Town of Sunman Releases Draft Comprehensive Plan

Monday, May 15, 2023 at 10:42 AM

The 152-page plan outlines opportunities to address needs in the community.

(Sunman, Ind.) – The Town of Sunman has released a draft of their new comprehensive plan.

Last May, the town was awarded a $50,000 OCRA grant to help with the development of a comprehensive plan to identify opportunities to address needs in the community.

The Sunman Comprehensive Plan was developed over a 10-month period and features four key opportunities:

Strengthen Downtown
Capitalizing on Sewer Expansions
New Programming
State Road 101 / Meridian Street Enhancements

Sunman has a variety of land uses not typically seen in rural communities of its size, ranging from large industrial sites to numerous retail and commercial options, and an assortment of single and multi-family residential offerings.

Some of the key findings in the comprehensive plan include:

Sunman has a large amount of annexed land along major roadways currently being used for agricultural purposes.
Commercial buildings in the downtown core are being converted to residential units, even along State Road 1201 / Meridian Street.
Sunman has the ability to capture growth along State Road 101 towards Penntown through a planned sever extension.
The downtown core should remain the center of infill and development efforts targeting commercial and residential land uses.
The community has properties they would like to annex but lack a concrete plan for completion.

Future land uses could include new single-family residential housing, multi-family residential, general commercial development, downtown mixed-use development, and industrial development.

The 152-page comprehensive plan can be found here.