Bloomington City Council updated the Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) Wednesday, and this year’s amendments are not as controversial as ones proposed in the past.
Council also changed several rules for its redistricting commission for a second time.
Student housing size
The UDO is a document that sets the local zoning and building laws. It was adopted by the city council in 2019 but is considered a living document through amendments.
The most notable change proposed this year by planning staff relates to sustainability incentives and floor plate maximums on student housing developments.
Currently, developers of multifamily or student housing projects can add an additional floor and increase a building's footprint if it meets the affordability or sustainability incentive category. However, city staff said developers only use the sustainability incentives.
“The sustainable development incentives may be too lax, too easy to get,” development services manager Jackie Scanlan said.
Under the new changes, project developers will need to fulfill both categories if they want to maximize a project’s height and floor plate size.
“You can do either sustainability or affordability and you get a little bump,” planning and transportation director Scott Robinson said. “If you do both, you get a much bigger bump.”
Councilmember Matt Flaherty said maximum building width, as opposed to floor plate size, could control monotony in design.
“That’s the real driver of what a pedestrian sees,” he said.
Council president Susan Sandberg said some residents are concerned about the size of housing developments. She said it is somewhat ironic to drive by Verve, the new student housing off North Walnut Street, because she does not think of either ‘affordability’ or ‘sustainability’ when she sees the project.
“This is, I think, a little out of what many people have envisioned when we talk about the need for density that is hopefully is going to bring price points down,” she said.
Councilmember Steve Volan said people should not be quick to criticize a housing development’s height.
“One person’s horror at a tall building is another person’s ‘oh that’s fine we need more density,’” he said. “I don’t know if everybody in Bloomington objects to the size of that building.”
However, Volan agreed with his colleagues in saying building width ought to be more of a concern than height.
“Maybe we’ve been upset with the wrong things for a while, maybe extra floors aren’t the issue,” he said. “It’s the massing of a building like Evolve or Smallwood- the sheer width of it, combined with its height.”
Council also changed what triggers a ‘student housing’ classification.
Any multifamily development with more than 33 percent three-bedroom units was automatically labeled student housing in the previous UDO.
“We have had a number of smaller scale developments where we think that scope is a little big, capturing developments that weren’t intended to be captured for student housing or dormitory,” Scanlan said.
Under the new changes, these developments must also have a minimum of 10 units, with at least 33 percent still designated as three bedrooms units.
The plan commission must now ratify several of council’s updates June 13.
Council unanimously approved new requirements for the Citizen’s Redistricting and Advisory Commission after failing to receive enough eligible applications. Council previously loosened its own requirements in January.
The goal of the commission is to make recommendations regarding decennial redistricting to create six council districts by the end of 2022.
Under the requirements, council needs five committee members: two Republicans, two Democrats, and one independent. However, one member of each major party needs to be a full-time Indiana University student who lived inside city limits and voted in one of the last two general elections.
“This is a big barrier to students, who in the last general election in 2020, many of those students had left Bloomington during the pandemic,” council attorney Stephen Lucas said.
Lucas said council is struggling to find student applicants, specifically Republican students.
However, council removed several requirements:
Members no longer need to be registered voters residing in city limits
Members no longer need to have voted as a city resident in a general election
Members can now have held or ran for public office in the past 10 years (current office holders are still ineligible)
Each seat no longer requires two eligible applicants
