So I'd like to go ahead and call this deliberation session of the Bloomington Common Council to order
here on October 15th. If the clerk could please call the roll. Council Member Ruff. Here. Piedmont Smith.
Here. Stosberg. Here. Daly. Here. Zulek. Here. Rosenberger.
Thank you. Great, thank you. So tonight we have a little bit of a different meeting. It's a deliberation
session, and these take different forms on different days, depending on what it is that we're doing.
So today we have the Bloomington Historic Preservation Commission here to hear a little bit more about
them. So we will start with a presentation, I believe, from program manager Noah Sandweiss.
Is that correct? Yeah, so I put together. OK, not yet. I'm still summarizing the agenda. Thank you.
And then after that there will be a discussion that will be moderated by council members who look and
we'll have public comment within that and Then we will adjourn. Yes clerk Bolden My apologies to council
members Rallo and Flaherty. I actually did not call their names for the role So go ahead Flaherty here
and Rallo Sorry about that. That's okay. Thank you. I
I didn't look up and look at the screen either, so it's on all of us. Thank you guys for joining us
remotely. So we will have that introduction by program manager Sandweis and then have the discussion
moderated by council members Zulek and then we'll adjourn. So Mr. Sandweis, now the table is yours.
Let's put it up.
showing up there. Okay, well, first of all, I'd like to thank everybody for being here. We have a really
good crowd. I particularly like to thank council members Zulek for reaching out. I know there have been
some members of the commission who've been wanting to have a deliberation session for a while. And I
believe on city council as well. So the way I had set up this presentation was
to go through a handful of the general topics that we had discussed in sort of a pre-meeting that cover
a lot of what we might want to go through in this deliberation session. So if you wouldn't mind, I can
run through those real quickly and we can use them as sort of a guide for the conversations. Does that
sound good? That sounds lovely, thank you. Okay, awesome. So one of the topics we wanted to discuss
was commission appointments.
how they're made, how to get them, terms. And for each of these topics really to have the opportunity
for people in either the council or the commission to bring up any points that they think are particularly
relevant or pressing. Design review process and delegation. There's been some question about who reviews
what and as I guess we'll find out that sort of depends
It depends on the codes written up by various historic district committees, as well as state legislation,
which is more or less the same in this regard as local legislation, just in terms of what staff cannot
review. There's some cases where certain things are exempt from review in a lot of the time that'll
sort of be district by district.
but it also includes some sorts of maintenance. We generally don't review paint color. So there's a
number of issues like that of repairs and maintenance sort of going off of that point. That's a colorized
photo. You know, a particularly pressing topic about, you know, the use of materials, timelines for
doing repairs,
This does sort of bleed into a lot of other topics like procedure for issuing COAs as well as what is
subject to review. Demolition and new construction. This is an issue that also touches on our demolition
delay process, which that is something that Bloomington has that not every city in the state has, so
that's an area where our code sort of adds something onto state code.
This also touches on a couple of the things that are, a couple of the types of projects that are not
reviewed by staff by statute, which include new construction, demolition, and moving buildings. Enforcement
and incentives, this is something that I know a lot of people have asked about. There is enforcement,
there are some incentives,
but I think a lot of people in the commission would like to find ways to sort of tie that more to historic
districts. We have a great program through the BUEA for historic preservation facade grants. There's
also a sort of little known assistance program for getting grants for architectural or engineering drawings
for work on historic buildings that's provided through the commission.
And then sort of wrapping up with the discussion of other topics that might not be covered by any of
these umbrellas. So that sounds good to everyone. I think that'll more or less cover what we want to
talk about. OK. So we'll start at the very beginning if you wouldn't mind. OK. Thank you so much. So
now it's going over to council members who look for the
moderate a discussion part and then at some point we'll need to shift into public comment. So I'll kind
of leave that to some degree in terms of discretion of where you want to put that comment. I think 810
is a good time to stop then we'll have 20 minutes of public comment. I know there are some people in
the crowd who are interested in speaking. Okay that sounds great so we'll have public comment at 810
and I'll help
Keep that great. Thank you. Okay. Thank you all so much for being here. This is Pet project of mine.
I've been working on for a couple months now. I will just Request that all of the historic preservation
commissioners the first time you speak if you could give your name for the record for the clerk and
Just mention that you are a member of the historic preservation commission Thank you. And so like
Program Manager Sandweiss said earlier, we are gonna start with repairs. And so our first, I guess,
discussion question, big fan of the Socratic seminar style, but our first discussion question is how
might the current code impact and or facilitate a person's ability to address needed repairs in the
event of needed repairs?
If I may start, I'd just like to read a couple parts of the state and local code that most directly
address this. So going off of the state legislation, which is, thanks, Indiana Code Title 36, regarding
reconstruction, alteration, maintenance, and removal of historic buildings and structures and
the preservation of historic character
A building or structure or any part or pertinence to such a building or structure, including stone walls,
fences, light fixtures, steps, pavings, and other signs may be moved, reconstructed, altered, or maintained
only in a manner that will preserve the historic and architectural character of the building structure
or pertinence. Historic building may be relocated to another site only if it has shown that preservation
on the current site is inconsistent with the previous subsection.
Then moving on to our local code, Title 8. Conformance to statutory requirements for buildings. Historic
building structures and sites shall be maintained to meet the applicable standards established under
the state statute for buildings generally, so as to prevent the loss of historic material and
the deterioration of important character-defining features. Historic buildings shall be maintained to
meet all applicable requirements established under statute and ordinance for buildings generally,
including but not limited to Title 16 for residential rental unit lodging and establishment inspecting
program in the Bloomington Municipal Code. Ordinary repairs and maintenance, nothing in this section
should be construed so as to prevent the ordinary repairs and maintenance of any building structure
or site, so long as repairs or maintenance do not result in a conspicuous change in design, form, proportion,
mass, configuration,
Building material, texture, color, that depends. I think most districts don't deal with color that much.
Location or external visual appearance of any structure or part thereof. And certificate of appropriateness
is not required for a handful of repairs, including ordinary repairs and maintenance as defined in the
previous section.
repairs and maintenance designated by the commission or in some cases historic districts under their
rules or in special exceptions that are granted by the commission. Thank you. Hold.
So Mr. Sandweiss, you mentioned that the color of the building materials or the paint is not addressed
in most of the districts. So could you clarify the different historic districts? Do they each have a
different set of standards that things are reviewed under? More or less, yeah. And this is the way that
Bloomington does it.
is that different districts, once they're established, in most cases, this is by groups of people who
live or own properties in those districts who then nominate them to the Historic Preservation Commission
will write up their own sets of standards that are then voted on and ratified by the commission. There
isn't a consistent way throughout the state where every city does this. For instance, in Fort Wayne, there's
one set of standards for the whole city. Indianapolis is more like us, although their process tends
to be a collaboration between Planning Department, the Historic Preservation Commission, and
local neighborhood groups. So I'd say that our process in Bloomington is fairly bottom up and sort of
federalized, if that's a good word for it.
And when the commission votes on sets of standards, they may have comments about how appropriate they
think the degree of review is, but really what they're looking for is consistency with the state law
and with federally recognized codes for what should be subject to review and why. Also, consistency
with language.
which sometimes that gets a little difficult. Thank you. I'll ask a question to the commissioners if
that's okay. In your review of different COAs, how has the timeline worked for residents and have you
felt that the majority of people who are bringing requests to you have been able to get the things that
they're trying to get done done in the timeline that's set by the code?
I'm Sam DeSeller, I'm the current chair of the Historic Preservation Commission. When things come before
us, we often have to ask, how long has this been on the clock? We try to put things through as quickly
as we can. That said, if we don't have enough information, if we
don't feel like we know what the petitioner is asking, we will ask them to come back. So I don't know
if I'm answering your question in a substantive way, but we're not here to hold them up. We want them
to be able to fix their house.
We want them to be able to add on to their house. We want them to be able to do what they need to do.
That said, we are given the responsibility of making sure that they comply with whatever guidelines
that have been set before us, and there's a wide range of those. So in certain districts like Elm Heights,
it's much more restrictive. In certain other districts like McDowell Gardens,
much less restrictive. I really like McGold Gardens, they're great. But our job is not to be punitive
or to stop people from doing what they want to do. It is to help them figure out what works within the
context of an historic district.
I recently went to historic preservation conference in Fort Wayne and when I told people that the commission
met twice a month most people were shocked by that they their commissions would maybe meet once a month
sometimes less and so we typically offer two times a month where we review things and get feedback and
to folks, I think only November and December we only have one meeting because Thanksgiving and Christmas
kind of throw off the calendar. So we, I think just in terms of setting our schedule for reviews, we
try to be as quick to respond as we can be. There are also some items for more minor alterations that
are handled by staff and those as a rule don't require a quorum of the commission for approval.
So those are brought up at each of the bi-weekly meetings, but handled more sort of on a rolling basis.
Can I ask a follow-up? So which decisions are made at the staff level? Again, this depends largely by
district. So just a second. Statutorily, there's a handful of things that staff cannot review.
