Town eyes round barn on 600W

By Grayson Joslin | Daily R eporter gjoslin@greenfieldreporter.com

McCordsville officials are looking for the town to purchase a historic location on Mt. Comfort Road with potential plans to transform it into a history park reflecting the history of McCordsville.

During its October meeting, the town’s redevelopment commission passed two resolutions to authorize the town manager to execute all documents necessary to complete a potential sale of two parcels on Mt. Comfort Road, with one of these parcels containing the Round Barn Inn.

This round barn is not to be confused with the Littleton/Kingen Round Barn, which is located outside of town limits.

Built at the turn of the 20th century, the Round Barn Inn previously operated as a bed and breakfast and was last sold a decade ago.

McCordsville town manager Tim Gropp first made mention of potentially turning this land into a park during a recent town parks board meeting. He mentioned his passion for preserving the history of McCordsville and allowing people to access unique parts of the town, and with the nascent parks department about to begin its fiveyear master plan, he and other town leaders have been brainstorming ideas. One of these ideas would be a history park combined with an agricultural park.

“One that has always stuck out to me is this Fishers has an ag park,” Gropp said at the park board meeting. “Theirs has full-functioning farms

that people can get free vegetables ... It’s a lot different but kind of having that agricultural backing. We are farm fields that have turned into a community in a lot of ways. So there’s a lot of unique history to that. There are some unique facilities around that I’d like to preserve and have a place to do that.”

He said the vision of the project would be to refurbish the round barn and showcase its history, while also refurbishing a secondary shed on the property and planting a community garden.

“While much of the development has occurred on farm fields, there’s still plenty of history, and the more I talk to people, the more history I learn about this community,” Gropp said. “I’d like to see how we document that and how we preserve documents from some of these old farm families and even some of the machinery, and to preserve the homestead.”

The documents brought forward at the October redevelopment commission meeting allow the redevelopment commission to offer a price for real property. Per state law the price offered may not exceed the average of two independent appraisals. The averages of the two parcels of land are $230,000 and $437,500.

Gropp told the commission there would be space on the property to create a parking lot if the commission does acquire both properties, describing a potential parking spot between the barns.

“That location Tim described for the driveway also works well across the street. Someday we assume development will occur over there, and the location Tim described is set up to be a nice drive-in location for that other property as well,” town building and planning director Ryan Crum said at the meeting.

Gropp said the town and the owner are in negotiations for the property, and that he plans to have an update ready by the next RDC meeting on Nov. 4 if they will proceed with the potential acquisition.

The Daily Reporter reached out to the owner of the property but did not hear back by press time.