"This area just called out for some sort of activation," Mayor Scott Fadness said at the ribbon-cutting for The 106 Plaza in September 2025. He was standing at 106th Street and the Nickel Plate Trail, at a spot that regular trail users had been riding past for years without much reason to stop. The mayor's comment sounds like standard ribbon-cutting language until you look at what was actually being cut open: not just a new courtyard, but the first real meeting point for three trails that had spent years running near each other without properly connecting.
If you bike, walk, or run in Fishers, you already have a route. You know where the Nickel Plate Trail gets shaded and where it doesn't. You know the Cheeney Creek Natural Area has its own quieter rhythm. What most people haven't updated is the mental map of where these systems now actually touch, and what's sitting at that junction waiting for them.
Where Three Trails Actually Meet
Before 2024, getting from the Cheeney Creek Natural Area onto the Nickel Plate Trail at 106th Street meant improvising. Fishers Parks added a direct connection that year, along with new parking, lighting, and safety features at the crossing. That fix solved the routing problem but left the intersection itself undeveloped, a spot where paths crossed but nothing invited you to slow down.
The 106 Plaza, built in partnership with Hub&Spoke and opened in the summer of 2025, filled that gap. Fishers Parks describes it plainly: the plaza sits at the intersection of the Nickel Plate, Cheeney Creek, and The 106 trails, right outside the Fishers Parks headquarters and the Maker Playground. That's three separate trail identities converging on one 8100 E. 106th Street address, something that wasn't true two years ago and still isn't obvious unless you've had a reason to stop there.
For anyone whose regular loop touches more than one of these trails, that matters more than it sounds. A junction that used to be a pass-through is now a legitimate stopping point, with public restrooms, water refill stations, shaded seating, and a fire pit built into the deal.
The Building the Trail Never Used to Stop At
Hub&Spoke isn't a park amenity in the traditional sense. It's a mixed-use building that happens to sit exactly where the trails meet, and it's what turns The 106 Plaza from a nice bench into an actual destination. Inside, Fishers Parks runs its 15,000-square-foot Maker Playground, a makerspace where residents take classes in things like woodworking and 3D printing. Next to it, Niyyah Coffee and Mashcraft Brewing give trail users an actual reason to lock up the bike for twenty minutes instead of just refilling a water bottle and moving on.
That combination, a public plaza wrapped around a building with a coffee shop, a brewery, and a hands-on workshop space, is not something you'll find at most trailheads. It's also why the plaza reads less like an amenity add-on and more like a small commercial node that Fishers built directly into its trail network.
Two Habits That Didn't Exist Before 2025
The physical space is only half of what changed. The other half is the calendar. Fishers Parks has built two recurring, free events into the plaza's weekly and monthly rhythm, and neither existed at this location before the plaza opened.
| Event | When | What You Get | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Music at The 106 | Third Thursday of the month, 6 to 9 p.m. | Live music on the lawn, drinks from Mashcraft Brewing or Niyyah Coffee | Free, drinks purchased separately |
| Pilates on the Plaza | Every Friday | A guided class on the open lawn | Free |
The Thursday series ran on a set schedule through the summer of 2026, with sessions in June, July, and August, each built around the same formula: grab a drink, find a spot on the lawn, and let a local musician fill the last hour of the evening. It's not a festival. There's no ticket, no registration, and no expectation that you show up for the whole three hours. It's built for the person already on the trail who happens to pass through at 7 p.m. on a Thursday.
The Friday pilates sessions work the same way, minus the drinks. Both events share the same low-friction design: no RSVP, no sign-up sheet, just a fixed time and a fixed place that repeats often enough to become a habit if you let it.
The Parking Detail That Actually Matters
If you're driving instead of biking in, the plaza's practical details are worth knowing before you show up on a Thursday night expecting an empty lot. Free parking is available at the main Hub&Spoke lot at 8100 E. 106th Street, and when that fills up during events, overflow parking is available directly across the street at the Cheeney Creek trailhead lot.
That overflow detail only makes sense once you understand the geography: the Cheeney Creek trailhead isn't some backup lot in a different part of town, it's the other side of the same intersection the plaza was built around. Parking spillover here isn't an inconvenience, it's proof of how tightly the three trail systems and the plaza are wired together at this one crossing.
Why This Is Worth Updating Your Routine For
None of this shows up if your relationship with the Nickel Plate Trail is purely transactional, a route from point A to point B with no reason to stop in the middle. That's most people's default, and it's not wrong. But the plaza was built specifically to interrupt that default, and the programming behind it, Third Thursday music, Friday pilates, a fire pit that doesn't require an event to use, is designed for people who are already out there anyway.
The bigger shift is less about any single event and more about what the plaza represents structurally. Fishers has spent the past few years connecting trail segments that used to dead-end or require a road crossing to bridge. The 106 Plaza is the clearest example of what happens when that connective work gets a public space built on top of it: a spot that used to be a crossing becomes a place people plan around.
If you already live in Fishers and use these trails regularly, the plaza is worth folding into your week, even if it's just stopping for a Niyyah coffee on a Saturday morning ride or catching twenty minutes of live music on a Thursday you'd otherwise spend at home. The city built this intersection to be more than a place three trails happen to cross. It's on residents to actually treat it that way.
Knowing a neighborhood down to its trail connections and Thursday-night calendar is the same kind of groundwork that goes into pricing a home correctly or knowing which streets carry a premium when a buyer starts asking questions. If you're weighing a move in Fishers, or just curious what a home near this corridor might be worth, the team at Allen Williams is glad to talk it through. Request a complimentary home valuation whenever you're ready.