A rezone request from the Indiana Center for Recovery (ICR) will get a second hearing at the next scheduled meeting of Bloomington’s plan commission, on March 11.
But based on Monday night’s deliberations, in March it will be a tough slog for ICR to win a recommendation of approval from the plan commission for its rezone request.
The center would like to build two group home facilities in central Bloomington, near Walker and 1st Streets—one on the north side of West 1st Street, and the other on the south side. The homes would be used for treating patients with substance use disorders and mental and behavioral health conditions.
But to use the land for the purpose of treating patients in a group home would require a rezone of the property, which is currently designated as R3 (residential small lot).
The ICR wants the land rezoned to MH (mixed use healthcare), which was previously the zoning district for the property, before it was rezoned from MH to R3 as a part of the 2021 adoption of a new zoning map for the city.
It is Bloomington’s city council that will have the final say on ICR’s requested rezoning—even if the plan commission’s recommendation is something the council can weigh.
But looks likely that at least two councilmembers would vote against the rezone, if the question is eventually put in front of them. On Monday, councilmember Isabel Piedmont-Smith spoke from the public mic, already in opposition to the rezone proposal.
Hopi Stosberg, who is the city council’s appointed to the plan commission, said that the requested rezone “feels like a step back instead of a step forward.”
On the plan commission, vice president Jillian Kinzie said the proposal “seems incompatible with what we’ve outlined in the comp[rehensive] plan.”
Even though their recommendation for Monday was simply to continue the petition to the required second hearing at its next meeting, planning staff are not in support of the rezone.
On Monday, the staff report on the proposal was presented by senior zoning planner Eric Greulich. He indicated that just from the zoning perspective, the problem identified for MH district is that it does not support the city’s goal of increasing housing in the area—in particular owner-occupied housing.
While the MH district does allow for detached single-family houses, that comes with a use-specific standard that they’re allowed only on lots that were lawfully established before Feb. 12, 2007. (It is presumably a pure coincidence that the date of Monday’s hearing was also Feb. 12, but 17 years later.)
In contrast to the proposed MH zoning district, the current R3 zoning also allows for duplexes and for cottage development dwellings, both as conditional uses.
Even if a group home for substance use treatment were deemed a suitable use for the location, by adopting the MH zoning, the city would be preventing the area from serving the future land use goals that are reflected in the city’s comprehensive plan, Greulich indicated.
Greulich indicated that of the possible zoning districts available in the city’s unified development ordinance (UDO), MH is not an ideal choice—if the goal is simply to allow construction of a group home to treat substance use disorders. Every other zoning district—besides the basic residential districts of R1, R2, and R3—allow the kind of group home that ICR wants to build, Greulich said.
What size buildings is ICR looking to build? The ICR describes the proposed building on the north side of the street like this:
- North first floor: 2 one-bedroom units, 7 two-bedroom units, 4 offices and 2 meeting rooms.
- North second floor: 3 one-bedroom units and 8 two-bedroom units
- North third floor: 3 one-bedroom units, 8 two-bedroom units
For the building on the north side of the street, that’s a total of 31 units and 54 bedrooms with 4 offices, and 2 meeting rooms.
The Center for Recovery describes the building on the south side of the street like this:
- South first floor: 4 one-bedroom units, 2 two-bedroom units, 1 office, and 2 meeting rooms.
- South second floor: 4 one-bedroom units and 3 two-bedroom units.
For the building on the south side of the street, that’s a total of 13 units and 18 bedrooms with 1 office and 2 meeting rooms.
Except for R1, R2, and R3, pretty much any other zoning district besides MH could be considered, Greulich said, when it comes to allowing large group homes. Greulich pointed out that while MH zoning still exists in the text of the city’s unified development ordinance (UDO), it has been completely eliminated from the zoning map.
So if the real estate that is the subject of ICR’s request were rezoned to MH, Greulich said, it would be the only land in all of Bloomington with that zoning designation.
When IU Health decided in 2015 to build its new hospital on land owned by Indiana University out on the SR 46 bypass, Bloomington did not see a need to rezone that area to MH—because it was already zoned as institutional, Greulich said.
Factoring into the current discussion on the ICR rezone request is the fact that IU Health hospital, which occupied the area north and east of ICR’s proposed 1st Street rezone, has been demolished as a part of the city’s effort to redevelop the area. The city purchased the property from IU Health in a $6.5 million deal, and has master planned and zoned the area as a new, yet-to-be-built neighborhood, called Hopewell.
