Avon's New Restaurants Are a Traffic Story, Not a Food Story
August 13, 2026
August 13, 2026
School buses are back on Avon's side streets this week. The first day of the 2026-27 year at Avon Community School Corp was July 30, and back-to-school nights are still working through the calendar, with Maple Elementary and Avon High School both holding theirs on August 6. If you drove past Shiloh Crossing during any of that, you probably noticed the parking lot looks different than it did last August. Two new restaurants have opened on that stretch of US 36 this year, and it's tempting to read that as Avon suddenly becoming a food destination.
It isn't, and the reason why is more interesting than the restaurants themselves.
Ford's Garage opened earlier this year at 10416 E. U.S. Highway 36, inside Shiloh Crossing, the shopping center anchored by Best Buy, Michaels, and the Regal movie theater. It's the fifth location for the Tin Lizzie Restaurant Group, and only its second in Indiana, alongside two locations in Ohio and one in Kentucky. The building is 7,300 square feet, seats 240 people, and leans hard into its licensing deal with Ford Motor Company: vintage vehicles inside, a menu built around items like Mama Ford's Homemade Meatloaf and the Jumbo Piston of Onion Rings, and hours that run until 11 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.
A few minutes away, Ale Emporium opened its fourth location on March 9 at 7510 Beechwood Centre Road, in a strip mall near Rockville Road and South County Road 800 East. It's a 12,000-square-foot sports bar with more than 100 TVs, 36 beer taps, a 136-inch LED screen over a live music stage, and a separate carryout counter. The chain started in Castleton in 1982 and already had locations in Fishers and Greenwood before Hendricks County.
Neither of these is a small independent restaurant testing out a concept. Both are established, multi-location operators making a calculated bet on a specific stretch of road.
Here's the number that matters more than either menu: US 36, which locals know as Rockville Road once it crosses into Marion County, carries an average of 44,534 vehicles a day past Shiloh Crossing, according to a commercial listing for outlot space on that same block. Compare that to the 11,500 vehicles a day on Ronald Reagan Parkway, one of Avon's other major roads. That's nearly four times the traffic on a corridor that's already dense with national chains.
Ale Emporium's own explanation for choosing Avon backs this up. Co-owner Scott Baun told the Indianapolis Recorder the decision wasn't about discovering an underserved market:
"For years people have told us they drive across town just for Hermanaki wings. Opening in Avon lets us bring Ale Emporium closer to a lot of those guests."
That's not a story about Avon developing its own food identity. That's a chain following demand it already had, to a location its traffic data told it would work. Ford's Garage made a similar calculation from the opposite direction. Operating Partner Sam Tancredi framed the Avon location around its proximity to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, calling it a pit stop for race fans headed to or from the track, not a restaurant built around what Avon residents specifically wanted to eat.
What makes this year's openings notable isn't scarcity. Shiloh Crossing already had Texas Roadhouse, Portillo's, Donatos, BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse, On The Border, Olive Garden, Red Lobster, and Chipotle before Ford's Garage arrived. Across the street sit Target, Meijer, Menards, Dick's Sporting Goods, HomeGoods, and Marshalls. This is one of the most saturated retail and dining corridors in Hendricks County, and two more national brands just added themselves to a list that was already long.
If you're trying to read Avon's growth through its restaurant openings, the honest takeaway is that the town's highway frontage is valuable enough that operators keep stacking themselves onto it. That tells you something about traffic patterns and regional draw. It doesn't tell you much about what residents actually do with their evenings once they're not sitting in a booth at a chain restaurant.
The more telling additions to Avon this year aren't on US 36 at all. They're at Washington Township Park, sometimes still called Avon Park by longtime residents, off Whipple Lane.
The park system manages roughly 275 acres across three properties, including Washington Township Park, Pecar Park with Pock Woods, and Murphy Park. Washington Township Park itself carries:
That trail cooperative is worth sitting with for a second. Three separate town governments coordinating on a shared trail system is the kind of local investment that doesn't show up in a shopping center's leasing brochure, but it's the infrastructure residents will actually be walking, biking, and running on for years.
Through August 17, the Parks Foundation of Hendricks County runs its Summer Fun Run/Walk Series at the park every Wednesday from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., a 2.774-mile out-and-back along the White Lick Creek Trail that's open to anyone at their own pace. It's free, it's recurring, and it's built by a local parks foundation rather than a national chain's real estate team.
If you want a single date to put on the calendar, it's Sunday, August 9. Avon Gardens is holding its fourth annual Flower Fest at 6259 E County Rd 91 N, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Free entry, free parking, five acres of display gardens, food and drink trucks, and it's both kid and pet friendly. It's a locally run garden operation, not a franchise, and the difference in how it grows shows up in the details: a fourth annual event with a fixed date and address, rather than a fifth location decided by a traffic study.
Looking further out, Avon-Washington Township Community Park hosts the Avon Heritage Festival every September, an annual event the park has built its reputation around since long before this year's restaurant openings.
The honest version of this year's story isn't "Avon's restaurant scene is booming." It's that Avon's highway frontage is valuable enough that national operators keep adding themselves to an already crowded corridor, while the town's own investment in shared identity, its trails, its parks, its garden festivals, is happening a few minutes away on roads with far less traffic and far more character. Both things are true about the same town at the same time. Only one of them is really about Avon.
If you're already living here and wondering what the next few years of growth might look like on either side of that contrast, that's exactly the kind of question Sue Sells Indy spends her days answering for Hendricks County residents. Reach out any time you want a conversation grounded in what's actually happening on the ground here, not just what a traffic study says.
Get assistance in determining current property value, crafting a competitive offer, writing and negotiating a contract, and much more. Contact Sue today.