I'm just going to start with that. It's basically four things, demolition, moving a building, construction
of additions, and new construction of a new building. The most common things that are reviewed by staff
are things like solar panel installation or replacement of materials in such a way that wouldn't have
a major effect on a house.
starting out a house of structures, you know, appearance or integrity. And it does vary somewhat by
district because there's some guidelines that are very clearly like we want say windows to be reviewed
by staff or ones that are say we only want staff to review what state code says staff can review. So
it varies a little bit.
So does state code, those four things that you mentioned, that staff are not authorized to do certificates
of appropriateness for, is that something that state code says, or is that just something that our local
code says? It's state. OK, thanks. My name's Duncan Campbell. It's state and federal. The state-enabling
legislation is enabled by a federal statute.
two levels back that we have to comply with. And if I might just add about the timeline issue,
in our statute, it says that we have to respond to a C of A within 30 days. If we don't, let's just
say, well, what has happened on occasion is we don't have a quorum.
and somebody has already been put back two weeks for a request for new information, let's say, and they've
come back for the second time and there's no quorum. If the 30 days expire, they get their CFA whether
we meet or not. So we have a large, you know, quite a bit of incentive to keep the ball rolling. It's
not the other way around.
Thank you. Does anyone have anything that they would like to add to the repairs or are we ready to move
on towards construction and demolition? Yeah. Yeah, when I read this question in the packet, I thought
it had to do with the cost of repairs and that it might be more costly to repair something
or replace something in a historic district than a neighborhood that's not a historic district. So can
somebody speak to that? I mean, I live in a historic neighborhood, and I haven't asked. I don't know
if this would be something I would have to follow. But if we replace our windows, do they have to be
the same shape?
It would have to be custom-made glass panes at this point, so I'm not sure. That could get very expensive
is what I'm saying. Yes, thank you. This is Sam Disheller again. Each district writes their own guidelines.
The HBC has the responsibility to enforce those guidelines and to
And the other part of that that we have to do is keep an eye on repairs, which is something that I feel
we are still struggling to do. That said, it can be more expensive, but each individual neighborhood
has the power to change that. We don't have that power. If there is a problem,
or if the neighborhood feels that it is too onerous to enforce the guidelines as they are written,
they have, and we encourage them to rewrite those guidelines to better fit the neighborhood and the
constituency, to serve them. I mean, we are here to serve that neighborhood. We are here to enforce
the guidelines that the neighborhood writes. And if they change those guidelines, we will enforce those changes.
So if it is to, I mean, we have power of oversight, but we don't have any money. I mean, we have, as
Noah mentioned, we have some limited funds for drawing assistance, but we don't have repair assistance
in large part. So I do understand that many residents are concerned about
repair costs, that said, they can change that. And the power is seated, vested in the neighborhoods
and not with us. So if that becomes an issue, I would encourage them to come to the commission and talk
to us and help us change those guidelines with them. So, I'm sorry, can I ask a follow-up? I have a
follow-up on the same thing, so go for it.
So let's say there's somebody who lives in a historic district who is struggling to pay for replacing
a porch or something that was damaged. And let's say they're in a district that has very strict rules.
And they can't afford to do the repair or replacement
while keeping the historic accuracy at the level that the standards are set at. And let's say they go
to the HPC and the HPC is like, okay, well, if you can wait, you can talk to your neighbors and get
this changed. So does that end up pitting neighbors against neighbors? Like, what if they have neighbors
who feel very strongly that, no, this porch needs to be exactly like the porches that are
for the other historic homes in the district. I just see that this could run into some conflict if you
have some neighbors saying one thing and other neighbors saying, well, I can't afford that. I hear that.
I mean, that does happen. I think there are certain neighborhoods that are more, I mean, they understand
what, and they're more united in what they're after.
And I think there are some neighborhoods, I've heard some people who have tried to write guidelines
in more neighborhoods where that's more contentious, where they say that they're trying to herd cats.
So I hear that. And it can be an issue. Certain neighborhoods do give the HPC
the latitude to rewrite their guidelines. And we have not done that as yet, but I think that's not a
bad thing if the neighborhood cannot agree on which direction they want to go. That said, there's churn.
I mean, we are in an academic environment, and so
neighborhoods change over time, and what those neighborhoods want and need change over time. And I think
that it's important to revisit those guidelines and change them. And they are not static things. Also,
they are guidelines. They're not rules. So the, yeah, bad face. So the commission has,
the latitude to interpret those. That said, the more specifically the guidelines are written, the less
latitude the commission has. It looks like Councilmember Flaherty has his hand up, so go ahead whenever
you're ready. Thank you. I just wanted to follow up on the same area of thinking. Thank you
to the commissioners who've weighed in and to the chair of the commission, maybe, or whoever would like
to answer, just some follow-ups.
on that process around guidelines. I believe it was mentioned when they're first written, the HPC, they're
proposed and HPC approves them. But can you speak more specifically to who writes them, how they're
selected, what that process looks like? And then also same question basically for rewriting guidelines.
How is that decided? Is there a threshold level of signatures needed to say we're gonna rewrite the
guidelines? Is it a neighborhood vote? If it's a vote, is it a majority vote? Like who has to make that decision?
And then again, who does the rewriting? HPC approves it, I gather, in the same similar process. But
I'm less concerned about folks not agreeing with one another. That's inevitable. I'm more concerned
about process and kind of protecting views of all, I guess, or having a process that's not stacked.
And so I'm curious to hear more about the details there. Thank you. Thank you.
I will do my best to address that. I'm going to rely on Noah to follow up on anything I leave out. By
and large, we leave that process to the neighborhood. The HPC, on the initial right of the guidelines,
we usually ask for volunteers from the commission to sit in with the neighborhood on writing
those guidelines. And they do multiple drafts.
I've been on a number of those. I think I have been the commissioner who's been on most of those in
the last decade. So you can put a lot of blame on me if you want. That said, I feel like my main job
when I'm listening to these neighborhoods talk about what they want for their neighborhood is to let
them know what they can do
what they can't do, what they need to do, and what they don't need to do. There are so many things that
you don't need to regulate with guidelines. And I encourage every neighborhood to say, we don't care
about that if they don't care about that. I don't want any more guidelines than necessary.
I like to keep them minimal. I don't like them to be, I have to make sure that they're not trying to
circumvent planning and zoning. Because a lot of neighborhoods, I think, take being an historic district
as an opportunity to say, I don't like what the city is doing. I wanna do something else. And we're
like, I get that. And there are certain things you can do.
But there are certain things you can't do because the purview of the Historic Preservation Commission
is limited and I want them to understand what those limits are. So my role is, I'm a bit of a bouncer
in that I wanna make sure they don't go too far off the rails. I want to make sure that their language
is concise
I want to make sure that they're readable so that when they come back to the HBC, we know what they're
asking us to do. And clarity, conciseness, all of these things are incredibly important. But I leave
everything to the neighborhood if I can possibly help it. I will say this looks questionable,
This language is unclear. I think you should consider this or consider that. But I am not going to ramrod
them into a certain position on what they want to do for their neighborhood, because it's their neighborhood.
And I think one of the most important things I've felt as a historic preservation commissioner over
the last decade is that the
the power that a historic district has comes from the neighborhood. We do not like to enforce these
things by fiat. We want them to be vested in what they're talking about. We want them to make their
own rules. As much as we can have that happen, we do. And if I missed anything, Noah, chime in.
But maybe between responses, I'd like to just interject and redirect a little bit. That is
helpful information, thank you. But I'm more interested in the procedural aspects. The neighborhood
is not an entity per se. There might be a neighborhood association. Those tend to represent some demographics
or some people in certain types of housing more than others, for instance. There are a lot of challenges
and we don't really regulate whether those are run democratically. I've dug deep into this before.
and experienced it in a number of neighborhoods, so I have concerns about the process. So back to that,
like procedurally, what has to happen for a neighborhood to choose to rewrite its guidelines? For instance,
is it just a group of individuals who live in that neighborhood and get together and say, we're some
volunteers, we care about this, we're gonna rewrite them, we're gonna propose it to the HPC, and then
HPC approves it or not? Or is there something more formal than that? Like, that's the type of question
I guess I'm looking to understand a little more deeply, if that's helpful, thank you.
So there's really in general there will be two or three situations in which new guidelines are written
up when a district is created in which case it's usually going to be the people who recommend a district
for designation which is going to be people who own property in that district and it may also include
people who reside in that district. There's at the end of a three year period as a conservation district which
As some of you remember, there's an option in Indiana code to create a conservation district which is
sort of a historic district light where rules are only applied really to demolition, new construction,
moving buildings and additions. So again, that's stuff that staff can't review. But at the end of a
three year period, there's a ballot that has to be sent out to property owners
At which point they send in a vote to the city saying yes we want to become a historic district or no
we want to stay a conservation district. If the majority of people don't have the majority of the property
owners don't vote no to stay a conservation district then historic district rules will have to be written up.
