- everyone. I am Carrie Thompson. I have the great privilege of being mayor here in Bloomington and I
- like to try to get things started on time to respect the fact that you all are giving us your time today.
- I am so thrilled that we are
- at today because Hopewell has been a project that I think a lot of Bloomington has high hopes for, but
- sort of hasn't known what to expect. And it certainly was a project that in the last administration
- took on a big vision and built up a lot of ideas in the master plan. And frankly, when I took office,
- I was wondering how we could fulfill a vision
- that was held in that master plan with the fiscal responsibility that I also know that we needed to
- have. And I am thrilled that we got to today. And I want to particularly thank our RDC. I know we have
- a few members of the RDC here today. Thank you for staying with us and for leaning into how we could
- make Hopewell truly work for our entire Bloomington community.
- in a way that really leverages the kind of housing that we need for the kind of economic development
- that we see moving forward in our community. I also want to just say a special thank you to David Hittle
- and Anna Killian Hansen and Andrew Sybor, I don't know if you're in here, all of whom have been working
- hard with their departments to get to a hopeful that really works for our community.
- I ran on a platform of housing, and that is why I am here today. Housing has, since the moment I moved
- to Bloomington and still today, housing has been a conundrum for Bloomington. We have been the least
- affordable place to live in the state of Indiana. And my commitment when we were looking at Hopewell
- is how do we make Hopewell
- a community that really attracts the people that work in Bloomington in a way that they can afford to
- live in Bloomington. Because we simply can't grow a local economy without the key components of housing.
- Hopewell represents what can happen when a community truly decides to invest in itself.
- When we take a site that once served one purpose as our hospital and turn it into a place that serves
- many, we'll have homes of all shapes and sizes. We'll give you a preview of that in a few minutes. We
- will have homes for every people, every stage of life. And particularly we want Hopewell to be a place
- that really calls in the young professionals who many times cannot find a place to live in the city
- of Bloomington.
- There will be places where businesses can grow and of course we have an incredible park right in Hopewell
- as well as two other parks adjacent to Hopewell which are designed for that community connection that
- we all need. To take a hard look at our own processes through the Hopewell lens,
- and make a test case for building more inclusively and a set of new standards for Bloomington. We are
- really looking hard at Hopewell to make sure that we are
- Figuring out the bumps in the road that happen when you're trying to develop a plat for a new neighborhood
- all the way through permitting. It's my commitment during this term that we will get to a more streamlined
- permitting process and we will have a predictable planning process so people know what they're getting
- into when they decide to build in Bloomington because we want
- this kind of housing in Bloomington. And we want our developers to know transparently what it will take
- in order to build homes in Bloomington. The city obviously can build a framework to get housing built,
- but it's the individuals and businesses in this room that will make it real. And one of the driving
- forces behind how we are pivoting
- Hopewell for our community is to turn Hopewell into a development that our local builders and developers
- can invest in, can participate in, and can build for our local folks who are in need of housing.
- And for those who are at the university now and will be graduating and we want to keep here, for those
- who are coming to the businesses that we are growing at the trades district and beyond, we need houses
- for those people and Hopewell is the place that we hope our local builders will be creating those homes.
- Our work at the city, of course, is always about people first. Hopewell reflects input from residents,
- from designers, and from developers. This is what leadership looks like when people listen. Hopewell
- will embody our values of sustainability, inclusion, and connection, and we will do it in a way that
- removes as much red tape as possible so we can get to the efficiency that our housing system really needs.
- And we have been really privileged to be led through this stage of the process by Allie Quinlan Thurman,
- who is online with us today. Allie leads the team at Flintlock Labs, who has developed the plans that
- you'll see today and the proposals that we'll go over with you throughout the rest of the afternoon.
- I'll turn it over to Allie.
- Hi, everybody. Thank you very much for having us. We're really excited to run through the work that
- we've been doing on Hopewell and really excited to get your feedback as well. We'll do a little bit
- of an intro of the project and where we are so far, and then we'll have plenty of time for questions
- and discussion at the end. We've been tagging this as a homes catalog, so housing options made easy
- as a little bit of a background and an introduction for those of you that I haven't had the pleasure
- to meet yet.
- I'm based in Fayetteville, Arkansas. I'm a licensed architect and a licensed landscape architect. I
- also am a small developer. We build this work in our own neighborhood as R&D and have been for about
- 10 years. I'm also a former planning commissioner here in my own hometown, which has given us a really
- good broad view of how challenging housing can be to get on the ground.
- We've been working through pre-approved plans programs as a solution for housing in a lot of communities
- since 2017, our first program there. I love to echo the comments here too that this is really a people-first
- approach, that this is not about real estate development as much as it is providing housing and community
- for the people who will live here.
- So our team is three small companies or a big team of small businesses. So Flintlock lab is our architecture,
- landscape and building practice here in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The Incremental Development Alliance
- is a national nonprofit that I'm a longtime faculty member of and have been serving as executive director
- for a few years.
- We'll be providing training and capacity building for locals to build these as part of the program.
- We'll talk about that a little bit more in depth. Then Kronberg Urbanist and Architects is one of our
- partner companies and other INCDA faculty member. Eric is also an architect, planner, and small developer
- in Atlanta. We work really aligned and do a lot of these plans programs together because our catalogs
- give really good breadth of size and approach within the programs.
- So we've got a team here in Fayetteville. One thing that's been really interesting working through the
- program here in Bloomington is how similar our cities are. So we're almost exactly the same population.
- home of our state's largest university. We also have a lot of experience really struggling with knowing
- how to balance the needs of the university and student housing with the needs of year-round residents
- and converting those students into year-round residents at graduation. And so we've had a lot of geographic
- similarities and code similarities too that we've really been enjoying the experience of working in
- Bloomington.
- Cronberg, as I mentioned, is based in Atlanta. They also bring a lot of planning and code support to
- our team as that's really their specialty.
