PENDLETON — Pendleton Planning Director Rachel Christenson said some of the best times at the town for her have been when work begins on big project.

“I always geeked out when we would get construction projects going. Construction kick-off days have always been my favorite days, ” she said. “When we did the ped bridge over the interstate, like, that is one of my most-favorite projects that we’ve worked on, because seeing that bridge actually happen was very exciting.”

As it turns out, that pedestrian bridge project that crosses I-69 — which Christenson started working on in 2014 and which was completed just before the pandemic started — also almost spans her career with the town.

Christenson, who started as planning and zoning coordinator in April 2014, is leaving her town position to join an Indianapolis engineering firm. Her last day will be Friday, March 26.
“It is one of those bittersweet things — even though I feel the word ‘bittersweet’ is super-cliché, but it really is,” she said early this week.
During her seven years with the town, Christenson was promoted to assistant planning director, stepped up to serve as interim town manager after a sudden vacancy in early 2020, and became planning director last fall.
The accomplishments of which she is most proud, she said, involve applying for grants and establishing planning documents so the town can chart its own destiny, two often complementary efforts.
“I’ve helped funnel in about around $8 million in local, state and federal grants to Pendleton,” she said. “I just absolutely love finding money and using it to do projects in our community, because I always feel somebody’s going to get the money, it might as well be us.”
She helped create or update at least 10 planning documents, including the town’s first iterations of a Downtown Revitalization Plan, Bike and Pedestrian Master Plan and tree care manual.
“I did our 2015 Park and Recreation Master Plan in house, and also our comprehensive plan update; I did those in house. The rest of the plans, we’ve hired consultants to help us with, but I’ve been the project manager on them.”
Christenson said the town has been a good place to work. She was able to obtain a certificate of public administration from Ball State University while working there. The town also supported her attending Leadership Academy of Madison County, she said.
“I’m also super-excited that I was able to be our first, even though interim, our first female town manager, and first female (planning) director. So, those things are really important to me.
“I also have really valued my experiences in helping lead our community through two emergencies — the tornado and also the pandemic. Not things I ever thought I’d be working through, but I think lessons learned through those processes are really going to help me in my future.”
Christenson, 38, was born on the southside of Chicago and grew up in northwest Indiana. She attended Ball State University, earning a bachelor’s of landscape architecture.
She interned for the City of Anderson, obtained American Institute of Certified Planners credentials, and “focused more on planning than I ever did the landscape architecture piece of it.”
Prior to being hired at Pendleton, she worked for seven years as a senior planner at Madison County Council of Governments, a regional transportation planning agency that serves communities in the county as well as a couple outside of it.
“We would always joke that I had a seven-year interview before I got hired at Pendleton because I would always pick the Pendleton projects to work on, if I could,” Christenson said. “It was nice, because I got to know a lot of the people in Pendleton before I even got hired. It was almost a seamless transition going from my job responsibilities at Council of Governments and then coming over to Pendleton. Some of the projects I had at Council of Governments I kept working on here at Pendleton.”
There will be some overlap with her next transition, too, as she heads to HWC to serve as a project manager in its landscape architecture and planning group.
It will be her first career foray in the private sector, offering a new, exciting and a tremendous opportunity to learn, she said, but again she will be working with some people she knows, namely some former Ball State classmates.
“I’m just kind of excited to be working with some people that I went to college with,” she said.
As Christenson prepares to disengage from working for the town, she has no intention of leaving the town, where she has been a resident longer than she has been an employee.
“I always thought Pendleton was special,” Christenson said. “I remember when we were looking for houses in the area, and we were driving through Pendleton, I thought I wanted to work for the town one day. So, I’m really excited that I got the opportunity to work here and help craft how Pendleton is going to grow and develop over time.
“I know a lot of the plans that I’ve worked on have helped set some things in place that, even though I’m not going to see them right here while I’m working here, in the future a lot of these plans are going to be implemented and be actually constructed over time. So that’s actually exciting to me that, even though I will be stepping away, there will be parts and pieces moved forward still.
“I really have absolutely loved working here. It’s been a great experience, sometimes hard experiences, but it’s a really special place, and I’m glad I got to be a piece of it. I’m glad I got to play a big part of it.”

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Pendleton town manager Scott Reske said Planning Director Rachel Christenson is leaving the town in a good position to move forward.
“Rachel is so good at her job. She’s a planner,” Reske said. “Her job is to get ready for the future, and she’s done a good job at that.”
Kayla Hassett, the town’s current planning and zoning administrator, will move into the planning director role effective Monday, March 29, Reske said.
Résumés are due to the town that day for what is an open planner position.
Reske said the town should be able to make a good hire because there are more people with the required education than there are planner positions, and because Pendleton is on the cusp of growth, which makes it a desirable place for planners to work.
For more details, email [email protected].
Reske said the town wants to have the position filled by the last week in April.

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