The western fringe: Bradford Shores and Farmington Hills, outside the line

2006 – 2019

Knollwood's newest phase of its first era stands outside the CDP: Bradford Shores at Knollwood, on Clay Township ground at the community's western edge, was platted in the instrument the county file dates 2 November 2006, and the Tribune introduced it in 2007 — "Bradford Shores offers land with ups and downs," a new neighborhood of rolling terrain and water, its lots about a third of an acre, one of the two Knollwood plats (with Springwood Estates) on city water and sewer. The same article fixes its neighbor in time: Sable Ridge, inside the boundary at 88 parcels, had been developed by Leroy Yoder some twenty years before — about 1987. Bradford Shores' second phase returned to the record on 17 January 2019, when the Area Plan Commission's Plat Committee granted primary approval for 22 lots on 24.13 acres along Fontana Drive and Sedgewood Court — over its own staff's recommendation of denial, on a waiver letting the street pattern run 1,936 feet against the 1,000-foot maximum, with the Farmington Hills Homeowners Association remonstrating and David Eckrich appearing for the applicant. The county file carries 39 Bradford Shores parcels today — and the Census polygon leaves every one of them out: the plat's ground sits just west of the boundary line, in unincorporated Clay Township's tax district, postal South Bend (46637) and in the South Bend school orbit, a Granger neighborhood by development, by press and by sworn testimony that the designated place does not contain. The conflict is printed whole because it is the boundary's cleanest exhibit: "Granger" as a community and "Granger" as a Census geography are different maps, and Bradford Shores is on only one of them.

Farmington Hills keeps it company: the remonstrating association's own plat — Farmington Hills, 48 parcels in the county file, its sections replatted from 2004 — lies likewise just west of the line in Clay Township, while its sister plats, Farmington Square and Farmington Meadows, stand inside the boundary at 331 parcels across their family. The western fringe is thus a matched pair of near-misses: two substantial plats, woven into the CDP's civic life (its homeowners' association appears in the CDP's plat proceedings; its developer's phases carry the CDP's flagship umbrella name), whose ground the line excludes. They are printed here, as the brief directs, as boundary — named, sized and sourced, and not absorbed.

Sources

1. St. Joseph County parcel record, read November 2026 — Bradford Shores (39 parcels, Clay Township tax district; plat instrument 2 November 2006); Farmington Hills (48 parcels, Clay Township tax district); Farmington Square and Farmington Meadows inside the boundary.
2. South Bend Tribune, "Bradford Shores offers land with ups and downs" (2007), as catalogued in the Michiana newspaper catalogue (MBRL/ProQuest) — the new neighborhood, its terrain and lots, and Leroy Yoder's Sable Ridge at twenty years.
3. Area Plan Commission Plat Committee, petition 7041-18-P (17 January 2019) — Phase II primary approval, 22 lots on 24.13 acres, the street-length waiver, the staff recommendation, the remonstrance, as the commission's record states them.
4. Home Builders Association of St. Joseph Valley, Spring 2019 — Bradford Shores as "Knollwood's newest premier residential community"; city water and sewer.