It's Your Business: Housing in downtown Bloomington is important goal for city
Bloomington really is a great place to live. Our community has invested in amenities such as parks, community centers, libraries, bike lanes and improvements to the physical environment such as streetlights and sidewalks. We host many free public events.
Years ago, the downtown was losing residents due to lack of investment and options. A basic 8-unit townhouse condominium project took 27 meetings to be approved. After many years of understanding the complexity and cost of even building housing in the downtown, the zoning codes were changed. Downtown Bloomington went from less than 1,000 residents to more than 10,000 residents today.
Some housing was created through adaptive reuse of historic buildings. These restorations repurposed the buildings to generate income, thus preserving the buildings as well as the character of our downtown. Additionally, there have been 91 new buildings built. These are primarily apartments created by developing underutilized private lots. Apartments were built because there was demand and financing is not conducive to owner-occupied condominiums. These old and new buildings house a varied cross-section of people. The people who live downtown support small retail, services, restaurants and entertainment venues.
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The goal is to have people living downtown to support the area. Downtown is a popular spot. Many would like to afford to live and work downtown without owning a car. What types of incentives would need to be created to allow for this? Developing proposals to further reduce parking requirements? Increasing the building height, lot coverage, setbacks, minimum unit size, floor area ration, minimum lot size or other land use controls? Donating land? Turning commercial space into residential space? What are collaborative approaches to reducing barriers to housing development? Update zoning regulations or incentives to facilitate housing for land owned by faith-based organizations? What are some incentive programs or flexibilities to enable and promote more adaptive reuse of underutilized properties for housing or mixed-use development? What are the sustainability and affordable housing incentives?
Providing a place in downtown for people to live is an important goal. Housing has strengthened our downtown. Foot traffic has definitely increased. Whether it be market rate or affordable housing, workforce, young professionals, retirees, single families, empty nesters, students, mentally or physically disabled or live/work, having a variety of types of housing and providing some options for our homeless population is what makes a community. The tough part is finding the property, getting approvals, getting the numbers to work and managing it correctly.
Talisha Coppock is executive director of Downtown Bloomington Inc.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Housing in downtown Bloomington is important goal for the city
