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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowAfter more than four years of planning, Fishers is preparing to open the doors of its newest community asset.
The $65 million Fishers Community Center is scheduled to open Nov. 1 at 11400 Johnson Farm Way, south of the intersection of East 121st Street and Hoosier Road, in the central part of the city.
The community center is the latest major project to provide amenities for residents in a city that has grown in population over the past 35 years from 7,500 people to 104,000. Following an annexation earlier this year of nearly 1,000 acres on its southeastern border, Fishers is the fourth-largest city in Indiana.
“Residents that decide to move to Fishers have high expectations in terms of the amenities and services that they’re going to be provided,” Mayor Scott Fadness told IBJ. “And so, this is a response to their desires and demands about what type of community they want to live in.”
Visitors to the 102,000-square-foot community center will find an 11,000-square-foot fitness center with workout equipment and exercise space; a 9,800-square-foot aquatic center with a 25-yard lap pool, an 18-foot enclosed water slide and other water activities and equipment; and an 18,600-square-foot gymnasium with three full-size basketball courts that can convert into six half-courts, three volleyball courts and up to nine pickleball courts.
The facility will also have a 1/9-mile indoor running/walking track overlooking the gymnasium floor, a 5,300-square-foot indoor playground, a sauna, a 2,600-square-foot cafe operated by Sahm’s Hospitality Group, four community rooms, a child care facility for children of members whose parents are using the community center and a new headquarters for the Fishers Health Department. A 2-acre dog park is expected to open next spring.
The fitness center, aquatics center, sauna, gymnasium, child care facility and dog park will be for members only, while the indoor playground, indoor track, cafe and community rooms will be free to use. “The indoor playground will be substantial. It really is kind of a ‘wow factor,’” Fadness said. “I think the walking track will be very popular.”
Convenient access
Jake Reardon-McSoley, the city’s director of recreation and wellness, said the city chose the location for the community center because it is centrally located—most of the city’s residents live within a 10-minute drive. More than 3,500 people live within a 1-mile radius of the facility.
The 15-acre property was previously owned by the Johnson family, who still operate Johnson Farms on land south of the community center. Reardon-McSoley said the property will offer room in the future to expand the community center.
“It is really the bullseye center of the community,” he said. “Statistically, a 10-minute drive time is really, really important for convenience, and it’s exactly that or less, no matter what corner you might live in in our Fishers community.”
Reardon-McSoley said the city expects 2,000 people per day to visit the community center. As of late August, about 3,500 memberships were sold, and he expects to have 4,000 members on the books by early next year. There will not be a cap on the number of memberships. Day passes will not be available.
People who live outside Fishers can become members of the community center, but city residents have by far purchased most memberships.
“There’s all different kinds of models for membership,” Reardon-McSoley said. “We wanted ours to be relatively simple.”
Memberships are available for both households and individuals.
A membership for a household with two adults and children costs $106 a month for Fishers residents and $116.60 for non-residents, while a membership for one adult and children is $90 a month for city residents and $99 for non-residents.
Monthly individual memberships for adults 19 years and older are $60 for Fishers residents and $66 for non-residents. For children ages 18 and under, it’s $30 for residents and $33 for non-residents. All memberships have a one-time $50 join fee.
“We did quite a bit of competitive analysis, and we think we’re priced right in the market rate for all those,” Reardon-McSoley said. “Not too high, not too low, kind of right where we hope most families kind of expect to be.”
Another attraction
The Fishers Community Center will be the latest major amenity to open in the Hamilton County city in recent years.
In 2024, Fishers marked the completion of the Nickel Plate Trail, which spans five miles from East 96th Street to East 146th Street, and the opening of the 7,500-seat Fishers Event Center, which hosts the Indy Fuel, Indy Ignite and Fishers Freight professional sports teams as well as concerts and other events. The Fishers Event Center is located within Fishers District, a $750 million, 123-acre mixed-use area between East 106th and East 116th streets, east of Interstate 69.
The Fishers Arts & Municipal Complex, which serves as City Hall and the Fishers Arts Center, opened last year in the Nickel Plate District, which features restaurants, shops, hotels and office buildings along East 116th Street.
John Weingardt, who represents residents who live near the Fishers Community Center on the Fishers City Council, noted the ways Fishers has grown from a small town when he moved to the community in 1992 to a major suburban city.
“If I wanted to go to a grocery store when I moved here, I had to go to Marion County to do it,” he said. “I wanted to make this a place where people can enjoy our community, enjoy all the amenities that they offer … and give people something to enjoy that’s literally in their backyard.”
Fadness said building facilities like the community center and event center make Fishers an attractive place for residents and make his job easier when he pitches the city to companies considering a relocation.
“I would put our parks and rec system up against really anybody in the country, and this facility is kind of the capstone of that effort,” Fadness said. “If it attracts the type of talent we want here, then that means I can go recruit companies because I can tell them, ‘Hey, look at all these educated, talented people that live here.’ Every bit of this has been intentional, and every bit of it is interconnected.”
The Fishers Community Center is being built by Fishers-based The Hagerman Group and was designed by Itasca, Illinois-based Williams Architects Aquatics. Fishers-based engineering firm RQAW Corp. also had an advisory role during the design development phase of the project.
In July, members of the Fishers City Council approved $65 million in bonds that will be used to finance the building’s construction after a build-operate-transfer agreement with The Hagerman Group ends next year. A build-operate-transfer agreement—which was authorized by a 2017 state law—is a form of public-private partnership that shifts the burden of cost overruns to a developer.
The Fishers Parks & Recreation Department will operate the community center.
Reardon-McSoley said the community center will be able to pay its own way through memberships without general fund support by its third full year in 2028. He anticipates the facility will have a net loss of $340,000 in 2026, but the parks department will be able to roll over $600,000 to next year through staggered hiring, delayed purchases and other efficiencies that will cover the first year without general fund support.
‘Culture of health’
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Fishers became the third city in Indiana to establish its own public health department.
The Fishers Health Department, which currently operates at 8939 Technology Drive, will be one of the first things people see inside the doors when they visit the Fishers Community Center. That was intentional, said Public Health Director Monica Heltz.
“I think putting the health department as one of the first things that you see when you walk through really helps focus that to say this is about health, and health is about community,” she said. “To me, it all goes hand-in-hand. It’s an important component.”
The health department will occupy 3,500 square feet and have a reception desk, waiting room, four clinical rooms, a lab, administrative offices and educational space. Heltz said the health department will expand services, including chronic health prevention and glucose and cholesterol screenings, and offer more educational services.
Fadness said creating a “culture of health” has been a focus in Fishers as city officials worked to build the Nickel Plate Trail and an expansive parks system. The Fishers Community Center, he said, is just the next step in that initiative.
“I think this becomes the epicenter of that effort,” he said. “We hope that it really does become kind of the central hub for this effort to make sure that we’re creating an environment where people reach their true health potential here in our city.”•
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This sounds like basically a clone of Carmel’s Monon Center, which would have been good context to add to this piece.
What context would that add? Do you think that Carmel invented the idea of the community center? Also, not really. They share similar activity opportunities but the Monon center in Carmel has a massive park attached to it and is located directly along the monon trail. Anyway congratulations Fishers on a job well done and a beautiful new facility for the community!
I guess they forgot the Hansen Family where the facility sits on their 10 acres after 25 years of living there.