Photographer / Amy Payne
At the corner of 116th Street and Michigan Road in Carmel, Indiana, lies Waterfront of West Clay, an upper-middle-class neighborhood characterized by lush greenery and family-friendly seclusion. The area has become a treasure of central Indiana real estate and a testament to the exponential growth and development of the Indianapolis suburbs. Waterfront of West Clay dazzles with its elegant landscaping, tasteful design, and its crown jewel, a 30-acre lake that offers pristine views to a select few homebuyers willing to peel off a couple more bills.
The neighborhood is the brainchild of Paul Shoopman, president of Shoopman Homes and himself the oldest resident of the Waterfront of West Clay community. Shoopman purchased the property — then 160 acres of cornfields — in 1990 and immediately began construction on his family home. A lifelong bass fisherman, one of his first orders of business was the installation and stocking of a lake right in his backyard. To add privacy and further beauty, he orchestrated the planting of approximately 12,000 trees on the property. With the inclusion of countless amenities, from both indoor and outdoor pools to a home theater and five-car garage, Shoopman imagined and brought to life a 30,000-square-foot space that would provide ample entertainment and attraction for his large family, in an additional effort to remain a watchful and protective father.
“With six kids, our goal was to have a larger home where our kids were more likely to stay because it has swimming pools and a basketball court or a racquetball court,” Shoopman says. “We were more or less trying to bribe the kids to stay at the house and have their friends come over here rather than be somewhere else where we had to worry about them.”
Shoopman’s career in homebuilding began some 54 years ago when he was fresh out of Manual High School, formerly part of the Indianapolis Public Schools district. At Manual, Shoopman was exposed to the school’s specializations in industrial arts, including mechanical arts and wood shop. He spent his summers applying what he had learned in his high school classes to real-world experience, following around his two older brothers who worked in construction and falling in love with the trade. In 1971, at just 18 years old, he convinced his father to co-sign a home construction loan in Center Grove, where he himself did his summer work.
While his brothers found their draft numbers selected to go off to Vietnam, Shoopman’s number just missed, and as he puts it, “I was free to start my own work life, and away I went into the new construction world.”
Two years later, in 1973, Shoopman started his first homebuilding company, Dura Builders — a quirky play on its tagline, “Built to Last the Duration.” For a couple of years, Dura Builders was able to call itself the largest homebuilder in the state. It was around this time that Shoopman married his wife of 52 years, Shelley, and after more than 30 years with Dura Builders, he made the move to sell the company to KB Home, a national homebuilding entity. This prompted the development of Shoopman Homes, which has been in business since 2006.
In 2019, Shoopman Homes was honored as a Business of Integrity winner at the Torch Awards, annually presented by the Better Business Bureau. It was a major accomplishment in a long line of decorations for Shoopman’s companies, which include multiple awards and distinctions from 2-10 Home Buyers Warranty, the 2003 Entrepreneur of the Year Award from Ernst & Young, and recognition from multiple Indiana governors. Shoopman was at one point selected by Governor Mitch Daniels to serve on the Indiana State Home Inspector Licensing Board, making him the first homebuilder to earn that appointment.
“It’s a makeup of a lot of things,” Shoopman says of how he sets up his companies for perennial success. “There’s a lot of communication that goes back and forth — visibility, signage, billboards — and you’re just making sure that you’re doing a good job every day. You’re out there working seven days a week, you’re communicating with people and doing business with people. It just kind of builds itself all on its own.”
With five and a half decades of experience in the industry, Shoopman has navigated ups and downs, including economic booms, recessions, and even an unprecedented global pandemic. In his more than 50 years of building in central Indiana, Shoopman has not identified much change within the homebuilding and real estate industries. With acknowledgment to improvements in areas like appliances, floor plans, and energy efficiency, he feels the world of homebuilding has remained favorably consistent.
“Other than there being a substantial difference between the sales prices, it’s been pretty much the same,” he says. “It’s just evolved based on the customers’ demands and wishlist.”
Shoopman’s experience has provided him with a sense of confidence and a knack for trusting his gut over the years.
“It always rebounds,” he says. “In housing, if it’s had lows, it’s had highs. You’ve just got to ride out the storms, keep pushing, get up every day and keep doing the same thing. Eventually it always comes back.”
Amid uncertainty, turmoil, and an ever-developing industrial landscape, having people in his corner has further helped Shoopman keep a level head and stick to his principles. The support of his family has been valuable to his sustained success and continuing passion for his work.
“We’ve been really fortunate, especially with our own family and our own kids,” Shoopman says. “It’s family oriented, and everybody still communicates with each other. It’s always good to have stability.”
This consistent support has made it easy for Shoopman to keep up with his work, which he anticipates will hold true for years to come. With more work to be done to fill out and develop Waterfront of West Clay, Shoopman looks further down the road, unflinching in his go-getter persona.
“We still have plenty of lots left to do business, but when I get closer to running out of lots, I’ll be working in another subdivision somewhere,” he adds.
After more than five decades in homebuilding, Shoopman still gets immense satisfaction out of his work, reflected in his practice of continuing to personally walk through and inspect every house that Shoopman Homes builds. He credits this “promise to provide personal attention” to his career-long success.
“It’s still rewarding,” Shoopman says. “You start a house from scratch and you get it done, sit back and look at it. Then two months, six months go by and you drive by houses that you built that same year. It’s always fun to look and see what you’ve done in the past.”
Shoopman has no interest in ever retiring and sees himself building until he “falls over at his desk.” It’s this tenacity and dedication that has maintained his status as one of Indiana’s top homebuilders for more than 50 years.
“I still love the smell of wood and paint,” he says.
