Bloomington council approves citywide zoning changes 5–3, eliminates minimums for motor-vehicle parking

After more than two and a half hours of discussion Wednesday night, Bloomington’s city council voted 5–3 to approve a package of zoning changes aimed at making small-scale housing development easier, reducing some minimum lot dimensions, and eliminating minimum off-street parking requirements for motor vehicles.

Voting for the ordinance were Isak Asare, Matt Flaherty, Isabel Piedmont-Smith, Kate Rosenbarger and Hopi Stosberg. Voting against it were Courtney Daily, Dave Rollo and Andy Ruff. The tally did not add to nine because Sydney Zulich was absent.

The final vote on the ordinance came at 10:30 p.m., roughly two and a half hours after the council began its consideration of the ordinance, which included amendments approved Wednesday night.

Flaherty was the council sponsor and the main advocate for the ordinance. Rollo was a voice of opposition.

It was in May when the council initiated the ordinance with the UDO amendments using its authority under Indiana’s state zoning code. The council’s resolution put the ball in the plan commission’s court, and the plan commission batted it back to the council in August with a recommendation on the resulting package that passed on a 6–2 vote.

The plan commission version would already have substantially reduced minimum lot sizes and widths in several residential districts, eliminated minimum lot sizes in the RM and RH multifamily districts, changed subdivision standards, established electrification requirements for projects using the city’s sustainable-development incentives.

An amendment to the ordinance, proposed by Flaherty on Wednesday night, and adopted by the council on a split vote, reduced the R3 and R4 minimum lot area further still. Under the amendment, lots in those zoning districts dropped from the plan commission’s proposed 2,500 square feet to 2,000 square feet. Flaherty’s amendment also reduced the minimum lot width from 30 feet to 25 feet.

The ordinance also eliminated motor-vehicle parking minimums, which produced one of the clearest policy divisions of the night.

Parking minimums

As recommended by the plan commission, the ordinance eliminated minimum requirements for motor-vehicle parking citywide. It does not prohibit developers from building parking or reduce maximum parking allowances. Flaherty described the change as giving builders discretion to provide the amount of parking their projects actually need, instead of requiring a minimum amount through city zoning code.

Piedmont-Smith offered an amendment that would have kept most existing parking minimums. Her proposal would have eliminated the minimums only for live-work dwellings, cottage developments, mobile-home parks, noncommercial urban agriculture and student housing or dormitories.

In support of her proposal, Piedmont-Smith pointed to older residential neighborhoods with narrow streets, including areas where redevelopment has brought duplexes with more bedrooms and more vehicles. She said Bloomington needs a broader solution for managing on-street parking, potentially including charging residents for use of scarce curb space, but argued that eliminating parking minimums before such a system is in place could make existing problems worse.

Flaherty agreed that Bloomington’s on-street parking system needs additional changes, but disagreed about using zoning requirements to address those problems. He said neighborhood parking permits, pricing, enforcement and restrictions on parking along especially narrow streets are more direct tools.

“The idea that we’re going to prioritize incumbents, some incumbent preferences on how they want to store their private cars on public space over housing affordability and housing development,” Flaherty said, “I think is just a misguided policy aim.”

Rollo supported Piedmont-Smith’s amendment. He said Bloomington is unusual because of the size of Indiana University’s student population and the number of students who live off campus and bring cars with them. Residents of older neighborhoods where houses were built without much off-street parking are already competing for curb space, he said.

Stosberg described herself as torn. She pointed to a cluster of newly constructed duplexes in her District 3 where the number of residents has increased sharply and where student vehicles have generated substantial parking pressure. At the same time, she said, she accepted the argument that requiring parking adds to the cost of multifamily housing.

Piedmont-Smith’s amendment on parking minimums failed on a 4–4 vote. It had support only from Piedmont-Smith, Stosberg, Ruff, and Rollo. That left the citywide elimination of motor-vehicle parking minimums as a part of the ordinance.

Bicycle parking minimums, tree-preservation

The council went the opposite direction on bicycles. An amendment from Stosberg restored the UDO’s existing bicycle-parking minimums, which the plan commission had voted to eliminate.

Flaherty supported restoring them, saying that bicycle parking is much less expensive to provide than automobile parking and that encouraging bicycling is an explicit city transportation goal. The amendment passed unanimously among the eight councilmembers present.

