Permanent sign for Inkwell made possible by Bloomington’s hearing officer
Since fall of 2021, temporary banners have served as signage for Inkwell Bakery and Cafe’s second location at Woodlawn and Atwater avenues, on the southwestern edge of Indiana University’s Bloomington campus.
Those banners can now be swapped out for permanent signs, based on Wednesday’s action by the city of Bloomington’s hearing officer, Ryan Robling.
What Robling approved at Wednesday’s hearing was a conditional use for the property as a restaurant—which might not seem like it is related to signs.
A conditional use is one that is not allowed outright in the zoning district, but can be allowed if the use is approved by the board of zoning appeals or the hearing officer. The property is located in a residential high-density (RH) zoning district.
Another aspect of the approval that might seem strange is the fact that Inkwell has already been operating as a restaurant at the location for more than two years. And before that, a Subway sandwich shop was in business there since at least the mid-1990s.
In fact, according to zoning planner Gabriel Holbrow, who presented the staff report to Robling, the location has been used as a restaurant since the at least the 1970s, possibly even the late 1960s.
The restaurant use probably doesn’t go back much before that. An aerial photo from 1961 shows what looks like a single-family house at that location.
Why did the property need approval for use as a restaurant, when it was already being used that way? The short answer: Because Inkwell wanted a bigger sign than would be allowed without the conditional use approval.
Independent of the sign issue, the location could have continued indefinitely as it is, with Inkwell as the tenant occupying the ground floor space of the 10-unit apartment building, Holbrow said. That’s even though the location had never received the required conditional use approval, which would have been required for the residential high-density (RH) zoning district.
Up to now, the restaurant use by Inkwell was allowed as a “lawful non-conforming use,” Holbrow said. And if Inkwell had wanted to install permanent signs that totalled less than 10 square feet, that would have been allowed in the RH district for a lawful non-conforming use. But Inkwell wants to install permanent signs that total 28 square feet.
To get more than 10 square feet, the restaurant use would have to be a “conforming use,” which would mean getting the required conditional use approval. That was the point of Inkwell’s petition.
With the conditional use of the property as a restaurant, Inkwell is allowed up to 100 square feet of wall signage, but Inkwell doesn’t want anything that big.
Co-owner of Inkwell, Tracy Gates, who attended the meeting on the Zoom video conferencing platform, did not have anything to add to Holbrow’s report. Gates just said that Inkwell wants signage that isn’t “over the top, but that will blend with the building and environment.”
Some back-and-forth between Holbrow and Robling established that the conditional use was not tied to Inkwell as the operator, but rather only to the property. Robling then approved the conditional use.
The hearing officer serves as a kind of one-person version of the five-member board of zoning appeals (BZA). If the planning director, or the hearing officer themself, wants to punt a case to the BZA, they can do that. The hearing officer is appointed by the plan commission, and is required to be a planning department staff member under the plan commission’s rules. Robling is the department’s planning services manager.