- And then InkDev is really all about helping local strengthen their own neighborhoods. InkDev is a national
- nonprofit, as I mentioned, that is 10 years old this year. It's trained almost 10,000 small developers
- nationally and in places like South Bend, one of the longest running places that they've been working.
- The pre-approved plans program there in South Bend came out of a stress test that were done by InkDev.
- And it really is an alliance of practitioners. It's very practicality-based and will provide capacity
- building and really hands-on
- training from everything from finance to construction detailing, supporting the developers of these
- houses all the way from start to finish. We are a really diverse team and part of the reason that we
- again want you to think about that is that this is how many specialties it takes to get even small simple
- houses built in communities in the United States these days.
- Building codes zoning codes processes finance there are a number of reasons that it's really hard to
- do this kind of work and so you're not alone in struggling with housing struggling with housing that's
- the right size in the right place at the right price point to be able to support people living the kind
- of lives that they want to live.
- This is really hard work and I want to reinforce that you guys are already really far ahead of most
- communities that we work in, in a lot of the work that has been done. And as mentioned, we're still,
- you know, we're still having to calibrate even with all of that good work and that is a sign of a successful
- system in our experience. We've never worked someplace that didn't have new things that we needed to
- take a look at and really looking at this as a practice.
- of getting closer has been something that we found at least helps people feel better about, you know,
- will never hit perfection.
- Pre-approved plans programs are something that we've been working on for almost 10 years as a really
- good framework for getting housing. While Hopewell is not a full pre-approved city-wide program, the
- way that we might typically see one run, we are really approaching this as delivering fully pre-approved
- buildings on platted lots with utility connections that are ready to go pull a permit for somebody.
- We also have been calibrating the program to be able to be rolled into a citywide pre-approved program
- in the future, which really means that we're trying to calibrate plan selections and dimensions to currently
- plotted lot sizes and standards throughout the city.
- One of the reasons we really took this approach from the beginning is that even if we build out Hopewell
- exactly as drawn in our best case scenario, and we've got people moving in, and it is a full win for
- this one site, we will not have solved the housing crisis. And so we really are trying to do what I
- think is really a dual mandate here that we're really championing that is
- building Hopewell out and also capacity building local so that we can build housing long term is calibrated
- to Bloomington's need well past you know the full successful build out of Hopewell.
- The use of stock plans or standardized plans that get repeated multiple times within neighborhoods has
- a huge history in the United States. There are many places that have adopted pre-approved catalogs.
- There are several in Indiana. It's been interesting too. We've done lots of Indiana work in the last
- few years. We've worked on regional projects in Southern Indiana and Indiana Uplands. We've done developer
- trainings in Indianapolis last year, and then we've got our long-term work in South Bend. We talked
- about, we're also kicking off one of these programs in Fort Wayne coming
- You guys are doing lots of work statewide.
- Plants catalogs and Sears kit homes and, you know, pattern books as they were sometimes called really
- were the way that most of our historic neighborhoods were built out. And so a lot of these catalogs
- have a really good history and, you know, proven track record of being great ways that we can build
- neighborhoods full of personality that are homes that people can really build out and customize through
- time. But it can be a very efficient way to build out a neighborhood rather than feeling like every
- home needs to be fully custom, fully designed for its own independent lot.
- Pre-preplans programs as an approach have really taken off nationwide. They started with ADU plans as
- an approach, especially the West Coast had several big state bills that were passed legalizing this
- kind of program. But a number of cities nationally have adopted these and seen really good success in
- starting to see redevelopment of types of housing that the market is not typically producing.
- A couple of things that we're trying to do with this program, one of them is expedite development processes.
- Often, this is a really great way that the city is functionally acting as a small developer, taking
- a project through its own system and flagging friction points that the city can make a decision they
- are feeling like is adding to the quality you're getting, sometimes is not adding to the quality you're
- getting. It's really common to have a development process, stress test calibration that comes out of this.
- We're also trying to reduce development costs. A lot of times that extra process, that extra time, that
- extra complexity is raising the bar so that really only out-of-state developers with big legal teams
- and lots of consultants can successfully develop within the system. Often that's reducing the lovability
- of buildings that we're getting. It's also really giving you more of a standard product of housing rather
- than something that's calibrated for your neighborhoods, your residents.
- So shifting into a lower bar for entry with more clear standards, which can be achieved via a pre-approved
- program, can help create local wealth, that these are being built by, owned by locals, and that you're
- not exporting wealth out to out-of-town developers. It also helps develop better built outcomes. We're
- not trying to zone for good architecture via really complicated zoning patterns and architectural design
- controls that then need review boards. Instead, we're developing good built outcomes that the city's
- selecting the architecture,
- details from the beginning so that you know what you're getting. It also helps reintroduce a greater
- variety of housing options, which I think is one of the most useful things kind of about this program.
- A lot of builders can build what they're familiar with because that's a safer path to take and development
- is a really risky business. We see that as a really rational decision, but often by reintroducing different
- types of really desirable housing that aren't commonly being built, we can also get the
- private market more familiar and comfortable with those and then start to see a broader range of housing
- types be built. One of the things that we talk about the most in terms of those wider range of housing
- types is who we're trying to house. One of the things, this is the most important, I think, set of data
- that we present. We talk about it a lot.
- Often when we start talking housing, people have an assumption, whether they realize it or not, we usually
- do, that we're talking about this young family, 2.5 kids and a dog, really specific household type as
- the most common owners of homes. That is not statistically where we sit in the United States
- or in Bloomington. Our most common household type across the US and the local stats match the national
- ones almost exactly.
- The most common household type, almost half of households, are two people with no kids. Either that
- is empty nesters, you know, your kids are only there for a little while, you have a long time as adults
- with that house, couples who haven't had kids, or couples who haven't had kids yet. But almost half
- of our households are two people sleeping in one bed at night.
- The next most common household is one person living alone. That is the fastest growing household type.
