The following is a press release written by Matt Flaherty for the Bloomington City Council.
Six members of the Bloomington City Council are encouraging Mayor Kerry Thomson to work with the city council to make reasonable updates to the proposed Hopewell South Planned Unit Development (PUD). On March 30, 2026, Councilmembers Piedmont-Smith (District 1), Rosenbarger (District 2), Stosberg (District 3), Rollo (District 4), Ruff and Flaherty (At Large) issued the following statement.
“We are all excited about the potential embodied by the Hopewell neighborhood. However, we believe the Hopewell South Planned Unit Development (PUD) proposal, presented by Mayor Thomson on behalf of the Bloomington Redevelopment Commission, can and should deliver greater benefits to our community. While we support many aspects of the proposal, it unfortunately misses the mark in several critical ways—most notably, its lack of permanent affordable housing.
“To address these issues, meet Hopewell’s promise, and abide by our own city goals, it is essential to:
- include and require more permanent affordability as a substantial part of the development;
- invest in sidewalk and street improvements that meet the basic requirements of city code; and
- ensure energy efficient buildings that will substantially lower utility bills for residents while also reducing pollution.
Currently, we believe the proposal falls short in all three areas, which is why we voted last week to continue deliberating with the hope of collaboratively addressing these issues.
“The 1.5 blocks of residential development in the PUD are special because the city owns the land. This is a unique opportunity—and ideal setting—for permanently affordable homes, accomplished by leveraging the land value and employing a shared equity model at least 99 years into the future. While we believe 50% permanently affordable units is reasonable, achievable, and the best outcome for our community, we would compromise and agree to 25% (with 15% of all units being reserved for households earning at or below 90% area median income). This would meaningfully increase the long-term affordability benefits to the community.
“We also believe the developer, in this case the city’s own redevelopment commission, must invest in key sidewalk and street improvements, which we know the city would require of any other developer. Unfortunately, Bloomington has far too much sub-standard pedestrian infrastructure that leaves neighborhoods less accessible and less safe. We have a transportation plan and unified development ordinance (UDO) that now require all subdivisions to meet basic standards for pedestrian and green infrastructure—a crucial investment in our future. The current plan for Hopewell South does not meet these basic standards required in our plans.
“Approving an exemption from these pedestrian design standards in a PUD—a mechanism with the express purpose of creating ‘substantial additional benefit to the City that would not otherwise be required by [the] UDO’—is not acceptable to us and would set a bad policy precedent. It’s clear we can both meet our plans and code requirements on infrastructure, while also maximizing the number of homes in Hopewell South consistent with the proposed petition. Here, we believe the city must lead by example.
“Energy efficiency requirements for homes in Hopewell are something we expected the mayor’s administration to readily support. While efficiency investments modestly increase upfront costs (which can be mitigated for permanently affordable units by leveraging land value if needed), they provide tens of thousands of dollars in net benefits through reduced utility bills for the lifespan of the home. We should implement our Climate Action Plan in this way and lower bills for future Hopewell residents.
“Finally, we want to address the mayor’s contention that the city council is a source of major delay on Hopewell. This is simply incorrect. The executive branch of local government, under the previous mayor and this one, has taken years to bring forward a development proposal, which has been before us for consideration for less than six weeks. Notably, the statutory process for city council review of a PUD provides 90 days following Plan Commission recommendation. We will meet that deadline.
“The time we are taking now to conduct due diligence and best serve the Bloomington community has been extended due to the mayoral administration’s limited substantive collaboration on the issues above. We sincerely hope that going forward we will see true collaboration and a willingness to compromise to address what we believe are serious shortcomings of the proposal. We also believe these issues could have been resolved before the proposal came to the city council, which would have expedited the current process. Closely following city code would have largely avoided these issues that have slowed council approval of the PUD.
“At last week’s council meeting, the mayor said: ‘What builds housing and what improves community is the decision to work together in good faith with great planning for the common good.’ We fully agree. We are indeed ready and eager to work together in good faith, but we should not be expected to simply rubber stamp whatever comes to us. Council approval of PUDs is required for a reason, and we believe the opportunity for real input as elected representatives of the community is essential. We ask again for the mayor to meaningfully collaborate and compromise so that we can move forward together for Bloomington.”
Note: Councilmember Flaherty authored this release. All councilmembers were individually invited to sign on.