On Monday, plan commission president Brad Wisler asked why the MH district even exists in the text of the UDO, if there are no land areas on the city zoning map with that designation. Greulich told Wisler that it might well be that MH district is no longer needed in the UDO text, either. The one use that only the MH would allow is a hospital, Greulich said. All of the various medical clinics and related offices are allowed under the MC (mixed-use corridor) zoning district.
From the perspective of ICR, the MH zoning district is the right one to request for a rezone, because that’s how it was zoned before 2021, when the city overhauled the zoning map.
Legal counsel for ICR, Cheyenne Riker, who joined Monday’s meeting on the Zoom video conference platform, said, “We’re just asking to be placed back where we were, as was suggested back in 2021, when we went through this remapping process.” Riker’s reference was to the fact that ICR objected to the comprehensive redrawing of the map at that time, which included a rezone of its property from MH to R3—but had been told it could later request a rezone of its property.
At Monday’s meeting, Riker did not raise any of the legal issues that he conveyed in an early December letter to the plan commission, which laid out ICR’s view that the 2021 change was a “spot zoning” of the property. The term “spot zoning” describes a situation where property is unlawfully singled out for different treatment from surrounding land.
In addition to its contention that the 2021 was an unlawful rezoning of the property, ICR takes the legal position that its patients fall within a protected class. That’s a class of people with disabilities—as defined under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Fair Housing Act—who have substance use disorder, and mental or behavioral health conditions.
The idea that the requested rezone does not meet the city’s goals for increasing housing resonated with plan commissioner Jillian Kinzie, who said, “This is a tough one for me, because I don’t see how we can go against what we’ve outlined in the comprehensive plan.”
Kinzie continued, “I know it might seem like a simple request to go back to what it was—that seems like a logical thing to do.” But she added that it’s not as easy as that. She put it like this: “We made a conscious decision as a community that we want more residential units.” About the rezone, she said, “I don’t see how we can do this.”
Speaking from the public mic, Bloomington city councilmember Isabel Piedmont-Smith said she is opposed to the requested rezone, “mainly because it does not fit in with the plans that the city council adopted when we did the new zoning maps and discussed this area moving from a medical use to a more housing focused use.”
Piedmont-Smith added, “To be clear, temporary housing for folks who are getting treatment for substance use disorders, while important, it is not the same as housing. It is not what we consider housing in our comprehensive plan.”
Piedmont-Smith called ICR “a for-profit business” drawing most of its clients outside of Bloomington.
Hopi Stosberg, who is the city council appointee to the plan commission, drew out the point that the two group homes under the zoning requested by ICR would still need a variance. That’s because Bloomington’s UDO has some use-specific standards on group homes that say a group care home cannot be located within 300 feet of any other group care home.
The 300-foot requirement applies across zoning districts, Greulich confirmed, so there is no particular advantage, from the perspective of the 300-foot requirement, to choose MH as the rezone district. Stosberg also expressed concerns about the idea that the massing of large group homes did not serve as a good transition from the trailer park to the south and the area to the north.
Also speaking from the public mic on Monday was Paul Ash, who is a member of the executive committee of the McDoel Gardens Neighborhood Association. The area of the association goes up to 1st Street in its northwest corner. Ash, who followed Piedmont-Smith at the mic, kept his remarks brief: “I could go on, but we just don’t want them here.”
“I could go on, but we just don’t want them here.” -Paul Ash in regards to his fellow citizens, battling addictions. I was waiting, through the whole article, for someone to just put it out there. At least Paul has the guts to be outwardly NIMBY instead of hiding behind the UDO.
Yes…that was a horrible comment. Very disappointing
i’m aghast at the implication that we should expunge health care from our street grid. that’s directly against the comprehensive plan! it was bad enough to lose the hospital, but to systematically and intentionally get rid of the providers that remain would be a real disservice to our city…i don’t need addiction counseling (knock on wood and thank god), but i have picked providers in the past specifically because they’re on 1st street instead of landmark or west of I-69 or east of sare road!
and i’m not very impressed by the opposition i’ve seen. maybe it’s just my perspective, but it looks like Piedmont-Smith is Once Again disappointing the people who actually voted for her with Yet Another failed attempt to offer an olive branch to the NIMBYs who still haven’t forgiven her for saying it might be alright if we have one or two new duplexes per year per neighborhood.