- Typically, anytime that people can afford to live alone, they do. That's a really fast growing demographic
- in the United States. Those two household types combined are about 75 percent of households.
- About three-quarters of households are one or two people living often in one bed at night.
- As we start to think about the most common size and format of house, it becomes really clear very quickly
- why housing is typically too large, too expensive, and too far apart to fit the majority of the households
- that we actually need to be focusing on housing. This is also challenging for that minority of households
- that have kids in them because we often end up with small households that have enough budget to buy
- a larger house,
- And they have no other option. While they might prefer a smaller house that might be a little bit lower
- maintenance, might be less expensive, often they can stay in a big house, right? Empty nesters who don't
- downsize because they have nowhere to go. And so they end up, you know, sort of taking up a house that
- could be a great family house if we were providing a more diverse set of housing that's better suited
- to those small households.
- As you can see here, if we look at the flip of this, the size of our houses that we have right now,
- about 62 percent of them have three or more bedrooms. When we talk about having lots of large houses,
- but still feeling that crunch for young families, that's really what's going on. We've got smaller households
- that are in larger homes than they need or want because we have provided very few small homes. One of
- the reasons we're going to talk about there is lot size. Lot size requirements have a lot to do with
- that across the United States.
- One of the things that's really challenging, and you may be experiencing this and it may not feel housing
- related but it is, as you were working through budget conversations.
- The format that we have for a lot of our neighborhoods that we can only build single family houses and
- they have to be on relatively large lots means that we have quite a bit of infrastructure and service
- needs that are being provided by very few taxpayers in very few houses, right? In this situation, which
- is sort of default normal under zoning in most of the United States, even if you start to make one of
- those a duplex, you have very few units that are available and there's very little city available in
- that house.
- We talk about this as housing, that instead we want to focus getting both more ratepayers in on the
- same amount of infrastructure so that city budgets are significantly better balanced, but we also want
- to see this as a people first approach. This does work better financially, but it also starts to provide
- housing choice. We can live in the same neighborhood for our entire life cycle. We have a wide range
- of housing types, housing sizes, housing budgets,
- that we can live within the place that we want to live, that's close to the coffee shop that we like,
- that's walkable to work. We can live there with neighbors who also have a wide variety of choice within
- their housing. As we start to talk through some of the changes we're going to be making, I want you
- to think back to this graphic of if we don't have a wide variety of housing relatively close together.
- We're both worse off for city budgets and we also have a number of people that end up pushed
- to outer edges of town because that's the only place they can find a house. Bloomington is like many
- places and I think more so than many places really seeing suffering from popularity and success. There's
- a huge population growth within the city within the last 20 years and projected to continue to grow
- significantly. As we think about the household size going down, remember how small our average household
- sizes. This is one thing we want to think about too.
- When in the year 2000, our population was significantly smaller than it is now, we also had a larger
- average household size. That average household size is going down steadily every year, which means that
- we need more total units
- to house the same number of people as more and more people want to live alone. So we're really working
- against two different challenges here. Population growth is definitely a challenge. We definitely need
- more housing to house new residents that are moving in or staying after college. We also have to be
- focusing on housing increasing numbers of individuals or couples living in homes.
- One of the other things we really flagged here that's very specific about this program is the need to
- be promoting home ownership. We've got a really high rental rate, which is often a sign that we don't
- have a balanced set of housing, that we've got lots of rentals available, lots of people who own homes
- but don't want to sell them. And we really need to be providing that pathway into home ownership part
- of this program.
- From a cost standpoint, we actually are at a somewhat unusual cost focus. One of the things that we
- often have found in communities like Bloomington, who do have really successful professionals, is that
- one of the challenges that we often see too is that when we aren't providing a wide range of price points,
- we both need hyper affordable, very attainable price points. We do also need some nicer homes. One of
- the things that we see happen sometimes is that we'll have naturally occurring, is what that's called,
- naturally occurring existing homes that are relatively
- affordable by virtue of being smaller and older, not fully improved. In communities that we're not providing
- the full range of price points, we often also see wealthier professionals purchase small affordable
- homes and then renovate them, add on, tear them down, build a large house, and we're losing that attainable
- housing that we already have, which is very hard to recreate, partially because we're not providing
- any higher-end housing. I also want to flag in your brains, we do need really attainable housing. There
- are really good affordability
- as part of this program, a couple of more expensive models that are great for professionals who are
- kind of mid-career can also actually help save some of our existing attainable housing. So that diversity
- of price point is also really important to match the diversity of incomes that we see in Bloomington.
- As we look at the Hopewell Master Plan, we're here in blocks nine and 10.
- and so sort of settling you in terms of what we're going to be looking at in this first section. We're
- blocks nine and 10 down in the southwest corner. We'll run through a quick case study too of another
- home catalog that is in process as an example of the calibrations that happen to solve the really specific
- challenges of any community's individual housing. One of the things that we want to
- Talk about again through the Southerland Choice is the wide variety of what we would call house scaled
- buildings that we can get quite a variety of unit types and unit sizes that all play really nicely together.
- Everything from small, missing middle apartment buildings down to really small micro units that hit
- great affordability metrics.
- So this is the rough selection of building types that you might see in a catalog that even you know
- this this goes up to a 10 plex. It has there's a four plex six plex and 10 plex in this one, as well
- as some little micro units right so the daffodil is a 16 by 22 studio unit that is built and sold for sale.
- So a pretty wide range of unit types. And then another element that you're going to see tucked into
- here is the need for kind of two things that we'll be talking through as part of this.
- One of them is small lots. I mentioned lot size is partially what's driving our affordability issues
- in a lot of the United States. If you think about a rough metric that lots of developers use is that
- your land cost should be no more than 20% of the total sales value of your eventual house. If you're
- gonna buy a lot, you can't really sell a house on it for less than, right, about 80%, you know, more
- than that lot cost. So as we start to look at lot sizes, and this is a,
- Case study that is done on Kronberg's work that this is an actual built for a nonprofit project in Atlanta
- originally, but the numbers have been calibrated to Bloomington current year costs. So if we look at
- our small, you know, three bedroom single family home on a normal size lot, we can get to decent AMI.
