87-acre parcel rezone doesn’t get hoped-for negotiation at land use committee meeting, heads to Bloomington city council with zero votes in favor

The aerial image, dated April 2020, is from the Pictometry module of Monroe County’s online property lookup system.

A requested rezone for 87 acres of land at the southern tip of Bloomington, next to I-69, will be considered by the city council this Wednesday (March 17).

The requested rezone is based on the idea that it will improve the marketability of the land, which has sat undeveloped under its current zoning for more than three decades.

At its meeting last Wednesday, the council’s four-member land use committee recommended against the full council’s approval of the request from owner Bill Brown, to rezone the parcel from PUD (planned unit development) to MC (mixed-use corridor).

At their meeting last week, land use committee members did not discuss the kind of zoning commitments that the plan commission had hoped the committee would negotiate. Zoning commitments are a way to constrain a zoning district to exclude certain uses.

None of the four members of the land use committee voted in favor of the rezone request.

Continue reading “87-acre parcel rezone doesn’t get hoped-for negotiation at land use committee meeting, heads to Bloomington city council with zero votes in favor”

Bloomington OKs rezoning for Comcast, because new UDO does not allow use variances

The Comcast property that sits in the wedge formed by Adams Street and West Fountain Drive will eventually not be recognizable by its communications tower.

The dismantling of the tower will be made possible by the construction of a new building on the site, which will expand the kind of equipment that can be housed there.

The construction of the new building will be made possible by the approval by Bloomington’s city council of a rezone for the property, from residential (R2) to employment (EM).

The city council approved the rezoning at its meeting last Wednesday on a unanimous vote. The city’s plan commission had previously forwarded to the council its unanimous recommendation for the rezone.

How is it even possible for a property that is zoned for residential use to be used as a contractor’s yard and communications facility for at least the last two decades? Continue reading “Bloomington OKs rezoning for Comcast, because new UDO does not allow use variances”