By Sam Elliott

The recent announcement that Indianapolis-based The Escape Room would be expanding into Fishers gave the city’s The Edge mixed-use building at 8890 E. 116th St. its fifth official tenant since opening last year.

City and building officials have been pleasantly surprised and pleased with the rate at which The Edge is filling up.

“We’ve been very excited,” said Scott Baldwin, The Edge majority owner and RealityQwest LLC – Baldwin Companies owner and managing broker. “I think a lot of it has to do with the effort the City of Fishers has put into its downtown redevelopment. I think they’re creating energy that a lot of tenants just want to be a part of.”

Community Health Network and Progressive Eye Care were the first tenants to open locations in the mixed-use development. Openings targeted for later this year include The Well Coffeehouse, The Borrowed Boutique, a children’s designer clothing rental retailer, and The Escape Room, an entertainment destination that offers visitors challenge rooms from which they must find clues and solve puzzles in order to escape within a one-hour time limit — bringing The Edge a diverse group of tenants in a space attractive to businesses.

“We allow tenants to have strong visibility on 116th Street while also having walkable opportunities to the downtown shops and all that energy,” Baldwin said. “We’re walkable to the amphitheater, we’re directly in front of the Nickel Plate Trail, we are visible from the interstate exit and get a strong traffic count from 116th Street. We have a signalized intersection and we have a 332-space parking garage, which is very liberal for the amount of square footage we have for its uses.”

Baldwin said The Edge has approximately 6,000 square feet of office space and approximately 8,000 square feet of retail or restaurant space remaining, and that the building is in negotiations with other potential tenants. Space on the corner of The Edge has been earmarked for as many as three restaurants, including a steakhouse, and Community Health Network is looking into expanding upon its 25,000 square feet.

“The Edge is in a prime location to be accessible to the government center, multiple residential developments and office buildings,” The Well Coffeehouse o-owner Debbie Zancanaro said. “The parking garage solves the problem we saw at the strip mall locations on the south side of 116th Street and the community presence assures constant foot traffic.”

“We were drawn to Fishers based upon our availability to have more rooms and multiple lounges with more space, which is crucial to our corporate team building and large group business,” The Escape Room Co-owner Dan Chillemi said. “Also because we tend to be a destination type of retail entertainment that is booked multiple days ahead of time, we liked the proximity to I-69 as well as the future IKEA and TopGolf coming to Fishers.”