And at that point, you know, that would also have to come from residents and property owners of the
district. But, you know, oftentimes these do come from neighborhood associations, which again, like
you were saying, council member Flaherty are separate from the city. So those aren't something that,
they should have rules and guidelines, but they are sort of independent entities.
There are also some districts that will say that they want a review every so often like Elm Heights
has written into their guidelines that they want a review at the end of 10 years of their district guidelines
and I believe they have written in that they want that done by members of the neighborhood association
and if that's not done then by members of the Historic Preservation Commission.
Right, and all of these would be subject to the same review process that DeSolar was discussing. Okay,
thank you. Maybe just the smallest follow-up, the Elm Heights example is helpful, but in the absence
of that, who initiates a rural rewrite? Is it the neighborhood association by default, even if it's
not spoken to? Is it any collection of individuals? Is there some type of
ballot or have we not encountered that scenario? I guess I'm following up on this because it was mentioned
by the chair that rewriting rules, for instance, is an option. And I'm curious if that's not spoken
to in the guidelines already. Is that happening? How does it happen? I don't mean to take up the time.
You can also follow up individually with me if I've taken too much. So thank you. In some guidelines,
it is specified that if a certain proportion of property owners initiate a
ballot to change the guidelines, then that'll initiate the process again with the HPC for a rewrite.
But that isn't something that's either in our statute or rules and procedures. So oftentimes that does
end up falling to how different historic districts want to self govern.
Thank you. Hi, thank you. This was actually my question too, so I kind of maybe want to try to ask it
again to see if, I guess from what you said, Sam, I got the impression that a group in the neighborhood
could say, oh, we don't want to custom fit windows. Can we look at our guidelines, for example, right?
And like, can we look at them and do a rewrite or an edit?
Procedure for that for neighborhood residents to come together to say we want to rewrite our guidelines
without anything else Making that happen Does that make sense We don't have a consistent procedure for
that unless anybody else Can
Think of any past instances. It is neighborhood by neighborhood and it is, you know, they are self-governing,
but you know, we are totally open to any individual neighborhood or historic district to come forth
and rewrite their guidelines. Could I add something? And maybe if there are public comments later, there
are representatives from neighborhoods who could speak. I think that's the first time you've spoken.
Can you state your name for the record?
I'm sorry. Go ahead. When there are public comments, there may be some people from neighborhoods who
could speak to how they have evolved these guidelines. My experience over 30 years of this is that the
people who generally initiate the designation come out of the neighborhoods. The commission doesn't
go looking for neighborhoods to designate. It comes from the seat of the power that be in that neighborhood.
Those neighborhoods have their own leadership rigors. I don't know what they all are, and I doubt if
they're all the same, but the people who are the leaders in those neighborhoods are the ones who tend
to come forward for designation. The extent to which they're taking public votes or have referendum
at every move they make is, you know, I have no way of knowing that, but my sense from working with
neighborhoods and to evolve guidelines is that
They are representative people who have led the fight to be in a historic district. And they have, in
my experience, always included the referenda in the neighborhoods that they work in. And once they design
those guidelines, they take them back to the neighborhood for approval. Does everyone in the neighborhood
participate? No. Will they ever? Absolutely no.
but the people who do care the most about it tend to be the one who come forward to try to get the job
done. We're responding pretty much to what they bring us. We're not going out and trying to get it to
happen in a certain way. Okay, so it isn't a perfect process, but as I said, the people in the neighborhoods
just speak better to how they've done it than we could probably.
This conversation has addressed some of the things that I was concerned about too in terms of economics
and one of the, I don't necessarily want to go backwards too far, but one of the definitions that's
in our local code is the definition of economic hardship, but I couldn't actually find that anywhere in code.
that that's considered. And I feel like what I just heard was like, well, basically economics aren't
ever considered and it's up to the neighborhood to consider it. And that's frankly sort of concerning
because if you have, you know, in any neighborhood, you're gonna have varying levels of income and varying
abilities to pay for things like new windows or repairing,
you know, storm damage or other sorts of damage like the porch example or anything else that might happen.
And so I guess the question is, you know, does that economic hardship concept actually appear somewhere
in code? And if it doesn't, then why do we have that as a defined word in the chapter? And then,
you know, is that ever considered when rendering a judgment?
Like when you guys get to decide something, like roof tiles and whether or not a roof tile is the right
color or the right shape, do you ever go, oh, well, these roof tiles are very, very similar, but one
is more historic and also costs three times as much. The other one probably looks the same from a distance.
Does that come into it at all?
Anybody want to answer that? Yes. Could you state your name and use a microphone to... Oh, sorry. Bernard
Cross. Bernard Cross. There have been at least three situations that I can remember where the issues
of cost has come up. Windows, roof tiles, as you mentioned. There was an issue where we were looking at
I think the roof tiles made up of a different material and we actually formed a subcommittee to examine
the feasibility of replacement materials that were in appearance and I suspect in quality sufficient
enough to be a viable replacement. So there have been occasions where we have looked at replacement
materials and
in those occasions specifically because the persons concerned have made a complaint for want of a better
word that to replace with the original materials would be cost prohibitive. So in those three situations
that you can think of, did you guys say, okay, the less expensive or the more attainable in terms of
cost option is okay?
If my memory serves me and please don't hold me to it, I can remember one where an allowance was made
and I think in the other an allowance was not and the petitioner was required to replace it with historically
similar materials.
I'd like to address that a little bit further. I think there's nuance. I think it depends in large part
on what district we're talking about and also the level of historic importance of that particular structure.
I think that the commission is willing to give a lot more latitude with contributing structures as opposed
to notable
or outstanding structures. So in large part, it depends on how important that building is and how stringent
the guidelines of that particular neighborhood are. So there's latitude there, and when there is, we're
happy to give it. And when there's not, we do toe the line. I have another follow-up, too, about one
of the other things we were talking about.
procedures of like rewriting the district guidelines. And so the neighborhoods themselves end up voting
on the guidelines before it comes to you to vote on the guidelines. So if the majority of the neighbors
voted on it, but it voted positively for it, but it was say a relatively even split,
does it ever occur to you guys to make them rewrite it to like, like is there a required percentage
say of neighborhood, neighbors that you wanna like buy into this or is it literally like one vote is
enough? Because I could just imagine a super, super duper split neighborhood and maybe in fact we have
them. So is there a requirement that like a minimum percentage of
the neighborhood vote be positive before you guys approve their guidelines? I think there's a majority,
there's a positive vote, and we do always encourage neighborhoods to go back and go back and go back
because the more buy-in a neighborhood has, the better off they're going to be. I mean, we are not wanting
to encourage
you know, contention within their neighborhood at the, you know, at the expense of having an historic
district. That's not our mission. Well, and I'm thinking about the rewrites, though, too. Oh, the rewrites?
Yeah, because that's more, I mean, that was where the conversation kind of started was, well, what about
those rewrites? What if there's, you know, a homeowner that wants to replace their windows?
and can't afford and so then says, hey, let's figure out how to rewrite these and there's a really even
split or roughly even split with only. The big issue that I've seen recently with rewrites is not having
enough people involved in the rewrites. I think that, I mean, I'm. So do you have a minimum requirement
of participation then for rewriting?
I want them to be concise. I want them to be, you know, as far as how many people sign on to them, we
rely on the neighborhood for that feedback, for how many people have signed on to them, how contentious
they are. We don't, you know. So there's not a written kind of,
your guidelines, any kind of minimum standard of participation for neighborhoods to like a clear majority
because there is a clear majority that people have to disagree with becoming a historic district.
That's true. And I guess I'm so is that a state guideline that that 51 percent have to disagree in writing
or is that something local? Yes, that is state. OK, so it's like a negative kind of
But in terms of the rewriting of the guidelines that again is something that the neighborhoods You know,
they write into their guidelines or don't and many don't so we you know, we No, no, we don't we do not
require that as far as I'm aware I
talk about in the event of someone can't afford to make that repair do is anyone aware of any state
or federal grants that would enable them to do so or how could the city better support people to make
those repairs so I went over a bit of the incentives that are available specifically for historic
preservation in the city of Bloomington they do come with some limitations for example the
Bloomington Urban Enterprise Association has a grant that's available to nonprofits and businesses within
the Bloomington Urban Enterprise Zone, which roughly comprises of downtown. It's like all funds, it's
a limited fund. But that is up to $10,000 per application per facade. So that's not chump change when
it comes for taking on some major projects.
The Bloomington Department of Housing and Neighborhood Development also has some grant programs for
homeowners. Those are mostly for life safety and essential repairs. I think one thing that would be,
or a couple things that would be particularly helpful that I've heard from people in the commission
are, you know, funds available for repairs in historic districts. And then also,
having more resources out there on the city website about how to conduct repairs and how to find qualified
repair people for projects that take more specialized work. I've since added to the historic Bloomington
page on the website a link to a number of
materials from the National Park Service about how to conduct repairs retrofits and other kinds of kinds
of adaptations to historic buildings But if there's some way that the city can also help put people
in touch with local resources I think that would be incredibly helpful As far as opportunities for homeowners
the state of India had
The state of Indiana has a tax credit program for homeowners who own properties in state or nationally
registered historic districts, which qualify if they're, you know, meet a, and Duncan may know this
more specifically, but if the cost of the repairs meets a certain threshold, they can get a tax credit
in exchange for conducting them.
