There is a simple reason as to why Carmel, Indiana, a town just north of Indianapolis, was named the #1 place to live in America by Money magazine. And it goes beyond the quality of life there.
It is due to the personality of Mayor Jim Brainard, a man so down to earth that talking to him is like having a conversation with your neighbor. He is so accessible that he actually answers his office phone and until recently had his home number listed in the Carmel phone book. Back when there were home numbers and phone books, anyway.
It’s easy to imagine sitting down with Brainard over a pint or two at Union Brewing, Upland Carmel Tap House, Sun King Spirits, Danny Boy Draft Works or Flix Brewhours, all local breweries in Carmel. Which, by the way, is pronounced with one syllable, more like the candy, than the Car-MEL in California.
“Well almost,” Brainard quipped, demonstrating his quit wit when asked about the pronunciation during an interview with PubClub.com. “The candy has an extra “a” in it, caramel.”
How can you not like this guy!?
The residents of Carmel (the Indiana one) sure do, having elected him mayor seven times now. Businesses do too; he’s helped bring in more than 80 corporate headquarters to Carmel, among them Nextgear, Delta Faucet and Monster.com.
Hardly one to pound his own chest over these accomplishments, the modest Midwesterner with an “aw shucks” attitude explains it in a way so simple you wonder why other cities don’t do the same.
“It’s about personality,” he said. “It’s also about data, responsiveness. To do economic development it’s about quality of life: a good education system, good libraries and good amenities.”
He jokes that Carmel was once a soybean field. “But so was Paris.”
He opens presentations to businesses by showing a picture of towns on the California coast, of Aspen at twilight, of the Eiffel Tower. “That’s not Carmel,” he says with each one. “If you don’t don’t have mountains, you don’t have oceans, you don’t have the natural attributes that tend to lure the best and the brightest and the companies that employ them, you’ve got to focus on the built environment. And that’s what we’ve done in Carmel.”
The guy is so good he could not only sell ice to an Eskimo but could convince people that the Indianapolis Colts are going to the Super Bowl every year. Heck, he’s even pursuaded middle America to believe that roundabouts – those odd circles that are used at intersections in Europe instead of stoplights – can be a good thing. Carmel has 145 of them.
“People speed up when they see a green or yellow light to get through it before it turns red,” Brainard explained. “We’re all humans. Roundabouts are great for ‘traffic calming’ around schools and places because people slow down. Roundabouts save us money AND we move 50% more cars per hour than before we had them. We only have six stoplights in town and they will eventually be gone, too.”
For those who picture the scene in European Vacation when Chevy Chase drives around a roundabout for hours into the darkness, Brainard shuckled and then pointed out that “those are rotaries or traffic circles, not roundabouts.” Unlike their confusing cousins, roundabouts are not multi-lane circles; they are easy to navigate through and top vehicle speeds are only about 25 mph.
And while Carmel is flush with roundabouts one thing it does not have much of are fences. People simply don’t put up those barriers in Carmel. It’s that friendly of a town.
Carmel, which has increased its population from 25,000 to more than 100,000 since Brainard took office on New Year’s Day in 1996, is also a biking and pedestrian-friendly place with plenty of bike lanes and trails that don’t tick off businesses by taking away parking spaces or implementing a system that is a danger to both riders and drivers like in so many other cities.
And while Carmel is definitely family friendly, there’s a bit of nightlife there, too. There has to be with all those corporate headquarters.
“Oh yeah, there’s a lot of places to go out in Carmel,” Brainard said. “There are a lot of families, yes. but we also have lot of single folks in the downtown area. They like the safety. It’s a nice place to live.”
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