One of Hamilton County’s oldest businesses is changing with the times.

Reynolds Farm Equipment

• Business: The John Deere dealership sells, rents and repairs a variety of agricultural, lawn and garden and turf equipment through John Deere, Honda and STIHL brands. Retail clothing and toys also are available.

• Location: Based at 1451 E. 276th St., Atlanta, with locations in Fishers; Muncie; Anderson; Lebanon; Mooresville; Xenia, Ohio; and Nicholasville, Ky.

• Founded: 1955 by A.W. “Mac” Reynolds.

• President: Gary Reynolds.

• Employees: About 250. 

To get closer to the farming community, Reynolds Farm Equipment moved its headquarters in March from the increasingly suburban town of Fishers to rural Atlanta, a small town in northern Hamilton County.

The Fishers store will remain open as a lawn and garden center with an emphasis on renting and selling worksite equipment to homes and businesses, as well as a sizable John Deere retail shop.

Reynolds Farm Equipment has been a fixture in Fishers for decades, since long before explosive growth turned the town into one of the most affluent and busy communities in the state.

But in recent years, Manager Michael Lawson said the increasingly heavy traffic had made it difficult for the farming community to reach the Fishers office — and for employees and farmers to maneuver heavy combines and tractors along bustling town roads. Agriculture remains the largest sector of the business, Lawson said, where heavy equipment can go for upward of $300,000.

The largest John Deere dealership in the area, Reynolds sells, rents and repairs a wide variety of agricultural, lawn and garden, and turf equipment, including tractors, farm implements, combines, utility vehicles and mowers. Reynolds also sells an assortment of John Deere clothing and toys — everything from casual shirts and hats to work gloves and belts to riding toy tractors and baby clothes.

“A lot of our customer base in Hamilton County can get to us a lot easier here,” Lawson said of the Atlanta location. “We’re also closer to (customers) in Tipton County and surrounding areas.”

Sonny Beck, the longtime owner of Beck’s Hybrids, the largest family-owned seed company in the country, understands the move. Beck’s is located just down 276th Street from the new 83,000-square-foot Reynolds Farm Equipment headquarters.

Beck figures the move will make shopping easier for farmers, who can now easily visit Beck’s and Reynolds in the same trip.

“Northern Hamilton County is going to be agriculture for a good, long time yet,” Beck said.

Lawson said the move won’t impact one well-known and much-loved aspect of Reynolds — the annual eye-popping Christmas lights display that fills 7 acres adjacent to the Fishers store near Ind. 37 and 126th Street.

The lights, he said, will be on display again this year. The Christmas display draws up to 3,000 cars on the nights leading up to the holiday and raises more than $30,000 annually for the “Come-to-Me” food pantry adjacent to Fishers United Methodist Church.

The company’s former location in Sheridan, a couple miles from the Atlanta store, has closed. Reynolds operates six Central Indiana locations, plus one each in Ohio and Kentucky, and employs 250 people, including 12 Reynolds family members.

Company President Gary Reynolds said moving the headquarters — founded by his father A.W. “Mac” Reynolds at a different Fishers location in 1955 — to Atlanta was a tough decision, but he thinks it’s for the best.

“I think the location is going to be just great,” he said. “We gave it some thought, but we’re satisfied what we did was right.”

And Gary Reynolds plans to contribute to the Atlanta community — including bringing local residents another dining option. He will open a public eatery inside the Reynolds headquarters — dubbed The Combine Cafe — in May.