It’s been about five years since Bloomington released its plan for the Hopewell development. The city is now looking at June next year to break ground.
But to do that, the city may need zoning changes. It’s considering some that would increase how many homes could be built in the Hopewell South development.
At an Oct. 21 kickoff event, Alli Thurmond Quinlan, the founder of the building consulting firm Flintlock LAB approved in June to work on the project, presented three proposals for the development to the public. The plans varied by average home value and what code changes would be necessary. Some would require a Planned Unit Development, a zoning district meant to create mixed-use neighborhood designs.
While PUDs can allow for flexibility in zoning codes — and sometimes allow for more units to be built on a piece of land than standard zoning — some city council members see them as bad practice.
City councilmember Kate Rosenbarger said the city should move away from using the zoning type, referring to PUDs as “bad planning and zoning practices.” She said the zoning code should be improved city-wide.
The Bloomington Comprehensive Plan, adopted in 2018 and last updated in June 2024, outlines land use policies and investment goals for the city through 2040. The current Unified Development Ordinance, which first went into effect in April 2020, governs the city’s land use and developments.
The zoning changes Quinlan proposed, such as allowing buildings to face alleys or splitting property lots, would be included in the development’s PUD, rather than integrated into city-wide code.
Flaherty said the widespread use of PUDs in Bloomington has circumvented zoning practices and not served communities, but that updates to zoning codes in recent years have limited when PUDs could be considered.
“Specifically with the Hopewell neighborhood, a PUD seems quite strange, since we recently zoned the entire footprint precisely in line with the Comprehensive Plan and city policy aims,” Flaherty said.
Proposals for Hopewell
The three proposals for the Hopewell development included:
- Concept Plan A: 118 homes, average home value of $290,000, PUD needed
- Concept Plan B: 84 homes, average home value of $315,000, PUD needed
- Concept Plan C: 28 homes, average home value of $425,000, no PUD needed
“With the PUD changes we are proposing we could create up to 118 homes,” said Anna Killion-Hanson, director of the city Housing and Neighborhood Development department. “This is a wonderful example of how difficult and limiting our UDO can be to create new homes.”
At the kickoff event, Bloomington Mayor Kerry Thomson said she hopes plans for a Hopewell PUD could serve as a “living laboratory” so that the city’s UDO could be changed over time.
The city last updated the UDO in July.
In March, the Bloomington City Council failed to introduce two resolutions that would have begun the process to amend the city’s UDO. Rosenbarger sponsored one of these resolutions, which would have added amendments to allow for denser housing in residential zones.
Councilmembers and the mayor were divided on how to approach UDO amendments. Thomson felt that amendments should come from the administration, specifically housing and planning departments.
Additionally, Thomson said she learned about the resolutions a few days before the meeting at the same time the public did. However, Rosenbarger and Flaherty said they had been communicating with the mayor’s office for over a year.
The councilmembers who voted against introducing the resolutions cited the time between when the resolutions were added to the docket and voting as an issue.
“We should be changing our Unified Development Ordinance (UDO - our zoning code) to allow for best practices throughout our city, not just in a few city blocks,” Rosenbarger said in an email. “We need alley frontage everywhere, we need smaller lot sizes everywhere.”
PUD proposals for the Hopewell development must be approved by the Plan Commission, the decision-making body for PUDs. The commission, which is also the city’s land use and development policy body, also advises the City Council on UDO changes.
“The widespread use of PUDs to circumvent zoning for many years in Bloomington led to a largely unmanageable system of patchwork zoning that typically has not served the community well,” Flaherty said. “In short, heavy reliance on PUDs is widely recognized as bad urban planning policy.”
Before a PUD can be approved for Hopewell South, the site must meet PUD requirements in the UDO. The next steps, Stosberg said, would include the administration deciding when to present a proposal to the Plan Commission so it can make a recommendation to the council about the PUD.