- So, you know, your area median income, a person making the average amount of income within your town
- percent AMI. So somebody making 130 percent AMI is someone who is slightly more successful making slightly
- more than average. 130 for new construction is actually pretty good metrics. But one of the things that
- we see here too is the down payments on these can be somewhat limiting. So we can and in this scheme
- they could get to a decent affordability success rate with just a single small family house.
- house as an infill. But as we start to see ADUs legalized in lots of communities, we can get down to
- a really good affordability for the rental of that ADU. But look at how much the down payment of this
- house has jumped. So we're at $25,000 that somebody needs in cash to be able to buy this house. In order
- to buy an accessory dwelling unit, here's the challenge we found with accessory dwelling units. As somebody
- who's written a lot of ADU codes and loves ADUs, the challenge is you're buying two houses
- in a package of one. There are some people who can afford two houses, there are some people who cannot.
- One of the things that we find really impressive is that if we let homeowners split that accessory dwelling
- unit off and sell it separately, we can capture both via real affordability benefit of the small unit,
- which is why it's so affordable for rental is because it's very small, and also we can lower down payment
- rate. If we can build the ADU, great, we've got another unit, we're housing another resident,
- an affordable rate, but it's pretty expensive for somebody to be able to buy, which means it's pretty
- hard to resell. If we can split the lot once and build two more ADUs, we can get that down payment down
- a little bit, but we're really still paying for both of those houses. And the down payment on these
- is also really high. We need $50,000 to $70,000 in down payments, so limiting our number of buyers.
- Although our house then price points, the price to own is pretty attainable. We see these affordability
- rates keep coming down the more houses that we can build. But in our scenario four here where we've
- allowed these units to all be built and then allowed them to each be split out onto their own lot, we
- start to see down payments that are down in the 12 to $20,000 range and we're hitting a 70 to 120 percent AMI.
- for homeownership. So homeownership is also really promoted anytime we can split very small houses out
- on their own lots. They can be purchased with a regular mortgage from the bank downtown. So as we talk
- about small lots, this has been one of the easiest ways we've found to sort of describe, there's the
- two part that we're really working on, that monthly cost to own, but also your down payment approaches.
- So the approach that we take with this is that we'll have
- user-friendly catalog that is all the details of each home, the overall dimensions, overall price points
- even, and then also full buildable construction documents that are fully pre-permitted through the city
- office. Then there's also a program guide to help guide people through how they build, what is exactly,
- who do they call next? Then this recommendations for the program is something else that we can talk
- through a little bit.
- that we find in code that is helpful to make updates to get better yield. One of the things that we
- really wanna focus on is matching the historic character and scale of a lot of our neighborhoods. And
- so we see lots of cottages, we see lots of small format plans, but we also see lots of opportunity for
- some two story units that can really make good efficient use of the additional foundation costs that
- we need anytime we're building on car store clay as we are in Bloomington and as we do at home.
- So as we look through kind of this first round of proposals, we're proposing putting forward a real
- mix of housing types and price points.
- fully pre-approved home designs that will streamline permitting and reduce costs for builders. They'll
- also reduce the unknowns for small developers, which, you know, unknown amount of time that it's going
- to take to work through pre-development and get to groundbreaking can cause a lot of heartache for small
- developers who don't have, you know, an enormous balance sheet behind them. That extra time is real
- extra cost for them.
- We really want to build this out as a local opportunity for local builders. And so we would not necessarily
- envision that these would be built individually home by home by different builders, often on small sites,
- that can be challenging. But the price points of these, the goal would be that people can easily take
- on three to five, you know, if not built concurrently, then, you know, sort of lots together that they
- can be strategizing and building with lots of support through the process.
- We'll also be working through with RDC legal frameworks to support permanently affordable and market
- rate homes. There is a challenge with some of these that the first time that we build a home, we often
- can get to really good affordability metrics. Often then they're in such good locations, they're small
- enough that we get really big bidding wars on those units for resale. And so we've seen several instances
- without a legal framework of sort of affordability protections that the first home buyer gets a phenomenal
- subsidy, gets a house,
- well below the federal standard definitions of affordable. Then in a couple of years of living in it,
- they can turn around and sell it for double what they paid for it, which is a great income piece for
- them, not great for long-term affordability. We'll be working through a permanent legal structure that
- the homes will be allowed to build equity in them. Each home buyer can build some equity in that house,
- but also that we can control overall price points and resale long-term to maintain the benefit.
- We'll have ongoing community outreach as well as developer training. We're starting now our engagement
- with local developers and local lenders. Finance is also a big hang up that we often run into for these.
- So they'll also be calibrated for local finance.
- And here's where we are in the overall project. So we've really wrapped up our discovery phase, kind
- of research, getting used to the real specifics of Bloomington and how this can be most impactful citywide.
- We're working on our detailed land planning now with neighbors, partners, and city departments. We'll
- then work through the plat and entitlement process to be able to hopefully pass a PUD on these two blocks.
- The block eight, which the police department will go on, will be part of that PUD. There are eight and
- nine or one block right now. So we'll plaque those together. And then we'll work through starting to
- recruit developers and lenders as part of the feedback group, as well as assess interest of people who
- may be interested in building these.
- We'll have some city-wide trainings talking about incremental development and how that works both for
- professionals and non-professionals. We find one of the things that's really important on these programs
- is ecosystem training. Housing is not built in a vacuum. Our planners and our fire marshals and our
- city officials and our lenders and our housing advocates are just as important to have onboard
- and understanding and pulling in the same direction as the builders themselves.
- So as we've worked through quite a bit of calibration into Bloomington itself, really trying to focus
- again on being able to have this rollout into a full pre-approved program. One of the things that we
- wanted to show and one of the kind of background of one of the biggest things that we'll be asking for
- is looking at one thing that is really unique about Bloomington and the way that the lots are platted.
