Carmel leaders are reflecting on a time before the roundabouts and the busy city center was packed with restaurants and shopping.
The city marked its 50th birthday this month. Carmel transitioned from a town to a city in the mid-1970s, and since then the population has increased by more than 80,000 residents. About two decades after Carmel became a city, the first roundabout was built. Nowadays Carmel has more than 150 roundabouts, more than any other U.S. City.
It wasn’t until about three decades later that construction started on the Carmel City Center. The corner of City Center Drive and Rangeline Road was the site of an abandoned strip mall with a dilapidated Kroger grocery store before it was transformed into more 50 shops, restaurants and other businesses as well as apartments and condos and the Center for The Performing Arts, which opened in 2011…