Special meeting: Bloomington historic preservation group to consider ‘time capsule’ as protected district
A special meeting of Bloomington’s historic preservation commission (HPC) has been set for Aug. 12.
The purpose of the meeting is to consider an application to designate about 125 acres in the eastern central part of the city as a historic conservation district.
The proposal is to establish most of the Green Acres neighborhood as a conservation district. In rough terms, the proposed conservation district is bounded on the west by Indiana University’s campus, on the north and east by the SR 46 bypass, and on the south by 3rd Street.
If the HPC approves the application, and forwards a positive recommendation to the city council, it will be up to the city’s nine-member legislative body to decide.
After three years, a conservation district is elevated to a historic district, unless a majority of property owners object to the elevation. In a historic district, any exterior alterations are subject to review by the city’s HPC. In a conservation district, it’s just moving or demolishing buildings, or constructing new buildings that are subject to HPC review.
Why a special meeting?
The next regular meeting of the HPC falls on Aug. 8. But the HPC’s rules of procedure require any request for the commission’s consideration be filed at least 14 days before the meeting when the request is to be heard.
So the Green Acres application would have had to be submitted by July 25 in order to be heard at the Aug. 8 meeting.
At its regular meeting on Thursday, July 25, the HPC voted to set a special meeting for Aug. 12. That makes the Green Acres application deadline Monday, July 29.
Why didn’t the HPC want to wait until its regular meeting on Aug. 22 to hear the Green Acres application?
The reason is connected to the impetus for neighborhood residents to push for a conservation district—which is the possible demolition of four houses along Jefferson Street and a fifth one on 7th Street.
Appearing on the HPC’s agenda again last Thursday was the “release” of the demolition delay for the five houses. The release of the demolition delay for the five houses first appeared on the HPC’s agenda for its April 25 meeting.
The release of a delay is a greenlight from the HPC to demolish the structures. The HPC has not yet acted on the request for a release from demolition delay, because the group wants to give residents a chance to apply for a conservation district.
Why is there a “demolition delay” associated with these houses?
It’s because all five houses are “contributing” historic resources, judged by a 2018 resurvey of structures in Monroe County. Any request for a demolition permit for a contributing structure has to wait out a 90-day demolition delay period.
But the director of Bloomington’s HAND (housing and neighborhood development) can exercise discretion to grant a 30-day extension. That’s what HAND director Anna Killion-Hanson did, which extended the demolition delay to Aug. 14—which is more than a week before the Aug. 22 HPC meeting.
That means any action by the HPC on Aug. 22 would be too late to ensure that a demolition permit could not be issued, before city council action to decide the question of a conservation district.
If the HPC were to vote to recommend that Green Acres be established as a conservation district, then the HPC’s vote would come with an action to put the five houses under interim protection against demolition. They would remain under interim protection, until the city council acts on the conservation district one way or another.
Considerations for a conservation district
Considered as individual properties, the five houses that are being considered for release from demolition delay would probably not merit historic protection—that’s reflected in the staff recommendation for each of the five properties on the July 25 agenda.
Bloomington historic preservation program manager Noah Sandweiss recommended granting the release of demolition delays for all five properties.
Based on the descriptions of the five houses in the HPC’s meeting information packets, they’re small, single-story dwellings, built between 1940 and the early 1950s—minimal bungalows or ranches with modest alterations, reflecting common mid-century housing styles. At one point, Indiana University staff or faculty lived in some of them.
Sandweiss will also be making a recommendation on the application for the Green Acres conservation district. At a Saturday (July 27) meeting of Green Acres residents about the application, The B Square asked Sandweiss what his recommendation would be. Sandweiss indicated he could not say, because he has not yet seen the completed application as submitted.
The consideration for an individual property is not the same as for a broader area.
At Saturday’s meeting, which was held at the Christian Science Church on 3rd Street, Green Acres resident Margaret Menge summarized the technical grounds for designating the proposed area as a conservation district. From Bloomington’s municipal code, here’s the wording of some of the criteria that Menge said would be cited in the application.