The council also unanimously approved a Piedmont-Smith amendment restoring tree-preservation requirements on small existing R3 and R4 lots that the plan commission version would have exempted.

Multi-topic amendment

Flaherty’s proposed amendment that further reduced lot sizes and widths encompassed several other topics. They included exempting PUDs consisting of 100% affordable housing from the sustainability-incentive requirements and spelling out exceptions to the electrification standard for commercial kitchens, technical or grid constraints, and backup power for critical services.

At the request of Rollo and Ruff, Flaherty’s amendment was divided into three questions. The first question covered the smaller R3 and R4 lot dimensions and elimination of minimum lot dimensions in MN and MM zoning districts. Rollo and Ruff initially voted for that, which meant the tally was 7–1 with Daily as the lone dissenter.

Later, Rollo and Ruff indicated that they had not understood which question was in front of the council at the time, and wanted to change their votes from yes to no. Because changing their votes did not alter the outcome, under local law the council was able to allow the corrections without a formal reconsideration. The corrected tally was 5–3: Asare, Flaherty, Piedmont-Smith, Rosenbarger and Stosberg voted yes; Daily, Rollo and Ruff voted no.

The second question arising out of Flaherty’s amendment, which exempted PUDs with 100% affordable housing from the sustainability requirements, passed 8–0. Habitat for Humanity of Monroe County’s Kari Bennett had told the council that Habitat supported the exemption as well as the smaller lot dimensions, which she said could make it possible to build more affordable homes on residential land.

The third question, setting out specific exceptions to the electrification standard, also passed.

Piedmont-Smith’s final amendment clarified subdivision wording governing access to a newly created lot behind an existing one. The ordinance allows one new lot to be reached through a 6-foot-wide no-build easement, subject to distance and fire-access requirements, or through a 20-foot access easement and fire-access road meeting state fire code. That amendment also passed.

From the public mic

Public comment reflected essentially the same split as the council discussion.

Greg Alexander urged approval, arguing that Bloomington zoning has blocked developers and individual landowners who would otherwise build smaller homes on smaller lots. He said the ordinance would not solve Bloomington’s housing problems, but would incrementally allow more supply and make small-scale development possible without going through a PUD process.

Kari Bennett, speaking for Habitat for Humanity, likewise supported the ordinance and asked the council to consider still more flexibility in the future, including smaller rear setbacks and ways to make greater use of alleys for access.

Others urged the council to slow down. Kathy Berry said the city should allow more time to see the effects of UDO changes adopted beginning in 2021, before making another substantial round of changes. She also pushed back against framing parking chiefly as space devoted to cars, saying access to a vehicle can be essential to the way people organize work and family responsibilities.

Eric Ost urged postponement until Oct. 14 so the council could consider the ordinance alongside another set of UDO amendments still moving through the plan commission. He said that the combined changes could increase redevelopment pressure on existing lower-cost houses.

Former councilmember Steve Volan, now a member of the city transportation commission and speaking for himself, urged the council not to let parking policy determine housing policy. He said that shortages of curb parking should instead be handled through permit pricing. He suggested “parking benefit districts,” where revenue above the cost of managing parking could be reinvested in the neighborhood where it is collected.

Final councilmember thoughts

In his final remarks before the vote, Rollo said his opposition went beyond parking. He contended that allowing lots to be subdivided more easily could increase the value of properties with modest houses as redevelopment sites, encouraging investors to replace relatively inexpensive houses with higher-rent units. He said some lots, like particularly oversized or corner lots, could be good candidates for subdivision. But he called the citywide approach too broad.

Flaherty closed by acknowledging that the ordinance did not address every obstacle to small-lot housing. He said, for example, that he had intended to propose reducing rear setbacks further, but had not gotten that provision into his amendment. Those details could be revisited later, he said.

Flaherty and the ordinance’s supporters argued that allowing smaller lots, eliminating mandatory vehicle parking and loosening other development constraints would remove barriers to additional housing.

Rollo contended that in Bloomington’s particular housing market, the same changes could make existing modest properties more valuable for redevelopment without ensuring that the housing replacing them would be less expensive.

The council sided with Flaherty’s approach by a 5–3 tally.