And that's done through the state DNR. OK, thank you. I'd like to follow up on the changing
of the guidelines. I've got a concrete example from the Garden Hill Historic District. It's in their
guidelines. One of the sections at the very end, it's the process for how you would actually rewrite.
And so I'll just read it out for you. If changes are desired in the guidelines, they shall be drafted
by the Garden Hill Historic District.
The neighborhood organization shall report its findings to the Historic Preservation Commission. All
property owners in the district shall be notified of the proposed changes in the guidelines. They will
be given copies of the proposed new guidelines and notice of the time and place of a public hearing
on the proposal. The neighborhood organization shall provide a system whereby all property owners have
the opportunity to cast a vote on the proposal.
If 51% or more of the ballots return to approve the changes, the new guidelines are forwarded to the
commission for discussion and approval. Thank you. Thank you for that, Jeremy. It's a bit of a bummer,
that voting system, right? Because that's the same voting system that changes a conservation district
to a historic district that
51% of actual property owners have to vote against it, where you won't even, you'll never ever even
get 50% of property owners voting, pretty much. I mean, maybe Elm Heights, but it's, so those guidelines,
the procedure changes even honestly set up to fail. Well, I think for this one, to revise, it's 51%
of ballots returned approve the changes.
What you're talking about is the change from the conservation district to historic district. Fifty one
percent have to come back approving it of all property owners. Just the vote. Oh great. OK that is great.
That's a regular vote. That's a regular way to vote. Yeah.
Except, okay, great, okay. Do you all ever, I'm just gonna keep going. Do you all ever take like best
practices then from like Garden Hill and suggest them in other guidelines? So like something like that
could be added to potentially all the districts? Yeah. We would not complain at all about that. And
a lot of the districts at the end will have procedures for here's how we change our guidelines. Yeah.
And we often, when a new district is proposed, we'll say,
look at this statistic, look at that. And we give them a lot of material to look at, so we can't force
them to accept any of it, but we'll put it out there.
For anyone listening and also just for anyone who might not know all 13 of the historic preservation
districts guidelines can be found on our city website if you look up points in historic preservation
districts, they're all linked together and Each one is about 20 to 30 pages and it's clear but it's dense and
a constituent reach out to me and ask about how demolition through neglect comes into play and how we
might safeguard against that. So I don't know that much about that, but I'm hoping that some of the
commissioners can share their experience with it. I think this is something that the commission has
been struggling to address
and you can correct me if I'm wrong, because you've been here longer than I have. Forever. Forever.
I mean, we understand preservation, but maintenance and lack thereof and the enforcement of lack of
maintenance is something that we are still wrapping our heads around. That said,
It is one of the two main responsibilities of the commission and it is incredibly important because
if you don't maintain it, it's gonna go away. And there have been multiple properties that have just
decayed through intentional neglect and have been allowed to be demolished and that's not okay. And
I am hoping, you know,
This is something I, you know, I'm beating the dead horse, right? This is something I, most every meeting,
try to talk about, try to bring up, try to say, which properties are endangered? How do we fix this?
And, you know, we are under the umbrella of hand and they have eyes out on the street, but we need more
eyes out on the street and we need more people to come and say, this property is endangered.
This is an issue, because we can't look at everything. But it is vitally important that we address these
things and we address them in a timely fashion so that we can catch them before they go too far and
before they are lost. And we have already lost multiple properties through inaction. And that lies at
the feet of the commission. Well, I have a suggestion.
We could kind of do a social media campaign for if if someone notices in their neighborhood that a house
is Not falling apart, but you know on the verge For perhaps they could submit a you report and and that's
an anonymous way to do things that might work I have actually asked for that to be added to the city
website and that has not happened yet, but if you have any
you know, influence there. I would greatly appreciate getting that up there. I'll see what I can do.
Thank you. You're welcome. So I just wanted to add a little more about demolition in historic districts
and demolition by neglect. So generally, deterioration resulting from neglect by the owner over time
is not considered as a factor when the commission votes to approve a demolition.
That being said, there are often instances or occasionally instances in historic districts where a property
is required by a new owner who cannot put it or demonstrates that they cannot put it to a reasonable
economic use, in which case it may be demolished. This can also happen in the case of disasters where
a building is damaged to the point that there's
Again, going back to the definition of hardship, no reasonable economic use from that building. There
is also a process in state and local code for demolitions of buildings failing to receive certificates
of appropriateness. It's a somewhat long process that basically tries to see if there's an opportunity
for somebody else to acquire the property who may be able to repair it.
I have not seen that come up before I don't know if somebody's been on the Commission for longer has
It has come up you know, this is a really I Really appreciate this forum, but just some of these issues
are so complex from the standpoint of somebody who's practicing historic preservation over a lifetime
basically that I
I fear that we're getting simple answers. Neglect is a strategy on the part of many people who want
to either get rid of that property in order to supplant it with something from which they can make more
money or they simply can't afford to do anything about it and they abandon the property. We don't have
that problem as much as we used to because frankly people in Bloomington have gotten wealthier and wealthier
and property values have gone up and up.
It's much less of a strategy Let's say that it would be in a big city where whole buildings and whole
blocks of buildings are abandoned simply because you can't pay the taxes on them anymore That that's
neglect, but it's not we're who's going to place the blame on that person and a lot of the discussion
so far has been about cost and about the sort of the difficulty of maintenance which
is a real difficulty, particularly if you're economically stressed. And if you're economically stressed
and you're living in a historic district, the implication seems to be that it's even a greater stress.
But I don't find that that's actually true. Almost all the applicant, I mean, we evaluate, adjudicate,
if you will,
requests for changes to property that come directly from the owner of the property. We're not going
out to people and saying you need to change your windows and you're gonna have to spend this much. People
are coming to us and saying we would like to change out all of our windows and our guidelines say if
your windows are in good shape and they're the original fabric you should keep them. So now we're up
against this somebody wants a brand new product and we're supposed to protect the historic product.
It's a much more complex interaction than just what's it going to cost. We're trying to maintain and
protect historic meaning in a community so that people can appreciate it. And because it's considered
in the public welfare to do that, that's why we're regulators. That's why we have police power.
It's not it's not just a matter of does it cost more. It costs more every year to maintain your house.
You know if you've maintained one for any period of time you know that this is true. And so we you know
we don't we don't adjudicate general maintenance for that mainly for that reason that we're not going
to we don't care when or how you clean your gutters. But if you're going to have if you don't if you
neglect your gutters and you're going to have to change them that's where we come in.
So it's a very convoluted issue where you're trying to regulate some people for a standard that is a
social and cultural standard that has been set. These ordinances weren't written by us. They were written
by all of us. And so we're in the unfortunate, if you will, position of having to work with our neighbors
and not make them mad and still take care of the things that
The public has told us we should be taken care of. So I would say of all my years on the commission,
and I've been active on it since the early 90s, I can't count on one hand the number of people who have
gone out of the room mad. Do they have an expense they didn't expect? Maybe. But mostly people we help
take care of their property in the best way that we know how to. That's our success.
And so I I'm confident that you get complaints from your constituents and I'm sure that they may have
things to complain about. But in general that's not my impression of how well this works. I think it
works really well. Could the guideline process be more democratic. Probably. And that's really up to
the neighborhoods who are conducting it. But we don't control the cost of things and we don't make people
replicate historic fabric.
That's just not ever done. That's not in the code. Sorry, I just, you know, I just felt like I was getting
down to brass tacks when nobody had talked about the whole picture. Yeah, I can understand that. I wanted
to follow up on what Councilmember Zulek was mentioning that, you know, could there be some way to report if,
if a home or a house in a historic district is being neglected and is falling into disrepair. But what
legal authority does the city actually have to do anything if that's the case? Or would it just be the
power of persuasion to talk to the property owner and try to get them to be nice? In the historic
commission's rules and guidelines document,
Article 7 maintenance that talks about neglect and or lack of care. And so it gives a process for if
we receive a report, then it lays out three steps for then what would happen where the commission would
contact the property owner. They would have 21 days to respond. They can then appear before the commission
to present plans or evidence of upkeep.
and make an argument that no, we actually are trying to maintain it. And then the commission would consider
the evidence. And if they find that the building's condition constitutes a threat to the historic fabric
of an area where the building is located and move forward, then the commission can forward the findings
to the city's legal department for appropriate legal action. And that is what it says. Okay, thank you.
Where are you reading that from? I'm sorry.
This is the, it's on the Historic Preservation Commission's website and it's the rules and procedures.
Oh, okay. Thank you. Thank you. And Commissioner Campbell, thank you for sharing that experience. Other
commissioners, would you like to share anything about your experience on the commission or your approach
to historic preservation?
If you want. I was going to say I've said I've asked this before in front of city council meetings.
