Group home rezone request withdrawn before hearing by Bloomington plan commission
A rezone request from The Indiana Center for Recovery, to allow construction of some group homes in central Bloomington, has been withdrawn.
At the first hearing of the ICR petition in February, the planning staff recommendation had been to continue it to the required second hearing.
But the staff recommendation for Monday night’s second hearing had been to forward the rezone request to the city council with a negative recommendation.
Several minutes before the plan commission’s Monday meeting started, Bloomington development services manager Jackie Scanlan told those who had arrived at city hall to watch the ICR hearing that the petition had been withdrawn.
Scanlan confirmed to The B Square that ICR had communicated its withdrawal of the petition—it was not just a request for a continuation.
Scanlan said that if ICR wants to build the group homes near Walker and 1st Streets, then ICR will have to file a new petition, starting from scratch.
The ICR wants the rezone so that it can build two group home facilities—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.
Based on deliberations by the plan commission at February’s first hearing, a positive recommendation to the city council did not seem likely. The rezone would have needed five votes of support out of nine members on the city council. At least two councilmembers would have been unlikely to support the rezone.
At the February hearing, Hopi Stosberg, who is the city council’s representative to the plan commission, said that the requested rezone “feels like a step back instead of a step forward.” At the February plan commission hearing, councilmember Isabel Piedmont-Smith spoke from the public mic against the ICR rezone.
At the February hearing, Piedmont-Smith said, “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.
The ICR wants the land to be rezoned, in order to use the land for the purpose of treating patients in a group home. The land is currently currently designated as R3 (residential small lot), which does not include group care homes as an allowable use.
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.
The planning staff’s analysis of the rezone request includes the idea that a zoning district that allows for uses as intense as the MH district does, is not appropriate for a location deep inside a neighborhood.
From the staff report: “While multi-family style buildings are allowed and appropriate in some locations within the former [IU Health hospital] area, the location of these properties for a Medical zoning district that is not on a high volume street and buried within a neighborhood may not be an appropriate location for this higher intensity zoning district.”
The ICR’s legal position is 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, the ICR has conveyed in a letter from its attorney to the plan commission 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 planning staff report distinguishes between ICR’s proposed use and the zoning district that ICR has requested in order to achieve that use.
From the planning staff report: “The Department recognizes that the particular desired use, as opposed to the zoning district requested, is one that can be beneficial to the community and city as a whole. However, the Department has concerns about whether or not the zoning district that is being requested is supported by the Comprehensive Plan at this location.”
If ICR does bring back a new petition for the same site, one approach could be to request a different zoning district. The reason that ICR asked for a rezone to MH (mixed use health care) is because that zoning district includes group care homes as an allowed use in Bloomington’s unified development ordinance (UDO)—with some use-specific standards.
But when weighing the appropriateness of a rezone request, the plan commission does not just weigh the appropriateness of the intended use for the land that the rezone petitioner is proposing.
That’s because any other use of the land that is allowed in the requested zoning district would also be allowed, even if the petitioner does not intend to take advantage of those uses.
There are other mixed-use zoning districts, besides MH, that allow group care homes. A new petition from ICR might ask for a rezone to one of those other districts.
Still, all of the other districts that allow group care homes include use-specific standards. One of those standards in Bloomington’s UDO says: “No Group Care Home shall be located within 300 feet of any other Group Care Home.” That standard does not look like it could be met by the ICR’s intended use, which is to put two group homes across the street from each other.
