By Ryan Palencer
AVON — December of 1995 was a special time for Avon. That month, Avon was incorporated to officially become a town.
Sharon Howell became the town’s clerk-treasurer shortly thereafter.
“I came on at the end of 1997,” Howell said. “At that time, we were housed at two different locations. The planning department was actually in the fire station that is across the street from the current middle school, upstairs. The police department was there as well. I think we had maybe three members of the police department and we were under the marshal system at that time. My office was located across (U.S.) 36.”
After another move, the current town hall was built in 2000. Howell says that’s when the town really began to grow.
“From then on, up and down (U.S.) 36, off (State Road) 267, and north and south on Dan Jones (Road), there was growth,” she said. “All of the housing additions, it just seemed like we were growing faster than we could keep up.”
Howell, who has lived in Avon since 1992, said those were exciting times.
“I think up until that time, there hadn’t been a creation of a new town in a long time,” she said. “The state was already developed, so there weren’t a whole lot of new towns being developed. There were annexations, but there weren’t a whole lot of towns that were being created. That was kind of a neat thing to have happen.”
She said a prime motivation of incorporation was so the town residents would have some say in the future.
“I think one of the reasons they wanted to be incorporated and be a town was so they could have some say in the planning and the building of the area,” she said. “Hendricks County would have done all of the inspections of the homes and those kinds of things. I think that there were members who had been in the community for a very long time, known as Avon and yet we weren’t a town.”
There was an Avon High School before there was a Town of Avon. Howell said the incorporation allowed people to better recognize the area.
“Everyone knew that it was Avon, but we weren’t a town,” she said. “It provided an identity for the area. They wanted to actually create something from the ground up.”
One of the difficulties was developing the boundaries for the town, she said.
“I think what became the boundaries for the town for the incorporation were set along the boundaries of the West Central Conservancy District at the time,” Howell said. “They used that legal description to come up with the actual boundaries of the town. Since then, we have grown from that.”
Though Avon has seen a tremendous amount of growth, Howell thinks that it has a similar feeling as before.
“I remember then feeling like I was coming into an area that was ‘hometown,’ where people seem to know each other and call each other by name,” she said. “I enjoyed that feeling and I think Avon has maintained that.”
ryan.palencer@flyergroup.com
