The majority of Monday night’s Bloomington Plan Commission meeting tackled alternative housing options, with commission members attacking housing diversity both at the individual project and zoning levels.
Mecca Cos. Inc. returned for a second city review of its proposed affordable housing apartments at 1100 N. Crescent Drive. The project was ultimately approved for city council review, as was a proposed ordinance for pocket neighborhoods and a pilot program for affordable dwelling units.
Mecca’s 8-acre project, which designates 70 percent of the units as affordable housing, had been met with some reluctance by commission members due to the site’s many environmental concerns. The 90 percent wooded property has a large sinkhole on the southwest side, a creek on the north side, two areas with an 18 percent or greater change in grading and a nearby sinkhole to the southeast.
By removing one of the proposed four buildings, petitioner Kyle Bach was able to mitigate the number of places where the proposed structure would encroach upon the environmental features’ buffer zones. That alteration increased the height of one building to five stories in one place and altered the makeup of the complex so that it now has a proposed 146 units with 245 bedrooms, somewhat fewer than the original proposal.
“This is a tricky plot,” commission member Nicholas Kappas said. “This is part of a habitat network that is drastically going away in this town. We have to be more sensitive about our built environment.”
Kappas would eventually come to vote against the petition Monday night, as would commission member Isabel Piedmont-Smith, who said she supported affordable housing, but not at the cost of the environment.