(A) Has significant character, interest, or value as part of the development, heritage, or cultural characteristics of the city, state, or nation; or is associated with a person who played a significant role in local, state, or national history; or
…
(C) Exemplifies the cultural, political, economic, social or historic heritage of the community;
Menge is serving on a committee that is putting together the application. Also serving on the committee are Lois Sabo-Skelton, Ann Kreilkamp, and Marines Fornerino.
Menge read aloud from some of the passages to be included in the application:
Through the architecture alone, you will find yourself walking through the 1920s, 30s, and 40s and will experience history developing into the 1960s. You will sense the importance of the interplay between Bloomington and Indiana University, then and now a complex relationship embodied by the students, faculty and staff who have lived and still live in the area.
At Saturday’s meeting, Kreilkamp read aloud from a description that she wrote about the neighborhood: “…Green Acres sits even now as a post-World War II time capsule memorializing a precious moment in time when horizons never looked brighter, and after a terrible war, all was right with the world.”
In her remarks on Saturday, Sabo-Skelton highlighted the sense of community that has developed between residents of owner-occupied houses and renters. There are more renters than homeowners who live in Green Acres, she said. But when she has talked to renters, many of whom are students, they tell her they don’t want to live in a large apartment complex.
Sabo-Skelton told the group that when she talks to renters about why they want to live in Green Acres, they say: “We want to live in a little house.” Often it’s because they want to be able to keep a dog, which is more difficult in a large apartment building, Sabo-Skelton said.
Sabo-Skelton described the goal of establishing the conservation district as protecting the neighborhood. She does not want to see large apartment complexes get built in Green Acres. She specifically mentioned the kind of project that was built on the the former Kmart site. The District at Latimer Square project, with its 900 bedrooms, was approved in 2021, and is now complete.
Sabo-Skelton put it like this: “There’s nobody that I’ve talked to that hasn’t talked about what we call the ‘Kmart disaster’.” She added, “We just don’t want something like that in our backyard.”
Sabo-Skelton said “We’ll wake up one morning and the bulldozers will be there. And we will be gone.”
By Saturday, the time and place for the HPC’s special meeting on Aug. 12 had not yet been dialed in for sure. But it sounds likely that the time could be 5 p.m. with city council chambers as the location.
Map
Distributed at Saturday’s meeting was a map of the proposed Green Acres conservation district showing locations of historic resources that are included in the 2018 Local Historic Resurvey completed by Bloomington Restoration Inc (BRI) for the City of Bloomington Housing and Neighborhood Development (HAND) Department. The 2018 study was a resurvey of the Historic Sites and Structure Inventory conducted by the State of Indiana Department of Natural Resources in 2014.
There are four classifications for properties in the inventory. From the methodology section for the study:
Outstanding (O): The property has enough historic or architectural significance that it is already listed, or may be eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. “Outstanding” resources can be of local, state, or national importance.
Notable (N): The property did not quite merit an “Outstanding” rating but still is above average in its importance. Further research may reveal that the property is eligible for National Register listing.
Contributing (C): The property met the basic inventory criterion of 40 years, but that it is not important enough to stand on its own as individually “Outstanding” or “Notable.” Such resources are important to the density of continuity of an area’s historic fabric. “Contributing” properties may appear in the National Register if they are part of a historic district but do not usually qualify individually.
Non-Contributing (NC): These are not included in the inventory unless they are located within a historic district. Such properties are usually built after the 40-year threshold, are older structures that have undergone major alterations and lost historic character, or are otherwise incompatible with their historical surroundings. These properties are not eligible for the National Register.
The B Square counted 1 “outstanding” property, 5 “notable” properties, 183 “contributing properties”, and 11 “non-contributing” properties.
The B Square also counted 244 properties in the proposed Green Acres district that are not in the survey inventory. The B Square assigned blue dots to those properties not listed in the inventory.
The maps included in this article are screen shots from a dynamic map the B Square built using Google Maps. It includes the point data from the 2018 resurvey of historic resources in Bloomington. Layers in the dynamic map can be toggled on and off in the left sidebar.
