It started with two neighbors talking across a fence.
Mayor Scott Fadness, making a rare appearance before the Fishers Redevelopment Commission Wednesday, July 8, said the city’s development of the Navient Building — and the Fieldhouse project rising next to it — began when his deputy mayor’s neighbor, a real estate professional working for the company, mentioned one evening that his firm was looking to renovate or expand.
“It’s a little bit of luck that we happen to be living next to that guy,” Fadness said, adding that it’s sometimes better to be lucky than good.
That backyard conversation grew into what the mayor called the region’s most significant office transaction in years.
“Landing the largest office deal in the last decade in central Indiana took a degree of creativity and a little bit of risk taking,” Fadness told the commission. “The Navient Building is about half the size of the Chase Tower downtown (Indianapolis) in office space. It was about 30% or 40% occupied, and the people who were in that space, the tenants, were probably on their last leg, a number of them trying to sublease and things of that nature. Worst case scenario, the city would sit with a 400,000 square foot office building empty.”
“We really worked diligently with Buckingham to come up with a kind of master development for that south end,” he said. “There’s a lot of moving pieces in this.”
Closing on the building is set for this week, with tenants moving in and out. Buckingham Companies will serve as master developer for the south end of the district. The firm is handling the multifamily development, helped the city secure the Navient Building and flip it to an owner-occupied tenant, and will deliver a turnkey Fieldhouse the mayor hopes will open no later than early 2028.
To hit that date, Fadness said, “we need to be building this thing yesterday.” The items before the commission Wednesday were designed to keep the process moving. A professional services agreement allows the developer to enter into contracts for early-order items such as steel, putting the city in line for construction. Once permanent financing is in place and the lease is signed, the developer would be reimbursed for those expenses.
The city will ultimately own the Fieldhouse under what Fadness described as a “rent-to-own” arrangement, with a turnkey lease — currently being negotiated — in the interim. The developer would be responsible for certain major infrastructure aspects of the building. General fund dollars will pay for the facility, and Indy Ignite will operate it.
Fadness framed the Fieldhouse as a way to smooth out the seasonal rhythms of the district anchored by the Fishers Event Center, which he called a catalyst for restaurants, hotels and development. The arena is busy through fall, winter and spring, he said, but sits relatively quiet for five to six months over the summer.
The Fieldhouse could fill that gap with tournaments, summer camps and other activities, feeding an ecosystem that already includes 40 restaurants committed to the district and nearly 500 hotel rooms.
The mayor closed by thanking commission members for their support and willingness to take on what he called some pretty creative projects — projects that, in this case, trace back to a lucky conversation over a fence row.