- In a lot of neighborhoods, and this is a specific case study of a specific existing block, this is right
- next to Rose Hill Cemetery there on Elm and Forth. You have many blocks, which this is really interesting,
- we hadn't seen this before, that have side driveway alleys platted as well as platted rear unbuilt alleys.
- With lots of unbuilt, what we would call a paper alley, it exists only on paper, it has never been built.
- But we also have very deep lots.
- relative to most similar-sized cities that were developed at similar times, there's very large lots.
- One of the things that this is leading to is the feeling, I think for a lot of Bloomington residents,
- that there is nowhere to infill. As you drive or walk down 3rd Street or 4th Street, there are no vacant
- lots. You have a full built-out street of homes that you were seeing and short of removing homes, there's
- no way to infill any additional area. One of the things that we're looking at though, and I have looked
- at in several communities,
- legalizing the ability to use that alley as legal street frontage that's something that is one of the
- you know, probably the last five years, one of the most popular code changes that we're seeing.
- can lead to the ability to infill our backyards, land that does not currently feel like it's developable
- because it's not very visible from the street. But the lots in a lot of these neighborhoods are so deep
- that they would be a typical urban, you know, depth lot and in town, in a town of about your size lot,
- even with a small lot carved out in the back.
- One of the things that we've seen be really beneficial in some communities for this is that you get
- a whole second street frontage. You can double the number of units within your neighborhood block. It's
- entirely voluntary because if you don't want anything built on your backyard, great, you don't have
- to. But it does also allow for the creation of significantly more attainable housing while preserving
- existing historic fabric on very little additional infrastructure maintenance costs for the city because
- an alley as a frontage is much
- cheaper to maintain than a full 60 foot right of way. One of the things that we also see as a real benefit
- to this is that through a code change only, just legalizing alleys as frontage and then legalizing lot
- splits. We understand there's lots of controls that will likely want to be put on that to make sure
- that we don't have, again, out of town developers taking advantage of that. All achievable. One of the
- things that we see as a huge benefit to this is additional land in your backyard that is not buildable,
- doesn't really have any value to it. You can't sell it, you can't borrow on it, you couldn't fix up
- your house with a home equity line of credit using that as value. The ability to split those lots out
- though creates legal buildable lots, which have a value both for homeowners, they can stay in their
- home, they don't have to downsize, they can pull some equity out of that by selling a rear lot to a
- new resident, or they can borrow on the value of that lot as a home equity line of credit or refinance
- to improve their own home.
- They're rough numbers on these and we pulled general lot values in Bloomington to run these comps, but
- just by that one legal code change.
- allowing alleys as lot frontage. We can create 20 new lots in town in a new neighborhood, 20 new dwelling
- units. These were all single-family cottages. We've also created almost a million dollars in lot value
- only by allowing those to be legal lots. One of the things that we'll talk about a lot is alley frontage
- and small lots throughout our code change recommendations. As we do some of these things, I think it's
- helpful to return to, what are we trying to achieve?
- One of the things that we really want to be able to achieve is the historic village the parts of town
- that we we love the most right and we put on the postcard are often relatively dense relatively mixed
- use some of sometimes that's office sometimes that is little shops.
- but the ability to have everything that you need within walking or biking distance to your own neighborhood.
- Here's an example of a neighborhood that Cronberg developed, self-developed. This is behind Eric's house
- in Atlanta that has an alley as frontage. There are not sidewalks, but it's such a small street that
- residents walk and play in that street. There's often kids on bikes there when I have been there visiting Eric.
- Some some of the products that Eric and I have developed here really small houses ranging from 500 square
- feet in the bottom left up to 2000 square feet one of our family houses that's tucked into the neighborhood
- with that.
- cute wraparound porch there on the north. Both of these incorporate alley frontage, you know, kind of
- your front, the front of your lot, your front door facing an alley, sometimes where they're even facing
- green spaces. So pocket neighborhoods or green space facing lots are another really useful component
- that this legalizes and it means we can do cottage courts, pocket neighborhoods without needing a condo
- association that the alley in the back is your frontage, although your front door might be facing a
- park or a trail.
- We talked a little bit about reintroducing housing types, but this is another of the kind of elements
- that we used within our Massachusetts program recently to show the wide range of housing types that
- we typically weren't seeing being produced by the market. With pre-approved plans, we can reintroduce
- and really create some additional diversity within the program. What might this look like conceptually,
- specifically in Hopewell?
- We started out with this first concept plan as a point of discussion. One of the things that we've really
- been working through is how wide street rights of way should be. What are those street sections? What
- should those look like? And so this was our first element. And I want you guys to pay a little bit of
- attention here to our yields at the bottom. So this is 118 units.
- We've got a finished lot value that we've created from this again taking an average of lot values that
- are for sale currently in Bloomington, assuming that these are a little cheaper because they're a little
- smaller but that there's also a range of values within this.
- We've got home prices within this initial plan from $175,000 up to 676. So the median price here is
- about 290. So really hitting that young professional kind of price point that we're aiming for, the
- mortgage payment on that is similar to renting an apartment, which is also often a good metric
- of affordability for that.
- for that kind of market segment. Flagging, you know, we did, we had not widened Fairview, which was
- a little bit of a flag and we did have some multifamily mixed into the inner blocks.
- We explored some alternatives and this is the yield impacts that can have seemingly minor changes. This
- one widened fair views. This gives us a full 60-foot right of way. We minimize the number of lots that
- faced onto an alley directly. These have an alley rear frontage, but a trail as their front face through
- an old alley. There's a 12-foot alley easement. We're using that as a trail easement and then building
- out a full alley that can be used for
- fire access and utilities. So this dropped us to 84 homes. So it's about 30% less units. Our finished
- lot value dropped about 30%. And our home prices, our average went up a little because we were losing
- some of those smallest units and we lost kind of the multifamily units, which brought our price points
- down a little, but we still maintain that, you know, 200,000 to 676 rough price point. The largest,
- most expensive houses are our corner units where we've got some three bedroom family houses, you know,
- they've got a play
- room and a decent size laundry, the kind of home that you can easily, you know, purchase either with
- kids or knowing that that's going to be important to you. And then we also have some really small studio
- duplexes and really attainable units for single person households.