But if you want to create incentives to help people restore their historic homes please do because that's
really where you come in. That's not something that we can do. So if you if that's a concern and I don't
I don't see why I wouldn't be it's in your hands. Thank you.
Commissioner Duffy? Yes, Karen Duffy. I can also talk as someone before I was on the commission. I was
a volunteer in my neighborhood who worked on guidelines. And we absolutely made it as democratic as
we could. We invited over and over again, please join our committee. And you know what it's like to
try to get people to join a committee.
People who are willing to work will join. And it's a small number. But we got 10. And they represented
different points of view. We welcomed that. We wanted that. We incorporated those different points of
view. And also, as Sam said, there's always a person from the commission who comes
when you're working on the guidelines to keep you on track and basically kind of help you do what you're
supposed to be doing. And in our case, we were told, please do,
consider, we weren't told we had to do it, but seriously consider adding at the end a procedure for
revising the guidelines. And I'm sure that's done in other neighborhoods too. Sam was our advisor and
he definitely brought that to our attention. So then as a member of the committee, I'm not a voting
member, I'm an advisory committee.
member, but I can back up what Duncan said. I've seen very few people upset with their experience at
the commission. I've also seen examples or instances where the commission has saved people money in
terms of these costs by basically some
The contractor has told them they have to do this or that and the commission had said, well, you know,
you can actually, there's a simpler solution here and suggested a simpler and much less costly solution.
So, just to add that, it does happen that way as well.
Ever so often, we get persons who, usually because they've committed some violation, express ignorance
of, usually at the time when they purchase their property that it's in the historic district. I would
like to see a system set up, something more formalized,
I know that when deeds are recorded or titles are recorded, at some level during the purchase process,
that information is given to that homeowner. And that information should include the responsibilities
that that owner would be expected to live up to, now being the owner of historic property. I don't think
that there is a system in place to formally notify a homeowner that the property that they're now purchasing
or trans, you know, being the recipient of a transfer is in a historic district. And I believe that
we could do something about that. So ignorance will no longer be an excuse. Thank you. Mr. Sandweiss,
do you have any
Suggestions? Well, I'd definitely like to second what Commissioner Cross said. You know, finding ways
to better notify people when or before they acquire a property because, you know, that's also an issue
for whoever is selling the property because it can become a legal liability if somebody's not informed
about a condition about a property that they own by the person that they purchased it from.
I also just wanted to add that as of this year, I believe 90% of the COAs that we've received have been
approved by the commission or by staff. And that statistic is more or less in keeping with other cities
that I have been looking at. And again, part of what that is, is that people will look to the guidelines
first and then come to the commission
Generally when they have a good idea of something that they want that they think is going to pass Like
to follow up on Commissioner crosses comments at the Conference that I mentioned I went to recently
Fort Wayne did a presentation on all the different ways in which they've implemented did
notify people that they have historic homes and then also so like the the city knows when those properties
are sold and so there's a good way that they can facilitate a back-and-forth and then I also think there's
some updates that are either been implemented or going to be implemented on real estate disclosure forms
where there's a section where I think you have to say it's a historic home or not and so that can create
issues if you know
The seller or the real estate agents are marking those boxes, but I was going to talk about that at
our next commission meeting So I agree Just want to give other commissioners the opportunity if they
would like to share anything Talk about something that doesn't work very well We have under plant in
our planning department
We have an agreement on the demolition delay ordinance that anybody who comes in and requests a demolition
permit on a structure or building that is in the historic survey automatically gets that request for
demolition reviewed by the Preservation Commission. So all of the buildings that are in our survey, which are
not all not not the districts but ones that are considered eligible to be historic districts. What's
hundreds more are are if they're if if their owners request demolition we're supposed to review it.
We only really have two options. One is to let the building go to demolition or send it to council to
designated as a historic district.
Most of these buildings, I'd say, somebody can correct me, are probably in the contributing category.
It would be in the contributing category, not the outstanding or the notable category. So they're not
immediately, it's not immediately obvious that they would be eligible for historic districting. They
may be significant as in,
adding to the street front of their neighborhood, or they may be old enough, but they may just not be
meaningful enough to warrant your designation, because you're the body that designates ultimately.
And also, we get so many demolition requests now. When I first started in this regulatory business,
all the requests for demolition were partial.
somebody needed to fix a porch, or take out a dormer, or replace some doors, or now 99% of them are
for full demolition. And that's all because of pressure on the real estate. And we can't justify sending
every one of those that comes into us to you for designation, that's all you'd be doing, is turning
them all down probably, but you know. But we're somewhat overwhelmed
by demolition requests, which when we initiated the demolition ordinance 20, 25 years ago, we never
anticipated this kind of pressure on the real estate in every neighborhood, and as you know, downtown
and on the outskirts as well. So we have to almost by default close our eyes and say go ahead, and I
would say we meet
We meet two times every month. And I don't know, Noah, on average we have four or five demolition requests
per meeting. That's probably the average, certainly not the maximum. And virtually all of them go to
demolition. So you do the math. We're demolishing hundreds of perfectly good buildings to reevaluate
the real estate on the part of the owner. That's basically what's happening.
Go ahead. And just let me conclude. So that's a problem because we're losing, if you, as I do, believe
in something called sustainability, it's a completely unsustainable situation where we are destroying
perfectly good fabric, historic or not, perfectly good buildings, just to reevaluate the real estate.
and it's moving the ownership of our real estate out of our hands, and it's destroying tracks
of neighborhoods piece by piece. Melody Dusner from Historic Preservation, and I just wanted to jump
in here because I felt like this is something that I could add a little bit to. I am a brand
new commissioner. I started in February, and this is my absolute least favorite part
the job is having to vote on these demolition requests. And I say that especially as someone who has
not managed to become a homeowner in Bloomington. I can't afford to own a home. And so watching small
house after small house disappear that way. And yeah, the lack of sustainability with that kind of constant
destruction.
That's really been a real sore spot for me. And I hope we can continue to work toward ways to address
this that also recognize the quality of smaller homes that may not be architecturally super, super unique.
And they may not have belonged to somebody really famous, but in fact, they're
more characteristic of Bloomington because they belong to ordinary folks who lived here and worked here.
And how do we recognize those as worth preserving? Right now, we don't have a tool really for that category.
And so I think a lot of us would really like to see one. I want to say something that I meant to say
at the beginning is thank you. We've been asking to meet with you all for
over a decade, and I am so grateful that we're having this conversation now. I think that the HPC and
the Common Council has a number of overlapping goals, and one of them I think Commissioner Duesner just
mentioned, and that's affordable housing. I think some of the things that we do on the commission and
with zoning are at odds to
How do we make more affordable housing for entry level housing for people? And these old houses that
are small and in these neighborhoods that are not exactly downtown, those are prime real estate for
new home buyers, but they're also, because of zoning in some cases, prime real estate for developers
who want to come in and tear these down and build
larger duplexes and triplexes and multifamily housing. So I think taking a hard look at the housing
stock that we have and evaluating that in terms of what do we have, what's sustainable, what's affordable,
and where do we want to grow is something that is incredibly important. And I think the other issue
I wanted to touch on was
This commission has a number of different viewpoints. I think we work really well together. I think
we come from a lot of different backgrounds. And I think we desperately need your support. We are, I'm
gonna make my plug, which I made to you earlier. We are struggling to make quorum, so the quicker you can
get the mayor's office to give you candidates and approve them and get us a full slate of voting members,
we would be so grateful for that. So whatever you can do to make that happen, thank you. Go ahead. Are
there parts of Bloomington that are particularly hard hit by these demolitions that you could speak to?
There are some members in the audience who I think will speak to that during public comment, but there
are neighborhoods that are ripe for development. There's a neighborhood called Cottage Grove, which
is west of campus, east of college, sort of around 11th, 12th, thank you.
That's one. I think Bryan Park, south of Bryan Park is another one that's going to come up any time
soon. Daniel, chime in. The closer to IU, the better. Yeah. Anything close to IU, especially around
the stadium. And I think there are neighborhoods that are actually pretty well self-regulating. Like
we kicked up Green Acres six, eight months ago, and I think
I mean, I was a dissenting vote on sending that up, but I think that's actually one that has a very
thin slice of multifamily zone, but it's doing pretty well self-regulating at the moment, but anything
around the university is at risk, both from developers and in some ways from the university. I mean,
you look at what happened in Elm Heights a couple years ago,
where the Jacobs family bought up a bunch of houses in Elm Heights and wanted to turn it into a center
in the middle of a neighborhood. That's a problem. If I may add my voice to the previous three commissioners
who were speaking about demolition delays. I've lived in Bloomington for 10 years and I think last eight
I've lived in
one historic district or another. I loved old houses and the idea of buying a cookie cutter, you know,
mass produced house in a subdivision is an absolute nightmare. I've renovated a few simply because I
like it and I need a hobby. So it's an expensive hobby.
