140-acre rezone in southwest part of town OK’d by Bloomington city council on 7–2 vote
A rezone request for about 140 acres in the southwest part of Bloomington has been approved on a 7–2 vote of the city council.
Dissenting on the vote were Dave Rollo and Andy Ruff.
The vote came at around quarter to midnight on Wednesday, after deliberations that started around 9 p.m. Rollo wound up being denied a chance to give final comment, when his colleagues voted to end the discussion before he had a turn.
It was the third meeting for the council’s consideration of the Summit District planned unit development (PUD), which could allow construction of an estimated 4,250 units of housing in five new neighborhoods, to be built over the course of the next 10 years.
A PUD zoning district is a kind of customized zoning that uses an existing zoning district as a baseline, but diverges from it, in order to deal with challenges that are unique to the district.
The council had previously discussed Summit District two weeks ago, on May 1 and two weeks before that, on April 17.
At the start of the council’s deliberations on the PUD, Travis Vencel, with Sullivan Development, asked the council to put the project to a vote that night. Also attending Wednesday’s meeting on behalf of the rezone was Angela Parker, legal counsel for Sudbury Associates.
On Wednesday, when council questions had been exhausted and public commentary had run its course, council president Isabel Piedmont-Smith called for final comments from councilmembers. Just three councilmembers—Hopi Stosberg, Sydney Zulich and Andy Ruff—had a chance to share their final thoughts.
Before Ruff’s 7 minutes of remarks concluded, councilmember Isak Asare tried to get the attention of Piedmont-Smith who was chairing the meeting, but was not recognized by the chair.
But when Ruff concluded, at around 11:45 p.m., Asare was recognized. He then made a motion to call the question. Based on B Square records, that motion has not been used by a Bloomington city councilmember in at least four years.
Under Robert’s Rules, a motion to call the question can’t be debated, and if it is supported with a two-thirds majority, ends discussion of the question and puts the item to a vote.
Seconding Asare’s motion to end discussion was councilmember Sydney Zulich.
The vote to end discussion was 7–2 with Ruff and Rollo dissenting. When his turn in the roll call came, Rollo said, “Absolutely not!”
When Piedmont-Smith announced the 7–2 tally, which meant the council was then set to take the final vote, Rollo said, “We have never concluded something of this magnitude…without thoroughly hearing from our colleagues in terms of final comment.”
Rollo continued, “This is shocking to me. It’s an affront.” Rollo added, “Proceed if you want. I object.”
Piedmont-Smith told Rollo that the vote was in favor of calling the question, so it would proceed to a vote. Rollo’s final word on the topic was: “I’m so disappointed in my colleagues.”
The final 7–2 vote on the PUD was the same as the vote on calling the question.
The same split was seen on an earlier motion—which came around 11 p.m.—to postpone the PUD to the council’s June 5 meeting. Rollo and Ruff were the only councilmembers supporting postponement.
The move to shut down discussion, before Rollo could have a turn to speak, prevented any possibility that Rollo could have pushed the meeting past midnight during his speaking turn. After midnight, any two councilmembers can, under Bloomington’s city code, end a meeting on the spot, with one making a motion to adjourn and the other seconding the motion.
Rollo did not give any indication that he was trying to prolong the meeting as much as possible. Earlier in the meeting he had declined to pursue additional questions, saying, “I sense the temperament of the council.”
On Wednesday, the council approved nine reasonable conditions that will be incorporated by the planning staff into the text of the PUD. The topics of the conditions included: caps on total units; onsite recycling services; home ownership options; affordability requirements; steep slopes; accessory uses; and height.
The reasonable condition addressing home ownership requires at least 20 percent of housing units in each of the five neighborhoods in the PUD, and at least 40 percent of housing units throughout the entire PUD, to be developed to enable individual ownership.
Rollo had seen an earlier version of that reasonable condition, and was surprised by a last-minute change, made an hour before the council met, that had reduced the required fraction of units to 40 percent.
Councilmember Matt Flaherty, who worked on the reasonable condition with Hopi Stosberg, said he regretted that Rollo had only recently learned of the change. But that was not enough to persuade Flaherty to agree to a postponement of the PUD, when that vote came.
Counting the three reasonable conditions that the council approved at its April 17 meeting, the PUD wound up being approved with 12 reasonable conditions.
The reasonable condition on affordability requires at least 15 percent of the units that are built to meet the permanent affordability standard, by being income restricted to households earning below 100 percent of the HUD AMI for Monroe County, Indiana. That’s the requirement through Jan. 1, 2027.
After Jan. 1, 2027, the Summit District PUD has to conform to whatever affordability requirements are included in Bloomington’s unified development ordinance, as amended by that time. The idea behind the timing requirement is that the council could enact more stringent affordability requirements in the next two and a half years.
Public comment on Wednesday, about the various reasonable conditions and the Summit District PUD as a whole, featured themes familiar from the first of the plan commission hearings, which started in July 2023. Opponents pointed to the sheer scale, environmental impact, impact on traffic, and concerns about the capacity of the sewer system. Supporters focused on the need for additional housing supply in Bloomington.
In Ruff’s comments explaining his vote against the project, he quoted from the city’s comprehensive plan on the topic of “growth”:
First, when it comes to the use of the terms “growth” and “development” throughout the document, when they are used in the quantitative context of physical growth (expansion of population and/or our built environment, these terms are to be interpreted as value-neutral. No part of this Plan or Vision should be construed as advocacy for population growth, growth of our built environment, or growth in consumption as goals or end points in themselves. Rather, the vision of growth and development for our community is a qualitative one. Qualitative growth includes: growth in social and economic equity; growth in environmental quality and integrity; growth in community health; growth in opportunities for quality education, quality employment, and civic engagement; and, growth in access to amenities for all. This is what we mean by “economic development.” Simple physical growth should not be confused with economic development nor be understood as a means to foster economic development. It is the intent of the Council that this position on growth and development shall inform the interpretation of this Plan.
Ruff talked about the idea of growth. ”You can’t grow indefinitely in a finite environment,” Ruff said. Ruff said that the reasonable conditions had improved the rezone proposal, but in the end he had too many general concerns about its magnitude.
Stosberg talked about the many benefits that the Summit District PUD would provide to Bloomington.The project would deliver diverse housing options by restarting a development from 25 years ago, Stosberg said.
As a benefit, Stosberg also named transportation connections through the property from the new streets that would be built. Stosberg also pointed to the land that would be donated to the city for a fire station. Stosberg also pointed to a multi-use trail connecting to the B-Line and Switchyard Park.
Stosberg wrapped up that line of thinking by saying: “So I think that Bloomington is actually getting a whole lot of benefit from this development.”