- And I wanted to show, too, if this is helpful, as we're bringing through some of our code changes in
- our PUD, this is our current by right. We want to call out really clearly, R4 is actually a great zone.
- You guys have done great zoning work already. The TRO is a great zone. And here's our current yield
- that we can do within the R4. And this is partially due to how deep our lots are in town. So this is
- a larger lot than is required for minimum lot size. But because we've got a minimum lot width, we can't
- actually use this backspace for anything because we don't have a street back
- there's not really a way to put one in. So we end up with lots of extra space that isn't necessarily
- buildable. But under current buy right development, we can fit 28 homes, right? So about three quarters
- less than we're proposing doing with a couple of these code changes. So we thought this might be helpful
- to also see just relative to the background of why we're trying to ask for some of these.
- So we have plenty of time for questions. We can go back to any slides that we need to for discussion.
- But I also would encourage you guys to reach out to us now or throughout the process. We'd love this
- to be a really engaged and informed program. And so any feedback that you've got for us now or in the
- future, any recommendations you have for us of builders, locals, sometimes general contractors who are
- doing residential building can be scaled up to great small developers. We'd love those introductions.
- So I will pass it to Anna to manage Q&A in the room.
- We do not have a great way to mic you all for questions unless you come up to the podium and speak.
- So people online, and we do have quite a number of them, can hear the questions. So can I just ask if
- you have a question to ask if you come up to the microphone? Now is a great time to do that. Come on up, Bill.
- Break the Ice. I'm Phil Stafford. And you were talking a lot about how many people are living alone
- these days. And that's a significant demographic change. But much of that demographic change is driven
- by the aging of our population. Significant amount of that. Something like a third of the population
- in West Side neighborhoods west of the Beeline Trail, or 30% of those people are living alone.
- Another 30% are people over the age of 50. And so what I was looking for in the presentation was some
- reference to aging in place through universal design and other kinds of community supports that help
- people accomplish that. But what I heard was a more transitory environment where people can build up
- some quick equity and then resell their property, which seems to me would
- be a detriment if we're trying to also build community with this neighborhood as well. I can hop in
- and take some ownership of having explained that poorly. There is
- an accessibility percentage that will be insured in a lot of these. One of the largest buyer groups
- that we do see of these homes is seniors who are wanting to stay within their own neighborhood, have
- lived in the neighborhood for the majority of their life, are in a larger house than they really want,
- and would like to be able to downsize but stay within the neighborhood. I think it's likely a minimum
- of between 30 and 40 percent of the units that will be fully adaptable for age and place wheelchair
- accessibility. But there is also a real focus
- within the program of the ability to have those units be very flexible to a wide range of ages, but
- that seniors are a really important buyer group. So I apologize for not talking about that nearly enough.
- Just to add on, because now seems like an opportune time, Ali, the population slide that was shown really
- was where we aspired to be.
- several years ago when the master plan was developed we were aspiring to have population growth that
- hasn't happened actually perhaps because we don't have enough housing and we do want people to stay
- in neighborhoods obviously and build that neighborhood connection and
- What is happening now is people are staying in homes that are much larger than what they want to stay
- in. They want to stay in the community, but they may not be able to maintain the home that they have
- or may not want to. My family is a great example. We, at one time, had five kids at home. We only have
- two now. And in three years, we'll have none. So we don't need the same size house. Hopefully,
- in three years, we'll have none.
- Um, and, and, but we'd love to stay obviously in Bloomington and, and close to the neighborhood we're
- in now. And this, um, allows some movement in the market. And right now there isn't much. Come on up
- for the next question. Let me also say that if you are online and you have a question, please drop it
- in the chat or raise your hand. There were, um, two things that jumped out at me. Um,
- regarding the obstacles to this kind of stuff besides zoning. And that's the fire marshal. Currently,
- we have historic neighborhoods that we all love and we've protected that we are not allowed to build.
- We have houses off eight-foot alleys currently in these neighborhoods. We're not allowed to do that
- anymore. So the fire marshal is one obstacle for this regarding infill. How do we get past that is the question.
- And then the second thing is also the fire marshal. And one of those slides you showed is stack the
- duplex. You can't stack residences anymore without a full fire suppression system, riser, vault, post
- indicator valve, which is outrageously expensive. Yet they're all over our community right now with
- no fire suppression. So that's my question is how do we go back to the things we love and we're protecting
- with all of these
- onerous, egregious codes that really don't really amount to much when it comes to affordability. It
- just drives up cost. That is an excellent question and something that we really struggle with in a lot
- of different locations. And I'll give you the two part answer. Part one is everything that we propose
- will be fully compliant with current fire codes. So we've got a 20 foot wide fire access route. The
- alleys are built at 20 foot walk width.
- for a fire truck, we've got a maximum of 150-foot fire hose pull to every unit. All of our eaves are
- below 30 feet in height so that we don't need aerial access, the larger ladder trucks, which has a wider
- requirement. And then we use a limited amount of attached dwellings. Townhouses are a better, you know,
- townhouses are sort of the secret hack for fire code right now because the fire separation wall that
- is horizontal between them.
- The units are between two vertical walls. You don't have any horizontal separations. It's a cheaper
- detail to build. It's much easier to get done. Lots of more residential contractors can achieve those
- details. Townhouses really help us get the density that we're looking for with achievable fire separations.
- I will say almost every state that we have done a pre-proof program in, we have ended up in
- really attempting to and sometimes successfully making amendments to the state fire code. Depending
- on your local representation, we've had successful bills in Tennessee, North Carolina, New Hampshire.