A very expensive hobby. But again, I share my commissioners distress in having to vote to send to demolition
a number of these perfectly good houses. What you would also find, and I think
In my experience, certainly within the last five years or so, one of the motivators for communities
to seek historic districting is to protect these neighborhoods from developers because they like their
neighborhoods, they like the character of these neighborhoods that they live in, and even one multifamily
25 unit apartment building can just change the entire character of the community in which they live.
And it is unfortunate that that is the process that they are left with to protect their neighborhoods.
So I would like to see
more protection being afforded to these neighborhoods that we're speaking of, primarily because of the
contribution that they make to our broader Bloomington community. I believe that that's sufficient.
And like Duncan said, a number of these buildings aren't individually unique.
But as a collection, as a group, they make the neighborhood unique. And you can't keep cutting pieces
off of it, then you won't have a neighborhood of any character anymore. I was actually just going to
make a suggestion. I don't know if you're planning on three minutes per person, but that would only be seven
I don't know if you want to go to public comment and then maybe come back if there's more time, but
I don't know. Just a suggestion. Yeah, absolutely. I do just want to wrap up that part real quick. So
what I'm hearing from many of you is that we're looking for an alternative to approval of demolition
or designation by council. Okay. I will put that down as an action item.
Thank you. If anyone doesn't have any burning questions or comments to make, I think. Can I say something
about membership? Please do. The first thing on our list was qualifications of commissioners. And I
don't think we ever talked about it. I think you skipped it over and started with something else.
I've been a commissioner, a voting and an advisory member off and on for, like I said, since the early
1990s. And I helped write the ordinance that we're working with now, and I'm pretty proud of it. I think
it's one of the best ones in the state. And I think it functions largely as we intended it to. But the
thing that, and Sam alluded to this, not only do we need rapid reappointments, but we need qualified
And when we wrote the ordinance in chapter two of the Bloomington Code, we put under the composition
of the commission this sentence. The membership shall include individual members with demonstrated expertise
in historic preservation activities.
To the extent available in the community, the commission shall include professional members from the
disciplines of architecture, history, architectural history, preservation planning, archeology, or other
historic preservation related disciplines such as urban planning, American studies, art history, American
civilization, cultural geography, and cultural anthropology. We have a lot of people with these
qualifications in this community.
And the better the commission is and the better it meets these standards, the better it functions. And
I've been on some pretty lame ones and some really great ones. And we're pretty consistent, but it really
helps to have qualified members. And as far as I'm concerned, everybody at this table is qualified.
But it hasn't always been that way. And we are suggesting a standard by which these appointments can be made.
So please pay attention to it. Absolutely. And for anyone listening who would like to apply, if you
just look up Bloomington Boards and Commissions, there is a form for just any board and commission.
Make sure that you click Historic Preservation and talk about some of those qualifications that our
lovely Commissioner Campbell just mentioned. With that, I think we can move on to public comment.
and we'll start in chambers. Our public comment section will be. Actually, do we want to let people
sit down at that chair? Public comment so then they're part of the circle. Absolutely. So if you want
to make a public comment in chambers, there's a chair down here at the end and there's a microphone
right there next to Mr. Hackard. So if you want to make your way from the podium down there and you
can sit at the table. Ma'am. Yes.
So if you're in chambers and you would like to make a public comment, you can make your way to that
chair. Please introduce yourself for the record and then you'll have up to three minutes. And if you
are online right now, if you could raise your hand using the reactions tab or send a chat message to
the host. Oh yes, and there should be a sign in sheet right there too if you want to sign in for your
public comment as well, please. Are you ready? Is the timer ready? How much time? Three minutes.
OK, I want to talk real fast. I'm from McDowell Gardens. My name is Elizabeth Cox-Ash. And I've been
involved with historic preservation for over 30 years. I was one of the architects that did Bloomington's
first historic conservation district, which was McDowell Gardens. And we selected our guidelines committee
based on the population. We had 12 members.
Three of them were landlords. Three of them were homeowners. And three of them were business owners.
That's how we did our guidelines initially. When we were elevated to full historic district in 2014,
again, we looked at our population to select who would be on our committee for our guidelines. And we
had more homeowners, so we had more homeowners there. But we also had landlords.
business owners, and homeowners. We took everyone's ideas and wrote them all up. And as far as what
you had done in the past, you had drafts. And we had at least 20 drafts both times. And we put them
up to a vote. And that's how we did our things. Our historic, anytime anyone wants changes, want a C of A,
They talk to our executive committee, and then we get them on our neighborhood association meeting.
And we meet not every month, but when we do meet, whoever shows up, then we look at what the homeowner's
wanting to do, and then we decide and put it up to a vote. That's just how our neighborhood does things.
We are known as historic light.
And that's because we're not as strict as some of the neighborhoods. We kind of look at whoever the
homeowner is. This is their cost. So this is their expense. And so we give them a lot of latitude. What
makes Bloomington unique? Our kit homes, our stonemason homes, these are unique.
I've been kind of looking around at other places throughout Indiana, throughout the Midwest. And each
area reflects what the homeowners built. So if we destroy these historic homes, we're destroying what
makes Bloomington unique. Bloomington is not Fort Wayne. It's not Auburn, Indiana. It's not Indianapolis.
Each place looks different.
Please, whatever is decided, please keep Bloomington unique. That's it. Thank you for your comment.
Has anybody raised a hand on Zoom wanting to comment? Yes, we have. OK, let's take one of the comments
from Zoom. And in the meantime, people, a new person, can come on over and sit in the chambers comment seat.
Thank you. My name is Richard Lewis. I live in the Prospect Hill neighborhood where similar to McDowell
Gardens, we became a conservation district in 2008, voted to renew that in 2011. But then through a
discussion between a state attorney and a city attorney, we were told, no, we didn't qualify to renew
because of the balloting. There were different interpretations. So we were kind of thrust into the position.
of becoming an historic district. So in early 2014, we formed our own new guidelines committee to work
on the parts, migrating from a conservation district to an historic district. We were fortunate that
we had 15 volunteers to serve on that committee, which out of a neighborhood of maybe 400 households
was a fair turnout and representative from people who were very hardline preservationists to people
who wanted to be as hands-off as possible.
I ended up being the chair of that committee and I am grateful that we, all 15 of us were able to reach
consensus on every item we talked about, which was great to really tool things and forge things together
in our committee meetings. And then we were ratified in fall of 2014 as an historic district. And similar
to what Elizabeth said, we're sort of an historic light because
We have such a range of economies in our neighborhood and we want people to be able to make practical
renovations without undue hurdles. And much like McDowell Gardens and some of the others, most of our
neighborhood has houses that qualify as contributing, very few outstanding, very few notable.
So for us, it's a sense of preserving a streetscape so that you can look down a street and see a similar
streetscape to what would have been there in the 19 teens or 20s. But that still allows people to add
on to their homes, you know, building up or out and back because we primarily want to preserve that
public way facade that contributes to the streetscape and its architectural character. Our design review
committee, I think, has worked very well with homeowners in the neighborhood. Just last week, the HPC
approved a new
an entirely new construction in our neighborhood that was on a lot that had been vacant for a number
of years. Our sign review committee, which does not have the power to approve or deny something just
to make recommendations and hopefully assist the homeowner, we also made our recommendation for that
to move forward. It's nice to know that we can partner with homeowners in our communities, sometimes
make suggestions that make their lives easier or more practical or more aesthetic.
Um, and I gotta say, uh, just looking at the screen here, it is so great to see a conversation table
with city council and the HPC together. So I do thank all of you and salute you for, for bringing this
conversation together. Thank you. Please come over and sit in the chair. If you want to make comments
are like, yes, you.
So please sign in and then state your name for the record, and then you'll have up to three minutes.
I'm Bill Vowles. I'm with the Near West Side Neighborhood Association. I've lived in the neighborhood
for over half a century. And ours was one of the oldest neighborhoods in town and also one of the newest
historic districts.
It also was developed as affordable housing back over 100 years ago. And when we were developing our
guidelines, we were very careful to make sure that we were not making the preservation of our neighborhood
unaffordable. We do not require particular materials in almost all cases. I think the only thing we
specify is no vinyl siding.
I would even go for vinyl siding, but that was not the side of the group, the committee's decision.
I was on the committee that developed the guidelines as one of the commissioners here. And before the
changes in zoning came up, I never got,
request to buy my property unsolicited. I have, in addition to my own residence, two rental properties
in the immediate vicinity. And the neighborhood was always very diverse. We were the only neighborhood
that black residents could buy our own homes in for
about half a century, the first half of the 20th century. We've also had diversity in the types of housing.
There's always been a scattering of multi-family in among our single-family small homes and a few large
homes. When the proposal for zoning changes happened, I started getting unsolicited requests in the mail and
on the phone from developers wanting to buy my property. When that was defeated several years ago, the
request stopped. When it came up again, it started again, and I get them on a regular basis now. These
are people who do not live in the neighborhood. They don't even live in Bloomington, although they often
give Bloomington addresses. If you check up on it, you find out they're from somewhere else. Who really
are interested in
I'm turning this into high-density rental housing that will cost more than the rents that I'm charging
for my tenants and will actually be a detriment to affordable housing in Bloomington. So the use of
our neighborhood historic preservation commission is, I believe actually,
making housing more affordable. Thank you. Thank you very much. If you could make sure to sign in, that
would be great. If there are other people in chambers who would like to make a comment, we're gonna
go ahead and take one of the ones from online, and then while that's happening, we can do a chair switch
in chambers. So let's go ahead and go to that second online commenter. When you're unmuted, please state
your name for the record, and then you'll have up to three minutes.
