The newest wave: The Hills, Woodford Trails, and the state-line plats

2018 – TODAY

The wave resumed at the state line and the Toll Road: after a fifteen-year pause in large plats — the sworn testimony's measure: The Hills was "the first development of more than 100 homesites in the area in over 15 years" — the newest plats are these. The Hills at St. Joe Farm, west of Bittersweet Road and south of Anderson Road immediately north of the Toll Road, was approved by the Area Plan Commission on 19 March 2020 (APC #7136-20-P): 229 platted lots on 76 acres, developed by The Village Development LLC with Capstone Builders, its first resident arrived in late September 2021 and its second phase — 42 lots — in the spring of 2022, with ground optioned beside it for up to some 600 homes in all. The county file, read in November 2026, carries 87 parcels under the plat's name (40 of them improved) — the sections recorded and built to date against the 229 approved, both figures printed because both are the record: the approved plat is the plan's size, the parcel count is the ground's. North Pointe Shores, at the county line's eastern ground (its plat paper runs from June 2018), carries 28 parcels. Woodford Trails at Knollwood — the newest instrument under the Knollwood umbrella, its Section One paper recorded in 2022 and a second phase following — carries 105 parcels in the file at the state line's northern ground, 84 of them still classed as vacant land: a plat in lots, its first custom houses rising in 2025–26 in the builders' record. The Ranch, platted in February 2025 on the township's northeastern ground, carries 52 parcels, 48 of them still vacant; Hawthorn Crossing, platted in the 2025–26 paper, carries 25. The competitive frame is the testimony's: Place Builders' small phase at Pleasant Valley off Ash Road, Legacy Builders' roughly 30 lots off Adams Road near State Road 23 — the ground the builders' record markets as Brownstone Estates — and, outside the line, Northbridge Valley's phases in Osceola.

The Hills made the wave's politics: because Mishawaka declined the development's water service in writing (29 May 2020), The Hills' developer created Granger Water Utility LLC — approved by the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission on 13 April 2022 (Cause No. 45568), the first newly created investor-owned water utility in Indiana in about twenty years, serving some 35 residences in The Hills by November 2025 at a flat $75 monthly residential rate. Its approved service area was drawn at about 151 acres — The Hills' 76 plus the expansion ground beside it — on state water permits issued in February and March 2021, before the commission's order: the utility was built, in other words, at the size of the plat's future, not its first phase. The utility fight widened into the territory case of 2025 (Cause No. 46221), and its settlement — stipulated 29 October 2025 among Mishawaka, the county, the regional water and sewer district, Granger Water and the consumer counsel — drew the service map the next plats will be built under: Mishawaka exclusive for water across most of its claimed territory, a shared sewer area the proceedings name "Granger West," and some 498,000 gallons of Mishawaka sewer capacity opened to the district. The newest subdivisions of the CDP thus arrive, as the oldest did, on the question of who serves them; the difference is that the question is now answered in commission orders before the plats are drawn, rather than in hearings after the septics fail.

Sources

1. Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission, Cause No. 45568 — verified testimony of Steve Smith (26 October 2021) and of the applicants; Order of 13 April 2022 approving Granger Water Utility LLC; service area, lot counts, phase dates and rates as stated.
2. Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission, Cause No. 46221 — verified direct testimony of J. Patrick Matthews (17 November 2025); Stipulation and Settlement Agreement (29 October 2025), incl. the "Granger West" shared sewer area as the settlement proceedings name it.
3. St. Joseph County parcel record, read November 2026 — The Hills at St. Joe Farm (87 parcels), Woodford Trails (105), The Ranch (52), Hawthorn Crossing (25), North Pointe Shores (28).