- We took through state bills in Oklahoma and Arkansas last year, which our first time through usually
- doesn't work. We got our first ones in, we'll be reintroducing bills there. But advocacy for building
- code changes is an absolutely critical component of affordable housing because exactly as you're saying,
- Lots of the things that we love and know work and have had in our communities is phenomenal, high value,
- high desirability housing for 100 years are not legal to build under current building code. We see a
- huge cost to that literally and figuratively in successfully deploying housing in communities. If you're
- interested in know a state senator, a state representative, we've got some really good model bills that
- we'd love to help with.
- Hi, Ali. My name is Eric Spoonmore. I'm with the Chamber of Commerce here in Bloomington. You had mentioned
- that there was a mechanism, a legal mechanism, I think, that would prevent the potential for large capital
- gains of people that might sell a house after two or three years when they first bought it. I'm curious
- how that works, if there's other communities that are doing that. And then would that be legal to do
- in Indiana, or is there special legislation that we would need to have in order
- to make that happen. And then are there any tax implications, property tax revenue implications to that
- as we're kind of on a market-based system here in Indiana, would that limit our ability to generate
- the necessary tax revenue that we need to provide services? It's a really common mechanism that is becoming
- mandatory in lots of communities for, I'll give some examples of,
- A land trust is often the format that it takes, but you need an entity that is holding the protections.
- Functionally, what is often happening
- Whether it's via a land trust or whether it's via another mechanism or another holder of that is that
- there's a deed restriction on the home that there's a right of first refusal that is held by an entity.
- Sometimes it's the land trust. It could be the RDC. It could be the city. There's a right of first refusal
- to purchase that home at a pre-agreed upon appreciation rate.
- If we have a long-term homebuyer, this becomes not very important, but the protections are actually
- there to prevent people from buying the house, sitting in it for a few years, selling it, and then the
- house is doubled in price. The first right of refusal means that there's an annual pre-agreed
- upon appreciation that you know that you will get when you're ready to sell your house. When you're
- ready to sell your house, the holding entity of that protection
- has a qualified list of home buyers that they can bring in to purchase the house. The house is typically
- sold then below what the market rate might be. It's generally a capped rate. In some communities, it's
- 5 percent annually. There are communities that your annual housing appreciation is actually 30 percent.
- A 10 or 15 percent cap is actually much
- well below market rate, but still a great return. We're trying to balance that. Home buying, especially
- really affordable units, is an important way that households are growing wealth, especially in our deeply
- affordable units. Some equity growth is valuable. You don't want units doubling in value and now they're
- not affordable anymore. It's really trying to balance the needs of the affordability metric and the
- needs of the home buyer, but that has typically been a mechanism that's really popular and has worked
- really well and been
- maintainable. It also means that the structure of that deed restriction, it's the most popular way to
- do it because if the entity that's holding that deed restriction is not able to exercise their first
- right of refusal, the home can then be sold at market rate, which means that you don't really see the
- same reduction in appraised value or assessed value that you would in more stringent, you know, if it's
- a deed restricted that you can only sell that house to somebody with a specific income. There's a deed
- restriction program right now in Colorado that's really unique that you have to, in order to inhabit
- these houses that are being built under this program, you have to work a minimum of 30 hours a week
- in the community and make a certain income. We do see some hit on tax value and assessed value of those
- homes because they can't be sold at market rate. The deed restriction program has worked really well
- in a lot of communities because they could be sold at market rate.
- of a program but they could roll out of it at any time so they're typically not taxed at a lower value
- than they would be otherwise. We don't see a lot of property tax negative impacts. One of the things
- about the higher density too that we're really seeing is we actually see significantly higher tax revenue
- from blocks that are developed at this kind of a density
- While each person's property taxes stay relatively approachable because their house value is small,
- you're buying a $200,000 house, your property tax rate is pretty attainable at that price point, but
- you have so many more houses. In this one, we have four times the number of individual dwelling units.
- Our overall assessed value that we're taxing on is significantly higher than neighborhoods that have
- larger lots and fewer homes, but each
- persons taxes are lower. And so it works out really well economically for both homeowners and the city
- typically. We have a couple of questions online. Let's start first with Mark Fig. I love the idea of
- changing codes to allow more use in existing neighborhoods. How would you handle very common private
- restrictions?
- I'm going to ask Mark too for clarification on private restrictions. I'm reading and interpreting that
- as deed restrictions that already exist on the neighborhood. Some subdivisions have restrictions that
- you can only build a house in a certain size or your lot has to be a certain size that can overrule the city.
- a wide variety of what people mean from that though too, because there are some neighborhoods that have
- restrictive covenants that have been struck down in court, you know, as being discriminatory or there's
- a wide variety of what we might mean when we say private restrictions. So I'll also ask if possible
- for a clarification in that. I'm just speaking about private restrictions against multiple units on
- one lot and things of that nature that limit
- the ideas that densify? Typically, if we are able to get legal lot frontage and you can legally split
- a lot, then we can still be in compliance with those private restrictions because there is only one
- dwelling unit per lot. You've just created an additional lot in the back. There are a lot of communities where
- Both things can work. One of the other things that we see as being really important is that not every
- neighborhood, not every set of neighbors, not every block is going to want to have infill in the back.
- One of the big benefits of legalizing these things is that we're allowing people to do it if they want
- to, there are no requirements to do so. Blocks that were neighborhoods that want to keep the same density,
- keep the same look, can do so. Thank you.
- Thank you. Okay, we'll go back to in-person and then online. Thanks so much. My name is Jen Pearl and
- I'm with the Bloomington Economic Development Corporation. And thanks so much for the really
- great presentation. It's exciting to see what's possible. My question is about opportunity zones or
- any other federal programs or state programs that could be leveraged to help with affordability and
- development in these areas.