Hi, my name is Wendy Brescht and I live in Elm Heights in the same house that I grew up in. Moved here
in 1963. Pardon me, I'm just parking my car, I was driving. Yeah, I've been happy for the historic
designation in Elm Heights because it has helped to
slow down a little bit, the rental creep, which has kind of gone already past me, but I keep track of
rentals, rental prices, rentals, I don't own any rentals, but what I see is that older homes,
smaller homes, existing homes, especially, are renting for not very much.
when a home is demolished, when another property is built, whatever, it's not something that can ever,
you know, when it's either plexed or when it's done, something like that, which is easier to do,
of course, without the historic commission. And I have seen the same thing, that they are considerably
more expensive.
When those small houses are demolished to make way for a bigger rental or for a bigger whatever, they
can no longer be owned and it removes really important housing from Bloomington. I think what I've seen
is that the newer built rental properties are inherently unaffordable and no longer good for
owner occupation. I think it's important to have attainable housing for
families for working people and that is our existing housing. What I've seen is that when other housing
is, when they've been demolished, other housing is built, each unit will cost more than the original
house. A one-bedroom will cost more than the original house. I also wanted to ask about a rental agency
that is buying up homes in my area and historic homes as well, a large federal just around the corner
for me, beautiful brick federal,
really good shape, windows were in good shape, everything was in good shape. They added, they immediately
changed all the windows, they're now nylon. They redid a lot of the, they added two bathrooms, two and
a half bathrooms, I think, which are not, which we couldn't find any permits for. And I'm wondering
how did they get away with this? How is that possible that that doesn't,
somehow flies under the radar or something. I'm just a little concerned that that is, that students
like, this is a person that rents to a lot of sororities, a lot of things like that, and that students
like new and landlords like easy. And I think that's something that needs to be considered when,
you know, there needs to be some kind of oversight for when rental landlords buy up historic homes.
Thank you. Let's go ahead and go here in chambers. Maybe you've already signed in. Please state your
name for the record and yield up to three minutes. Thank you, Madam President. This is Christopher Emge,
Sunny Slope resident and an employee at the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce. First of all, I'd
like to thank Council Member Zulek for putting this on. I've learned quite a bit. And Commissioner Cross,
who's taken my phone calls and questions on historic preservation quite a few times.
I am not even an expert or remote in that. I'm not even good at self-preservation. But a couple of things
I have noticed is that all architecture is not created equal, at least on the eye of the beholder. And
a lot of examples we've seen so far have been like 1920s, 1930s. But when you start creeping into like
1960, the architecture, I'm gonna use what I heard as in council chambers, I don't know, two years ago
with the CVS building,
and then had across the street was the old National Building, which is the Posh Hotel. They used a shell
built around 1960. And I'm thinking maybe keep one of those, but not both as architectural representation.
This is kind of the balance I think it's important that the Preservation Commission keeps in mind. I
live in Sunny Slope, and I'm thinking about the character of it. And I'm like, well, if you demolish
some of these, it's not the same as some of these very quaint
working class homes you see more in the center core than say the south side. And so as we try to increase
our population and probably going to be confined to our current boundaries, we have to make some of
these sort of trade-offs. I don't know what they are. I don't have an art history background to make
any sort of assessments on this, but we have to sort of look at this on what we want to keep and what we
don't in some of it. Not all of the architecture, I don't think, at least aesthetically, from my point
of view, is created equal. And it's something that I think the preservation commission, I hope, keeps
in mind that not everything has to be kept forever. Having a representation of this architecture style
might be enough to keep some of the history, but not all of it. Anyway, I thank you for your time. I
thank you for an excellent discussion tonight. Appreciate it.
Thank you, thank you for keeping time, even though the timer is not up on the screen right now. Do we
have anybody else on Zoom that would like to make a comment? Okay, we have another Zoom commenter,
so yep, I see somebody else coming in chambers, so while they're getting settled, let's go ahead and
take that Zoom commenter, if you could introduce yourself for the record, when you're unmuted, and then
you'll have up to three minutes. Is our timer gonna go back on again? Okay, great, thank you.
Yes, good evening. My name is Jeff Richardson. Thank you so much for doing this this evening. I've learned
a lot. I live in a 1950 house limestone ranch in Elm Heights.
I'm happy to say that our neighbors, we have some beautiful homes next to us. We've had three new neighbors
just move in within the last few months. They all have kids. So I know there's an image of Elm Heights
aging rapidly. There are some of us that are elderly, but we have a lot of kids now in the neighborhood
and more on the way. And so that's very exciting. One of the things that concerns me is
In some circles, this discussion, not tonight, but generally about historic homes and the preservation
thereof is somehow people who are either for preservation and therefore anti any kind of affordable
housing and that there's two camps. And in fact, I think most of the people that I know of here, we
had a neighborhood gathering the other day with about 100 people show up pretty spontaneously.
We're all concerned about affordable housing. In fact, I'm living that belief in converting our basement
into a studio apartment. I'm happy to say we didn't need the money, but we knew that people needed housing,
and so we converted our basement into a studio apartment. We've had other neighbors have done the same.
Just down the street, we have an ADU and others underway.
And so I think we get it. But so I'm just arguing that both can be true. You can want to preserve some
of the integrity, the beautiful history of our neighborhood and other older parts of the city and before
affordable housing. I will note that what was said earlier about some of the older houses going to ruin,
especially with elderly people not able to keep them up. And we have a good example of that on first
and Henderson.
I'm not getting into the debate about whether the house should have been turned into a duplex or not.
I think frankly, that's fine. But I do think that's a prime example of someone who probably an intervention
would have helped keep that house in good shape. And it may or may not have been demolished in the long
run. I basically feel that we have a lot that draws people to Bloomington. Having historic district
and historic home was one of the reasons we bought in this neighborhood.
We love Bloomington. We love IU. We love being here. And part of the reason for that is the beauty of
these neighborhoods and the welcoming and loving character of these neighborhoods. So thanks for listening,
and thanks for doing this tonight. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Let's go ahead here in chambers.
Hopefully you've signed in, state your name for the record, and then you'll have up to three minutes.
Hi, I'm John Butler, and I'm in the potential Cottage Grove historic conservation area. I want to address
three things. First of all, you may wonder why people would want to create a historic conservation area,
why property owners would seek out an extra set of rules that they would have to live under. And I think
the answer is very simple. It's stability.
Our neighborhood is facing destruction. We are under threat from every direction. We currently have
four houses that have been slated for demolition. And this is of a group of about 100 houses. And this
is just right now.
Surrounding us, houses are being taken down every week. And when I attend these historic preservation
committee meetings, the houses that are being voted on are houses that I know. So the reason is stability.
We don't want to see the destruction of our neighborhood. Number two, you've talked a lot about
affordability. And as homeowners, we don't want to make things more expensive. And that's why we're
looking towards a preservation light model.
where we attempt to preserve the neighborhood without pushing forward undue costs onto the people in
the neighborhood. Finally, there's an affordability issue that goes beyond just repairing your houses.
I'll just speak directly to our neighborhood. When a house is torn down, it's usually getting about
$1,000 to $1,100 per bedroom per month.
It is being replaced by a structure, and I'm not going to say house, by a structure which is getting
about $2,000 per bedroom per month. These more structures that are being built, we're not creating affordable
housing. Actually, we're doing the opposite. We're destroying affordable housing. And there's a lot
of people in Bloomington who are getting pretty upset about the
way these zoning laws have affected their neighborhoods and their chances of ever owning a home. We're
competing with people from across the state, investors and developers, just to be able to buy a home
in our own community. And, you know, the Historic Preservation Commission deals with these demolition
requests all the time. I don't know if the city council is aware of the sort of scale
of this problem, this housing crisis that's affecting the state and the city. Thank you. Thank you for
your comment. Is there anybody else on zoom? Okay, there's nobody else on zoom. Is there anybody else
in chambers who would like to make a public comment tonight? Go ahead and make your way. Yep. Somebody
just just be like upfront and assertive and come and sit in the seat and sign in and then state your
name for the record and then you'll have up to three minutes.
Hi, I'm Matt Sutton, proud Bloomington resident, former voting member, advisory member of the HPC, former
deputy state historic preservation officer for Utah, and archeologist, and various, interested in old
things. Listing, I wasn't gonna comment, I was just gonna listen, but I can't help myself.
