A three-story 110,000-square-foot self-storage facility can now be built on the vacant lot at 4600 East Morningside Drive, on the eastern eastern edge of Bloomington, north of Bruster’s Real Ice Cream.
Site plan approval for the building, which is proposed by owner Tyler Curry, was given by Bloomington’s plan commission on Monday night. The vote was 5–0 with one abstention.
Because the plan commission needs a majority (5) of its nine members in order to take action, an abstention has the same impact as a no vote.
The absention came from Hopi Stosberg, who connected her decision not to vote yes or no, to a recently installed neighborhood greenway. She called the self-storage facility “autocentric.” saying that she could not in good conscience vote for putting such a facility on a greenway.
Stosberg is the city council’s representative to the plan commission, and the site of the proposed storage facility is District 3, which she represents. Stosberg said she’d heard from many residents who oppose the self-storage facility.
Stosberg also said she could not vote no: “I will be abstaining tonight, because I can’t really vote no, because…they have followed the rules.” The rules in question are in the city’s unified development ordinance (UDO).
The planning staff recommendation was for approval of the site plan, based on its conformance with the requirements of the MM (mixed-use medium scale) zoning district where it’s located. Continue reading “Bloomington OKs 3-story, 110K-square-foot self-storage building in eastside neighborhood”