- That's a great question. This section of Hopewell, we believe is in an opportunity zone. And so working
- through finance with the developers of the program will be something that we're working through. An
- opportunity zone fund is somewhat complex on a lot by lot element. So that's one of the things that
- is in our developer lender feedback scope is to do some exploratory work on whether or not an opportunity
- zone fund that is over the entire set of two blocks could be a great way to have people able
- to invest in functionally a rolling construction equity loan that could then be used for multiple small
- developers within the blocks. There are several creative financing piece. I know we've got John Zote
- from CDFI Friendly on today. We'll be talking CDFI funding too, but there's quite a few creative financing
- mechanisms that are going to be explored for this to figure out the best way to get these deployed.
- Okay, we have another comment online from Richard Lewis, acknowledging that the Hopewell neighborhood
- offer offers opportunities that the previously built older core neighborhoods may not fire safety alley with etc.
- Is there a thought to adjusting the code just to hope well for starters as sort of a building lab and
- then possibly spreading code changes outward from there that may better reflect the reality of the existing
- right of ways in the older neighborhoods? Is it possible to adopt code changes just to a single area
- like that? That's also a great question. And that is the way that we are currently planning to tackle
- the code changes.
- There are several other blocks in Hopewell that are under the TRO zoning type. And so we actually also
- have two zoning types that are within the area. So this first set of blocks, it's blocks eight, nine,
- and 10. Let me come back up to our lot map so we can see which ones those are. So eight, nine, and 10 will be
- entitled under a PUD, so a planned unit development that will be a specific set of code overlay for
- just these blocks. That will let us test and calibrate what we think the code changes need to be, but
- then also get another round of testing those on the ground to see did we miss anything? Do we have something
- that went too far? Let us really
- rolled way, be able to calibrate and know that if there are wider zoning changes that are then incorporated
- as part of a larger housing plan that citywide, that we've got a really good calibration and test of
- how those work on the ground that people can go and see and touch before a larger code change that citywide
- comes through. Do we have any more questions in council chambers?
- Don Weiler local builder. This one comment. First, I do agree that build a lot for new homes at all
- price points. It is an important the without that build a lot for homes at all price points, including
- the higher value homes that will take over affordable homes that then are substantially improved and
- then become unaffordable.
- So I will support the comment that Ali made about that. Currently, ADUs in Bloomington are required
- to have a deed restriction. There is a primary residence deed restriction, and also that the ADUs cannot
- be sold separate from the primary residence. And in fact, I just read an article today that talked about
- that specifically, and it referred to that as a poison pill.
- for the development of 80 years. Um, so I guess the question really is, are those restrictions up for
- consideration in the city of Bloomington? Thank you. I'll pass that answer to the mayor while she comes
- up to the, uh, lecture and I'll weigh in 100% in support that, um, anytime we can sell that
- 80 you separately, man, does it help with the portability?
- And we're looking at all ways to help affordability. And part of the reason that having owner occupancy
- tied to an ADU and one of the strokes of brilliance about Ali's wisdom about the potential to divide
- these deep lots is that if I want to build an ADU but don't have the cash outright to
- to build that ADU, I have to remortgage my entire house to do that. With a lot split, you would be able
- to get a separate mortgage just to, well, construction loan converted to a mortgage for that ADU and
- provide a much more affordable rental product or potentially an owner-occupied smaller house.
- on that ADU, so it'll be part of our conversation for future potential UDO changes. And I'll really
- encourage too, while our next question comes up, everybody that has, especially our builders who are
- in these codes all the time, who have those really smooth questions, we would love to hear from you.
- With those, I'm gonna put our emails back up, because you guys are the experienced ones at this code,
- and if you've got specific
- problem areas, we'd love to know about it so we can take a look. Phil Stafford. I'm sorry. Was she done?
- Yeah. Okay. Phil Stafford again. You make reference to blocks 2, 8, 9, and 10 recently, and I wondered
- if you could clarify what this means for the old Bloomington convalescence structure, which has been
- identified as a
- possible police station for the city. I'm not fond of that idea, but I think there's some potential
- for significant again senior housing and or intergenerational housing in that building with restoration.
- So I'm just unclear whether that's in your plan or not.
- I'd be happy to take that question. Currently, the Flintlock scope only includes blocks nine and 10.
- Block eight was excluded from this particular project. However, due to the PUD requirement of having
- at least five acres, we had to include it in all of Hopewell South's PUD consideration for right now.
- The future use of that building has not been decided by the Redevelopment Commission as of yet, but
- it is a hopeful site of a potential BPD station. Do we have any other questions in person or online?
- There are great studies about lights and sirens for emergency vehicles. We still run lights and sirens
- on all our calls, it seems like, because I live downtown and it's pretty loud. The police department
- in the neighborhood lights and silence rules every time they go out. It's going to get interesting.
- There are good studies saying that that doesn't really help. Have we looked at that? Are we considering
- that as a city?
- We are you know be part of our discussion about relocation of the police department. This is a obviously
- a neighborhood that had a lot of lights and sirens because it used to be the hospital site. So home
- to many ambulances. But we've we've done some workarounds even with the police station where it is now
- where they delay turning on those lights and sirens. Other questions here or online.
- I'm going to invite Allie to any closing comments you want to make and then I'll close us out. I'm excited
- to work through this with everybody and hope to hear from you on feedback. I'd love for you guys to
- stay engaged as we go and we are really hopeful that we'll be able to take a PUD through relatively
- quickly and we look forward to comments and support on that. Thank you so much.
- Thanks Ali and thanks for your team's work on this. This really is an exciting pivot in innovating on
- housing for Bloomington and I'm really thrilled with where Ali and her team have led us in collaboration
- with our city team and much input from folks here on the ground.
- We will continue to get that input. And if you saw that timeline, you know that we're really hoping
- to train developers and get this ready to go by June of next year. So that's our timeline. You can expect
- to see more details as we know them. And we remain open to questions and comments even after the meeting.
- Thanks so much for spending your time with us this afternoon.