Thinking about the time I spent on the commission and listening tonight, I kind of hear four things
that I think are, that I've noticed are worth examining. One is, and this was a little new to me, I
wish I'd thought of it before, the neighborhood, the process for a neighborhood group to ask
for a designation probably could be better defined.
that it seems a little vague to me and it could be better defined in code. The second thing, and this
was something that was very frustrating to me on the commission, issues like the cost of historic
preservation, the economic impacts of that, the sustainability of housing, the density of housing, the
affordability of housing, those are things that
fall sometimes on the historic preservation, but we weren't the experts to figure that out. That,
to me, was scope creep when we would start to talk about that, because it really, to me, those are not the
specialties of people who are on the Historic Preservation Commission. So I think some other way, some
other policy mechanism for considering those things would be a very valuable thing. They're relevant,
they're important, but you don't want to ask historic preservation specialists to figure out affordable
housing plans. It's just not the purview. Third is, we've heard this several times tonight,
There's really no options on a demo delay other than demo it or designate it. And it really does need
some kind of middle ground. I have thoughts on that, but I got 41 seconds. And then the last, and I
think probably the biggest, is that the code, as it is put together, is all stick. All stick. There's
going to be a cost, a time you have to spend, et cetera, et cetera, and no caret.
And I think preservation is best done when there are incentives for it. There are federal incentives,
but there are no, and they're pretty obscure, but there are no city incentives. I could not talk my
neighbors into designating a district because I got no good reason for it. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Has anybody raised a hand on zoom? Is there anybody else in chambers who would like to make a public comment?
Go ahead and make your way to the chair. Be assertive and upfront about standing up. Make sure to sign
in and state your name for the record, and then you'll have up to three minutes. Hello. My name is James
Ford. I live in what is Cottage Grove, will be Conservation District, we hope. I really want to just
respond to Matt Flaherty's first concerns about voting and who makes the decisions.
I don't know who matters to you. I'd like to hear from you. Do you think that people who own a house
in Bloomington but live in the Bronx and never come to Bloomington, does that matter to you that they
are in part of the process? What about a student who comes and moves into our neighborhood who could
potentially be a voter and vote you back into your position? Do they matter, even if they're only living
in our neighborhood for one year?
Do we involve them in the process? Do we actively reach out to the 90% of our population, which are
renters, student renters? What about people who own properties and rent them out, but they don't live
in the neighborhood? They live, say, out of town. One person owns 10 properties. Do they count as 10,
or do they count as one? And what if their properties are separated into LLCs,
LLC is ten properties are they four votes ten votes one vote I don't know and I'd like to hear from
City Council what you would expect our guidelines to look like and say well we want you to We want you
to survey all the renters and all the property owners Even though they don't live in the state even
though they don't live in in the neighborhood That's all I really want to say. Thank you
Thank you so much. Is there anybody else in chambers? Go ahead. Please sign in and state your name for
the record, and you'll have up to three minutes. My name is Tondra Radawan. I am a, live in a,
uncategorized. I don't live in a neighborhood district because we don't have one yet. We're
not a neighborhood. I'm a little bit south of Bryant Park. And I guess for disclosure, I also assist
this commission at times taking minutes. I don't have any decision-making authority. I just take the
notes and do my best to make sure they're accurate. I guess I wasn't really going to speak, but I did want to.
after the previous speaker mentioned the makeup of this town being potentially 90% renters. I do think
that is a little bit high. But I do want to say that I don't think that it is all student renters. Many
of the people that rent in this town are not students. They're families.
their professionals that can't afford to live here that may have been trying to buy a house here and
they haven't been able to for a long time. I know that in the makeup of my neighborhood, I was fortunate
enough to buy a home. I've always wanted to live in an older home. I live in a 1920s Victorian home
that I was able to buy because it was completely run down and my landlord that also had 20 properties
was trying to get rid of that one because of the cost of the foundation and the cost
of the roof and the cost of repairs were so much that he wanted to get rid of that one. I think that
seeing our neighborhood changing over the 10 years that I've lived there, there used to be families
that lived across from me, wonderful people, one person that had raised their
their children, their grandchildren in their family home. And that house was bought, it became a rental,
after that it was all divided and it's an Airbnb. The house next to me, another wonderful family. That
same owner that was in a bidding war with other friends of mine that were trying to make it a family
home, bought the house next to it so that family had to leave. Wonderful tenants for a year,
and a half, that is now an Airbnb, and then the house behind it that was a garage has been converted
to an Airbnb.
I would like to have stability in my neighborhood. I would like to know my neighbors, but I can't know
them if they're just different people every two to three days, and I'm not sure if that's anything that
this council can address. I think that more people that are wanting to be invested in their neighborhoods
and in their homes and if they're landlords and they don't want to pay for what it takes to restore
their home, they could use some of that rental money that they're taking from their renters and use
that to pay the fines and restore
their homes and preserve the neighborhoods in those ways. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Is
there anybody else in chambers who would like to make a comment this evening? I don't see anybody jumping
up. Has anybody raised a hand on zoom? Great. Okay.
Thank you to all the public who commented on this topic this evening. Bringing us back, I think, to
Councilmember Zula, how did you want to close the discussion? Well, I have my next steps action items
written out. I can read them, if you'd like, from the notes that I've taken. Number one, we need a more
consistent approach to reporting houses that we notice might be.
risk of needing demolition. We need an alternative to the demo delay apart from council designation
designation or approval of demolition. And we need a more formalized system of informing potential home
buyers of the historic nature of their property. Am I missing anything in terms of action items and
things that we've discussed asking the mayor for getting the
I'll do my best on that Yes qualified Yes, and I guess I'll just conclude by saying I think this is
really productive and I want to thank everyone all the HPC members and then it looks like Sam has something
to say to Thank you again for hosting this and we would invite any members of the council who are interested
to Attend one of our meetings to see what we do. We're there every second and fourth Thursday at 5 just
on the hall
can also be accessed over Zoom. And thank you for all of the people who are in the audience who came
to speak or who just came to listen. Are there any council members who want to make any closing comments
about anything that they've heard tonight or respond to anything public commenters brought up? Council
Member Aralo.
Well, yes, I just want to thank the members of the commission for coming and sharing information and
their experiences. It's been very interesting and productive for me. Maybe this is too general a question
right now, but it was brought up, I think, a couple of times. If there are certain things, certain aspects
of our zoning code that is of particular concern,
for protecting historic structures and maybe affordability as well, I would like to know. If you want
to mention it now, that's fine. If you'd prefer to email council, that would be great because it is
within our purview to perhaps address it and remedy it and change code. Again, thank you.
If there's anyone who would like to share anything right now, I'd be interested, but we can reserve
that for email exchange too. Thank you. Thank you. An entirely different meeting that we would need
to have. I think so. In favor of keeping time, I would say we should keep that either to email or have
another one of these lovely productive meetings. Are there other council members who want to make any
closing comments?
Council Member Piedmont-Smith. Yeah, I also want to thank the members of the HPC who came and the people
in the public who came to speak with us. I think this was a really interesting exchange and really brought
to light some things we need to work on. I think I do want to mention one thing that I don't think is
really in the HPC's purview, but that I heard tonight and that I agree is a concern and that is really having
feedback from everybody who lives in a neighborhood or who lives in a neighborhood maybe more than 10
months because there are a lot of people who rent and who rent long term and I'm concerned that they
are not being brought into the process when historic preservation is discussed. So that might be something
just to talk to hand about, maybe talk to our Angela Van Roy or other neighborhood liaisons about. So
thank you.
And thank you to Council Member Zulek for organizing. Thank you. Are there other Council Members who
wish to make a comment?
Okay, I would also like to thank everybody for coming and thank you to council members who look for
organizing. And I also wanted to address one of the public commenters, Wendy, whose last name I missed,
I'm sorry, who mentioned some concerns about permits and the people that she'd seen maybe some renovations
in her neighborhood and couldn't find permitting for them. That if you have questions or concerns about
that, one option is to file a you report because that will automatically kind of filter into the right person
You can file those anonymously or if you attach your name to it and email then you'll automatically
get like updates on it But if you file it and on it anonymously and then just take note of the report
number You can look that up later and kind of follow along with what they said You could also call the
planning department and ask them directly and just be like hey, what's going on with this? I actually
did that last year about something. I was like, hey, this street is closed. What's going on with that
and they generally
kind of know, and if they don't know, they can be good at getting back. So I wanted to address that
as a concern because there should not be large renovations happening under the radar. But it is also
one of those realities that our planning and enforcement staff can't just be constantly driving around
this town up and down every single street all of the time checking for things like this. So it is kind
of incumbent on the public to go like, hey, I'm concerned about this thing that's happening.
And I also just want to show some appreciation for all of the public commenters that we got tonight
that there were lots of interesting things that lots of folks had to say from their perspectives and
I'm really glad to hear that there's you know from the different historic districts represented this evening.
and from members of the public that they were very deliberate about their committee groups and their
committee structures and trying to make sure to be inclusive. And I would hope that all of the committees
are like that. But my guess is that they're not necessarily like that. And so that would be an aspiration.
So if there are no other closing comments from anybody,
I'll just say that our next regular session is next Wednesday night at 6.30, and we are adjourned. Thank you.