Broadband property profile: Cherry Creek Goshen creates a community connection with Surf's fiber broadband service
Cherry Creek, a soon-to-be-launched housing development in Goshen, Indiana, has a simple tagline: Life is easier in Cherry Creek.
While Tonya Detweiler, developer and CEO of Cherry Creek Goshen, Prominence Homes, and Blue Diamond Communities, admitted she had reservations about the marketing message, she realized that it was creating a way for residents to have a connected and balanced lifestyle.
One of those partnerships is Surf Internet, a fiber-based internet service supplier. As seen in other new communities, fiber-based internet is one of Cherry Creek’s key amenities.
“On the marketing side, we have a tagline at Cherry Creek: Life is easier in Cherry Creek,” she said. “When the marketing team first came up with it, I'll be honest with you, I wasn't crazy about it because I thought life isn't easy for any of us, but it guides all of us and the partnerships we create with Surf being at the top of the list to think about what are the ways we will make people’s lives a little easier living in Cherry Creek.”
She added, “That's really what we're looking at with any of the partners we look to partner with: How does that contribute to that mission and vision?” Detweiler said.
Surf Internet will install a fiber network throughout Cherry Creek as construction progresses, including pre-installed connections in all homes and businesses.
Community-wide Wi-Fi will also be available in public spaces, enabling residents to stay connected while working, learning, or enjoying recreational activities.
Gene Crusie, CEO of Surf Internet, said in a release announcing its partnership, "Cherry Creek represents the future of modern living, and we’re excited to support this vision by delivering reliable internet that enhances everyday life for its residents.”
Property at a glance: Cherry Creek Goshen
Location: Goshen, Indiana
Demographics: General occupancy
Property Description: Cherry Creek Goshen is a planned 160-acre walkable lifestyle-focused community featuring retail stores, recreational facilities, and over three miles of walking and biking trails. The property’s design centers on accessibility and convenience, allowing residents to "walk to 80% of their lives" with more than three miles of walking and biking paths. Residents can access various vibrant amenities, including a dog park, fenced playground, pickleball courts, a pool and clubhouse, restaurants, and a coffee shop. The community also features 148,674 square feet of retail space and golf cart-friendly paths.
Greenfield or retrofit? Greenfield
Units: 1,200 homes
Deployment timeline: Phase One began on October 29, 2024. Construction for single-family homes begins in summer 2025.
Broadband architecture:
Vendors/products:
Surf Internet (fiber broadband provider)
Calix (XGS-PON equipment, SmartBiz platform)
Adtran (XGS-PON equipment)
Services:
· 8 Gbps fiber-based internet service
Community-wide Wi-Fi
An accessible community
About two years ago, the city contacted Prominence Homes and Blue Diamond Communities, the developer of Cherry Creek, about 170 acres South of Goshen. The community has very little on the South side of Goshen. And so, it was the last continuous piece of property that could access the city’s southeast side.
In July, the Indiana Finance Authority announced that the City of Goshen received $11 million toward the Cherry Creek housing project from the state’s Residential Infrastructure Fund. Goshen received the largest amount out of the 11 Indiana communities chosen to receive a share of $51 million in funding in the first round.
Cherry Creek is designed to be a walkable community with amenities like retail stores, recreational facilities, and over three miles of walking and biking trails. The development’s focus on accessibility and connectivity is complemented by Surf Internet’s high-speed internet services, tailored to support the needs of residents and businesses alike.
When completed, Cherry Creek will be a 483-lot mixed-use development built in two phases on around 180 acres of land once meant for a business park.
The plan is to create over 1,200 homes, including a mix of standard single-family homes, duplexes, and townhouse lofts. It will also build some condominiums.
All the homes are nestled within a lot, a large area of green space, and a little over 4 miles of a 10-foot walking and biking trail winding right through the heart of Cherry Creek.
“The city has been receptive and agreed to connect with Cherry Creek Trail to downtown Goshen, which is very exciting for many in our community that have wanted that on the South side of town for some time,” Detweiler said. "It took a project like Cherry Creek to launch that and make it a funding priority for the city.”
Providing seamless connectivity
Like other housing developments built in recent years, the focus is on providing seamless broadband connectivity. Residents can get wired broadband inside their homes and the broader community.
When the development starts taking in residents later this year, Cherry Creek will feature high-speed fiber-optic internet with packages offering connectivity up to 8 Gbps from Surf Internet. The infrastructure will connect the community's homes, businesses, and public spaces.
Surf Internet will install a fiber network throughout Cherry Creek, including pre-installed connections in all homes and businesses as construction progresses. Community-wide Wi-Fi will also be available in public spaces, enabling residents to stay connected while working, learning, or enjoying recreational activities.
