What was the meeting?
The meeting that I watched was the City of Bloomington Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) meeting on March 23rd, 2023, at 5:30pm. This meeting took place at City Hall in the Common Council Chambers and was also broadcast on Zoom. The people in attendance on the board were President Barre Klapper, Vice-President Jo Throckmorton, Tim Ballard, Nikki Farrell, and Flavia Burrell (on Zoom). Also in attendance was senior zoning planner Eric Greulich (on Zoom), staff running the meeting, the petitioners, and a handful of community members both in person and on Zoom.
The purpose of this meeting was to resolve property developer’s petitions for zoning variances regarding their properties.
What was discussed?
For this meeting there were two petitions from property developers for zoning variances regarding different parking requirement regulations set by the City of Bloomington. Information was provided to the public via the handout (linked below).
Petition 1
The first petition was regarding the requirement for parking spaces per residential unit at their property, as they were looking to convert a commercial space at the bottom of a residential building that they couldn’t lease out into more residential units without adding additional parking. This property already had 9 residential units and had gotten a variance a couple years ago to only provide two parking spaces – three less than the required minimum of 0.5 per unit (it rounds up). The property owner said that he tried reducing the rate to a very low cost per square foot, but still when potential customers came to visit the small commercial site they walked away. The property owner also stated that the city extended a no-parking yellow curb that makes it even harder for more parking around the site, and there is no space left on-site for more spots. He also talked about how this area (on Walnut) is not the greatest area, but also well-suited for walking. This led to two community members chiming in, including one that has lived right behind this building since before it was developed. Both community members talked about how there is almost no available parking around these areas and that the street backs up nearly every day while school is in session, with the resident who lives behind the building notes how different it is during spring break. This all led to the board denying the variance, reasoning that the space can be used for non-residential and non-commercial purposes like office space, non-profit space, or even amenity space. They said since this location has already gotten a variance and there is an existing issue with street parking around this area as evidenced by the community’s comments, these options should be considered.
Petition 2
The second petition regarded a larger multi-family housing development further away from the university campus that can house over a hundred residents. The development plans got approved recently with 121 parking spaces, including 5 electric charging station spots in order to meet the requirement for 1 electric charging station per 25 ground parking spots within lots containing more than fifty spaces. The developer was asking to have this approved for only two spots with active charging stations, even though all five would have the necessary infrastructure installed if future conversions were made. He said they will look at data from the use of these spots over the next year to determine the usage and need requirements, as he believes the spaces are needed to provide more parking for residents. He cites that the percent ownership of electric vehicles is much lower across the state of Indiana than the requirement calls for spaces, and that many similar municipalities have much smaller regulations if any at all. There were no community members that spoke about this topic, however the board members saw no reason that this should be approved. The board talked about how it is Bloomington’s mission to be ahead of the curve, and that electric vehicle usage will only go up and probably at a very rapid rate. Two of the city counselors even own electric vehicles themselves, and said that it is hard to find parking, and that having open charging stations might even be a motivating factor for people to come live at their property. They also said in regards to the developer’s request and evidence, this would be more in line with a policy change regarding the number of required spaces, which is not something they address. They focus on case-by-case amendments based on unique circumstances the property has, and this request is more of a want than a need.
Meeting Resolution
The resolution to both of these cases seemed pretty obvious when the council started asking questions and discussing the matters at hand. The first petition is working in the wrong direction from fixing the parking problems all around Bloomington, and the second problem disincentivizes buying electric cars and providing them spaces just to provide the developer a small cost cut. Despite the fact that it was clear that these petitions would be denied, everything stayed civil and reasonable. There were no angry participants or biases that seemed to come into play in the decision making.
Smart City Technology Opportunity
There is a huge opportunity for a behind the scenes technology implementation that I believe can fix issues with parking being so scarce around the city and causing backups on roads. Brought up by the residents when discussing the first petition, both the zoning committee and the residents want the same thing: parking options around Bloomington that are available and don’t cause backups. Using Internet of Things sensors around the city to create automated parking management would be a very progressive solution. This could exist in the form of a mobile app that shows you where parking is available, even recommending spaces nearest to your destination. An app like this could also ‘reserve’ spaces by property, based on the needs and trends that it sees in their daily and weekly use. This would allow for the residents to take back a lot of the parking areas, while still providing arriving guests/consumers directions to available nearby parking. This would make the streets flow better without any new zoning control or big parking structures. The streets of Bloomington are so poorly designed due to it being an amalgamation of centuries of development, so IoT sensors would really help eliminate the major pain points by organizing traffic through redirecting people looking for parking.
Resources
Handout: https://bloomington.in.gov/onboard/meetingFiles/download?meetingFile_id=11608
IoT Parking Management: https://ops-com.com/blog/iot-for-efficient-parking-management-a-step-towards-smart-cities/
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