUDs with a single set of standards and even allows minor changes to be approved administratively, which shortens the timeline a developer has to underwrite. The second is infrastructure ahead of demand — utilities, roads, and interchanges put in before the market asks for them, so land is ready the moment a deal shows up. The US-31 corridor is the local test of this. For years it stayed quiet not because no one wanted it, but because the water, sewer, and access were not there. The county’s roughly $45 million utility extension and the state’s highway upgrades are what will finally turn that farmland into frontage. A city that makes builders wait on both the rules and the pipes loses the deal to one that did the work early. **Build commercial alongside the rooftops** Housing is the easy yes, and most growing cities approve plenty of it. The ones that stay healthy make sure commercial keeps pace with the rooftops instead of trailing years behind. Part of the reason is tax math. In Indiana, owner-occupied homes are capped at 1 percent of assessed value for property taxes while commercial property is capped at 3 percent, so a dollar of commercial value can produce up to three times the tax revenue of a dollar of housing. That difference is what pays for the roads, parks, and services a growing city needs without loading the entire bill onto homeowners. The other part is how a place actually works day to day. Commercial is the jobs, the restaurants, the medical offices, and the retail that let people live and work in the same place. A city that builds only rooftops ends up with traffic, a strained budget, and residents driving to the next town for everything they need. The cities that come out of a growth stretch in good shape treat commercial as a requirement that moves in step with housing, not an afterthought they will get to later. **The discipline part** None of this is complicated, but it takes discipline to do all three at once, and to do them before the pressure is on. The cities that get an identity, an easy build process, and a real commitment to commercial all working together are the ones that come out of this stretch bigger and steadier. The ones that pick only the easy pieces — approve the houses, skip the anchor, let the commercial slide — are the ones still trying to catch up ten years from now. To learn more about Westfield or area land, feel free to email me at **wkrpindy@gmail.com** or call **317-698-2700**. [![FOLLOW MY LINKEDIN](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/44435648/interactive-214855928995.png)](https://wkrpindy.com/hs/cta/wi/redirect?encryptedPayload=AVxigLLXpG5gyqzPJz%2BeBQcRO%2BpRVOUSKr9iBBtI7tX0OAeW6e8L0FrpQhCnG25a65xwv7PCHHPQ238Ytm24iYxXBzlYNfRJjLaGigM2EWRQd0JqH9hSivi39cppcxASR%2Fm7R16Tr3eANVbFKZVFTD%2FttlxjOvnrUKanXGSDLfqD2dtEcoqRsWtEkmZzI25IDA%3D%3D&webInteractiveContentId=214855928995&portalId=44435648) ## Similar posts ### [1000 sf at Cherry St Plaza For Lease. 7.24](https://wkrpindy.com/insights/1000-sf-at-cherry-st-plaza-for-lease.-7.24) I've spent 10 years marketing a City with a Closed sometimes road running through it but I still think this is an awesome chance to get a sweet... 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Curt Whitesell May 21, 2024 ### Get notified on new Westfield Real Estate News Be the first to know what is happening in Westfield, and how it will impact the development and real estate in the City. ![logo\_wkrp\_black-3](https://wkrpindy.com/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/logo_wkrp_black-3.jpeg) WKRP Indy Real Estate 2929 E 186th St Westfield, IN 46074 ### Listings ### Blog ### Contact Us ### Team © 2023 WKRP Indy All rights reserved         317.698.2700         info@wkrpindy.com [Powered by Atlas - a B2B SaaS HubSpot theme](https://www.kalungi.com/atlas-hubspot-theme-for-b2b-saas-software) ```json { "@context" : "https://schema.org", "@type" : "BlogPosting", "author" : { "@type" : "Person", "name" : "Curt Whitesell", "url" : "https://wkrpindy.com/insights/author/curt-whitesell" }, "dateModified" : "2026-09-28T17:04:49.445Z", "datePublished" : "2026-09-28T17:04:49.000Z", "headline" : "How a city comes out swinging — three things the successful ones get right", "image" : [ "https://wkrpindy.com/hubfs/Curts%20Blog%20Pic%201-3.jpg" ], "mainEntityOfPage" : { "@id" : "https://wkrpindy.com/insights/three-things-redeveloping-cities-get-right", "@type" : "WebPage" }, "publisher" : { "@type" : "Organization", "logo" : { "@type" : "ImageObject", "url" : "https://wkrpindy.com/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/logo_wkrp_nobk-3.png" } } } ``` ```json { "@context" : "https://schema.org", "@type" : "CollectionPage", "description" : "Explore commercial real estate insights, land trends, and SR 32 development updates in Westfield, Indiana. 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