As it evaluated who would be the best ISP to serve its community, Detweiler said it based its decision on Surf’s customer-centric focus.
“When it came time to think about what on the technology side we wanted to see in Cherry Creek, we knew that technology is important because many people work from home and many people have teenagers that want that high-speed Internet,” she said. “We also know that it's a way of keeping us connected within Cherry Creek with one another. And when I thought about who would be the company that would help us do that, Surf came to the top of the list.”
Broadband internet service also helps residents connect within Cherry Creek to one another regardless of where they are.
“We want people to feel connected when they're in the common areas when they're in a park,” she said. “Cherry Creek has a large linear park that goes right through it. And being in that area, creating some outdoor spaces that still stay connected, those are the things that we're looking forward to doing that are different in our community than what we have right now.”
Appealing to businesses
Another element of the Cherry Creek development will be its appeal to businesses. The development will have a little over 140,000 square feet of commercial space.
Having Surf’s internet service in place illustrates how Cherry Creek acknowledges that it is a tool for all resident demographics.
Goshen, the hometown of Keystone RV Company, will now be able to continue using high-speed broadband to attract new residents who want to work remotely.
Jeff Dyson, marketing manager for Prominence Homes and Cherry Creek, said that while the RV industry is key, the presence of fiber-based internet will likely make the community appealing to other residents in other high-tech industry segments.
“Goshen is the RV capital in Indiana, which is great from a manufacturing standpoint because high-speed broadband is needed for that industry,” he said. “But on the flip side, having the high speed available for the new up and coming high tech remote workforce, Cherry Creek will be a place where the next generation of entrepreneurs can live and connect.”
He added that new residents continue to desire amenities like high-speed Internet, access to smart homes, and connected Wi-Fi, typically in a larger city like San Francisco or Chicago.
"When people are looking for a place to live, they want to move into a place that has that high-speed Internet and has access to all of those smart homes and connected Wi-Fi and all that type of stuff just because that's the thing that they would expect in a much larger city like San Francisco or Chicago,” Dyson said. “Having that connectivity in a small town is cutting edge for this area.”
Surf, which began as a dial-up internet provider in the late 1990s out of Goshen, has grown its employee base from 85 to 300 and sees the opportunity to serve remote workers with its fiber-based internet service.
Crusie said having a “nice place like that to land that meets all their needs is going to be special, and there are many other companies just like us in the region.”
Focus on innovation
The Cherry Creek development is a Greenfield environment so that it can take advantage of the latest fiber broadband technology. It will be equipped with XGS-PON gear, which will enable 10 Gbps.
While 10 Gbps is the top speed PON platforms can deliver today, the drive to get to higher speeds, including 50 Gbps and 100 Gbps, is on the horizon.
Goshen’s location is key to Surf’s fiber capabilities.
“Goshen is situated at the crossroads of our regional fiber. Between our data center in Detroit, our data center in Chicago, and our data center in Indianapolis,” Crusie said. “It's probably one of the few places in the Midwest with unlimited fiber capacity because those three things come together. This will allow us to push the envelope on speeds unavailable elsewhere.”
As a technology that provides high-speed internet access over a single fiber, 50G PON has lower latency and reduced jitter than other technologies. In a residential setting, 50G PON can provide high-speed internet access to homes, while businesses can use it to provide high-speed internet access to businesses.
“What I love about Cherry Creek is that this is a first, and we're going to push the envelope on stuff,” Crusie said. “We're talking about rolling out XGS-PON, but the platform will be capable of 50 gig fiber at home.”
But speed is only part of the equation. Surf is deploying Calix’s optical network terminals (ONTs) to deliver fiber internet to residents and leveraging the vendor’s SmartTown and SmartBiz products.
Calix’s SmartTown allows service providers to unite on-the-go communities of people with private Wi-Fi experience that drives customer loyalty and new business opportunities for service providers and their business customers. The SmartTown network is built primarily on residential Wi-Fi 6 Certified GigaSpire systems, allowing operators to create a low-cost, high-capacity wireless network that extends the private, secure, and safe home Wi-Fi experience into the neighborhood and beyond.
Likewise, SmartBiz leverages a range of Calix Success and Professional Services, making it easy for operators to deploy managed Wi-Fi and business productivity services to small businesses at scale.
“We're going to deploy Calix’s SmartTown platform,” Crusie said. “SmartBiz allows businesses to have their unique portal and participate in Cherry Creek's total ecosystem.”
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Sean Buckley
Sean is responsible for establishing and executing the editorial strategies of Lightwave and Broadband Technology Report across their websites, email newsletters, events, and other information products.