Bloomington officials released the latest draft of proposed changes to the Unified Development Ordinance yesterday. The more than 400 pages will eventually become the document that guides development in the city for years to come.
Planning and Transportation Director Terri Porter says the latest draft reflects the comments and concerns the department has received since the last public hearings in March.
She says the biggest proposed changes address regulating multi-family units in some of the city’s core neighborhoods.
“The change that people will notice is that It’s now proposed as a conditional use, which would mean it would go through a public hearing process," Porter says.
The previous draft only required multi-family units like duplexes and triplexes to be on corner lots, with no need for conditional approval. The new draft loses that language, but limits lot sizes and requires the Board of Zoning Appeals to approve multi-family units.
She says the new draft should expand multi-family housing, but restricting the number of unrelated adults in each unit will discourage those units from becoming student-occupied rentals.
“Each unit could only have a maximum of two unrelated adults, and that would be more attractive to families," she says.
Porter says she doesn’t anticipate any additional major changes to the document, but she urges people to come out to one of the three public input session starting later this month.
Those meetings will be in the City Council chambers on Aug. 26, Aug. 29 and Sept. 5. Porter says she hopes the draft will head to the City Council for review in September, where it will also receive public comment.
