Old Colonial Crest redux: Bloomington OKs mostly same site plan for 671-bedroom student-oriented housing project, but under different zoning

Approved by Bloomington’s plan commission on Monday night was a site plan for a project that would demolish the old Colonial Crest apartment complex, now called The Arch, on the north side of town.

In the place of 206 apartments and 393 bedrooms, spread across 15 separate two-story buildings, the developer plans to construct four residential buildings with a total of 241 apartments and 675 bedrooms, according to a letter from Smith Design Group, which is the consultant for the Aspen TOPCO II Acquisitions project.

That nets roughly 270 more bedrooms on the same site.

It’s basically the same site plan that the plan commission approved in mid-June.

According to Bloomington senior zoning planner Eric Greulich, the big difference between the version approved by the plan commission on Monday, compared to what was approved three months ago, is the lack of any new public roads proposed inside the project site.

Instead, Greulich said, one long driveway will wind through the site, with perpendicular parking off the driveway. A total of 495 parking spaces is included in the site plan.

The zoning that was in place when the previous site plan was submitted was residential high-density multifamily (RH). When the city council approved the changes to the city’s zoning map and the map was ratified by the plan commission earlier this year, the property was rezoned to mixed-use student housing (MS).

That means the project is using the sustainable development incentive for the MS district in the new unified development ordinance (UDO) to use building footprints bigger than 20,000 square feet.

The project will meet the sustainable development condition by achieving a Silver designation from the National Green Building Council. That’s different from LEED certification. The developer will have to submit the Silver certification, before getting an occupancy permit, according to Greulich’s memo to the plan commission.

Another difference between the two site plans is the addition of a fourth, shorter two-story building on the southern part of the site. Two of the other three buildings are four-story structures. The third is a five-story building. The two-story building would include four five-bedroom apartments.

The site plan was not controversial among plan commissioners, who gave it unanimous approval. Construction is expected to start in April 2022 and finish by August 2024.