If you've driven south on Highway 69 through Huxley this year, you've probably asked the same question as everyone else idling at that new roundabout: what is actually going in back there?
The short answer is Anthem, a 120-acre project on the west side of the highway that's been described as a $120 million investment in the town's south end. But the more interesting answer isn't the acreage or the dollar figure. It's what the small, unglamorous decisions behind Anthem tell you about how Huxley is trying to grow without becoming a smaller version of Ankeny, the fast-growing suburb 11 miles down the road.
What's Actually Under Construction
Anthem is the work of Chris Gardner, who owns Bella Commercial and the homebuilding company Bella Homes, and who has lived in Huxley for more than two decades. He's raised his family here and has three kids in the Ballard school district, which matters because it puts him in a different position than a typical outside developer parachuting into a growing exurb. He's building the thing he has to live next to.
The project splits into pieces that are each named on their own, not just labeled as phases:
- The Republic, an apartment complex at 300 Anthem Drive aimed at young professionals
- Anthem 55, a townhome neighborhood built for residents 55 and older, mixing for-sale and for-rent units
- A senior living campus, including an 18-unit for-sale condo project
- Three retail strips planned for a mix of shops, restaurants, and health and wellness businesses
- Space set aside for light industrial tenants, some of which had already sold as of early reporting on the project
Total planned apartment count across the site is 270 units, plus a pool, dog park areas, and a public gathering space built around a fountain. The retail sections are designed with angle parking and sidewalks throughout, which Gardner has described as giving the area a "downtown feel" rather than a standard strip-mall layout.
Here's the part worth knowing if you're timing a visit or wondering why The Republic still looks unfinished: the first 45-unit building was originally expected to be ready for occupancy in the first quarter of 2026. As of this summer, though, the project's own leasing page still listed The Republic as pre-leasing, not move-in ready, and reporting from mid-2026 noted that construction on those first apartments only began in spring. The senior living campus broke ground this summer as well. If Anthem looks less finished than the renderings suggested it would be by now, that's not your imagination. Large mixed-use builds tend to slip a season or two, and Anthem is no exception.
The Roundabout Is The Real Tell
The roundabout at Highway 69 and Anthem Drive exists because Gardner worked directly with the Iowa Department of Transportation to manage traffic flowing off the highway into the development. That's normal enough for a project this size. What's not normal, or at least not something you'd expect to end up in city council minutes, is the argument over its streetlight.
In January 2026, the Huxley City Council spent part of a meeting discussing a solar-powered light at that roundabout that kept failing during a stretch of overcast weather. The fix wasn't a redesign or a new contractor. The city added a generator that charges the light during the day so it has enough stored power to get through the night regardless of cloud cover. It's a small patch on a small problem, but it says something bigger: a lot of what "managing growth" actually looks like in a town this size is boring, hands-on troubleshooting, not sweeping master plans.
Why This Is Built To Not Look Like Ankeny
Huxley's population sits at roughly 4,800 people, and it grew nearly 30% over the past decade, making it Story County's fastest-growing town according to Business Record's reporting on census figures. That kind of growth usually comes with a tradeoff: either the town keeps its character and stays small, or it gets absorbed into the sprawl of a bigger neighbor and starts to feel like anywhere else.
Gardner has been unusually direct about which side of that tradeoff he's betting on. Talking about Anthem's role in buffering Huxley from the growth happening in Ankeny, he put it plainly:
"I don't want to get swallowed up by Ankeny," Gardner said.
That's not marketing language. It's a stated design goal. The angle parking, the sidewalks, the mix of housing for both young professionals and retirees on the same 120 acres, all of it is aimed at building density that still reads as Huxley rather than as an extension of a bigger commuter suburb. Whether that holds up over the eight to ten years the full build-out is expected to take is an open question, but it's a deliberate one, not an accident of zoning.
The Small Business Side Of The Same Story
Anthem isn't the only place the city is putting money and attention. In January 2026, the council approved a payment from Huxley's Economic Development Business Support Program to Finski's, a local business that also hosted an open house that same month for elected officials, city staff, and members of the Huxley Development Corporation. It's a small, specific detail, but it fits the same pattern as the roundabout light: growth here isn't just happening to the town from the outside. The city is actively steering resources toward the businesses already rooted in it.
That effort has some structure behind it. The city recently partnered with the Ames Regional Economic Alliance to build out business-focused programming, networking events, and marketing support for existing Huxley businesses, a signal that the town is trying to strengthen what's already here at the same time it's building something new on the south end.
Growth is showing up in other pockets too. The council has been working through plat approvals for Blue Sky Estates and Blue Sky Lakeview Estates, and at an April 2026 meeting, a resident named Tim Wood presented a vision for a park in the Westview Heights subdivision, with discussion tying into how a future trail location would connect toward the Heart of Iowa Trail. None of this is as flashy as a $120 million mixed-use development, but it's the connective tissue that will determine whether Huxley's growth feels like one town expanding or several disconnected subdivisions stitched together.
What This Actually Means If You Live Here
If you're timing your next trip past Anthem Drive, expect the roundabout to keep functioning normally now that the lighting issue has a fix, expect The Republic to still be in pre-leasing rather than fully occupied, and expect the senior living campus to look like a construction site through at least the rest of this year given its summer groundbreaking. The retail strips and restaurant space will likely trail behind the residential buildings, which is typical for projects structured this way.
The bigger thing to watch isn't a single ribbon-cutting. It's whether the small decisions, the generator on the streetlight, the grant to Finski's, the trail conversation tied to a subdivision most people haven't heard of yet, keep pointing the same direction Gardner says he wants Anthem to point: toward a version of growth that adds housing and amenities without erasing what made people want to live in Huxley in the first place.
If you're watching this corner of Story County change and have questions about what it means for your own home's value or timing, InSun Colerick knows this market block by block, not just by the headline numbers. Reach out anytime to talk through what you're seeing.