but fundamentally, i don’t know if ICR is a great organization or not. i don’t know if i’d want to go to bat for them, because i don’t know anything about them. but i think Piedmont-Smith did us a good service by framing it as opposition to a “for-profit.” from the conversation on reddit, i can tell a lot of people think that since the ownership/tax structure is “for-profit” that therefore it’s an undesirable competitor to non-profits like Centerstone, Indiana Recovery Alliance, or Beacon/Shalom. people are making the leap to assuming that the people who run these non-profits are opposed to ICR.
i have half a mind to call these guys up and find out if they really do oppose ICR. because i have had the impression from the numerous times i’ve seen people with these groups talk that they want to see a greater diversity of providers. i know in the past, indiana recovery alliance has actually referred patients to ICR. but i am not connected with these people, i don’t know how they really feel about ICR today.
so what i’m saying is, i’m so lazy that i would love to see a reporter run with my idea and call some of these guys up and clear up whether they’re opposed or not nudge nudge 🙂
I think Greg misunderstands my aim. I do not intend to “expunge health care from our street grid,” nor “to systematically and intentionally get rid of the providers that remain.” ICR is welcome to remain and provide the services that many in our community need. But this entity is not welcome to contradict our comp plan for long-term housing in this area.
I am confused as to why the comp plan rezoned this area residential in the first place. It appears that the majority of long-term housing structures around here where torn down within the past few years. This area is mostly medical offices currently, is it not? It seems like the IRC would be an excellent fit this area, way better than long-term housing.
Yes, several older houses with people living in them were torn down **by the IRC** in recent years.
It’s not just ICR that demolishes houses. City government does it, too: https://bsquarebulletin.com/2024/02/06/bloomington-oks-extra-cost-of-asbestos-removal-for-hopewell-demolition-work-set-to-start-friday/
It seems like some context is missing here. I think most of it that I am aware of is from the H-T, although their search engine makes things difficult. I did find an article from June 8, 2018 (‘Bloomington calls off moratorium on addiction treatment centers’).
ICR bought a couple of apartment houses (in 2017?) to use as housing for patients and ran afoul of the fire code by thus converting the structures to institutional use. I couldn’t find the articles, but they ran afoul of the original zoning, too, by having the treatment facility separate from the residential structure but nonetheless claiming to an inpatient facility, or something along those lines.
Whatever the failings of my memory, there is quite a bit of history here. ICR seems to have a relatively expansive view of what regulations allow them to do when compared with the view of those who enforce those regulations.
‘909 recovery’ and ‘1004 recovery’ were the ‘open sesame’ of search phrases in this context. The HT has the following articles:
For-profit addiction treatment center opens, with little fanfare – July 11, 2017
Detox facility proposed for former Hoosier Energy headquarters -December 4, 2017
Recovery center’s housing must be updated or shut down – May 25, 2018
Recovery center appeals zoning decision – June 15, 2018
“On June 5, the city’s planning and transportation department sent notification to the addiction treatment center that it was operating in violation of city zoning laws. A notice of violation said that in order to continue operating, the recovery center would need a conditional use permit from the city, which it did not have.
City inspectors determined that the treatment center at 1004 W. First St. and housing for patients located in an apartment building across the road at 909 W. First St. fit the designation “rehabilitation clinic.” The buildings are in a medical zoning district, where conditional use approval from the BZA is required for drug rehab facilities.
On June 11, the last day to file an appeal, owner Kirill Vesselov did so. Vesselov, who expanded his south Florida addictions treatment business to Bloomington in 2017, filled out and signed two notices seeking BZA review of the planning department’s decision.
During a May 24 phone conversation with the Indiana Center for Recovery’s lawyer, city officials learned Vesselov would not be seeking a conditional use request because the business did not, in his opinion, need one.”
…apparently, they changed their mind…
Addictions clinic gets OK to expand services – September 19, 2019
“By a 4-0 vote, board members approved three conditional use requests that will allow the Indiana Center for Recovery to expand its rehabilitation clinic and facilities along West First Street.
The buildings are located in an area zoned for medical use, but the center needed use variances to perform certain levels of treatment on site.
The opioid addiction treatment facility’s four buildings — a rehabilitation clinic at 1000 W. First St., an office building at 1004 W. First St., an apartment building at 909 W. First St. and a former medical facility at 637 1/2 S. Walker St. — will operate as a addiction recovery “campus” in the neighborhood.”