A Brownsburg church that has served the community for nearly two centuries is moving to sell 18 of its 38 acres off Northfield Drive to Fischer Homes, setting up a fight with neighbors who want to turn the wooded parcel into a public nature preserve instead. Calvary United Methodist Church carries nearly $3 million in mortgage debt along with heating, air conditioning, and ventilation replacement needs, and church leaders say the land sale is necessary to keep the congregation afloat.
The church has been at its Northfield Drive location since 2000, constructing its sanctuary on the front portion of the property in 2006 while holding the rear 18 acres of woodland in reserve, according to Current Publishing. That debt traces back to a $1.2 million balloon mortgage payment that came due in October 2023, on top of the aging equipment installed in 2006 that now needs replacing. Calvary United Methodist Church has served Brownsburg for 198 years since starting there in 1828, moving through six different locations before landing on Northfield Drive, and today its roughly 400-person congregation supports a produce garden, a school, and space for Boy Scouts, according to WTHR.
Facing that financial pressure, the congregation voted 93 to 3 in October 2023 to authorize selling the wooded parcel, a near-unanimous show of support for stabilizing the church's finances. The station reports that church leaders notified neighbors about the sale in 2024, well before the development proposal went public. Lead Pastor Rev. Michelle Knight has framed the sale as a way to preserve the church's future rather than abandon the community, telling WTHR the church wants to remain in Brownsburg and serve the community, and that it hopes to remain there for 200 more years.
What Fischer Homes Wants to Build
Developer Grand Communities, operating on behalf of Fischer Homes, is proposing a 20-lot single-family subdivision called Woodland Reserve on 17.6 acres of the church property, per Citizen Portal. Current Publishing reports that Rev. Michelle Knight said home prices would start at approximately $800,000. The plan calls for roughly 6.3 acres of preserved open space, side-load garages, tree-preservation easements, and stormwater drainage retention built into the floodplain areas on the site. Under the current proposal, the church would retain 19 acres, and Fischer Homes and the church have proposed 10 acres of green space as a buffer between the new homes and the church's remaining woods, according to WTHR. Fischer Homes has also worked with an arborist to preserve more trees as part of the zoning plan, the station reports.
Grand Communities first introduced the Woodland Reserve concept at a Brownsburg Town Council meeting in late September, where town officials and residents pressed for explicit mapping to separate buildable acreage from floodplain, the same meeting documented by both Citizen Portal and Current Publishing. That session was informational only and required no formal council vote, since the proposal must still work through the Brownsburg Advisory Plan Commission. Building on the 18 acres requires a formal zoning change from institutional to R2 residential, a process that calls for public hearings before the plan commission before the Town Council can take a final ordinance vote, Current Publishing notes. Fischer Homes and the church plan to petition for that residential zoning on November 23, according to WTHR.
Neighbors Push for a Nature Preserve Instead
Not everyone in the neighborhood is on board. Northridge HOA President Tom Porter has organized a coalition called Save The Woods that wants to convert the 18-acre parcel into a permanent public nature preserve for municipal recreation and youth programming, rather than see it developed. Porter opposes development he says would destroy the woods and harm wildlife, and he told WTHR that Brownsburg has an opportunity to add a nature preserve to its parks.
Porter says he has raised more than $600,000 toward buying the land outright and is hoping for a possible matching grant from the Hendricks County Community Foundation to push the effort further. Still, neither Current Publishing's reporting nor WTHR's account indicates that neighbors have submitted an official letter of interest or a purchase agreement to the church — the money raised represents pledges, not a binding offer on the table. Robyn Maynard, speaking for the church, told WTHR that the congregation wants to be a good neighbor even as it moves forward with the sale.
A Pattern Playing Out Across Brownsburg
The standoff over Calvary's woods lands amid a broader building boom in Brownsburg. Town data released in December 2025 showed the local population grew 38 percent over ten years to surpass 34,500 residents, a surge that has accelerated residential subdivision growth across the area, according to the Town of Brownsburg. Hoodline has previously covered that growth, including its March 2026 report on The Mural, a 165-home rental development then rising in town.
Calvary's situation also fits a wider pattern within the denomination. The Indiana Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church reported in June 2024 that 14 church properties across the state were sold over the prior year, generating $1.11 million for the conference amid ongoing denominational restructuring, according to the Indiana Conference of The United Methodist Church. For now, the fate of Calvary's woods rests on the upcoming rezoning petition, where floodplain boundaries, environmental impacts, and the neighbors' preservation hopes are all expected to come up for debate before any final vote.
