By Kurt Christian 812-331-4350 | kchristian@heraldt.com | Aug 12, 2018
More than 1,500 student-oriented bedrooms could be added to Bloomington's housing stock if all of the proposals set to be reviewed by the Bloomington Plan Commission are approved.
Monday night's packed agenda has developments across the city including proposals for: a 630-bedroom student housing complex on Bloomington’s east side; hundreds of duplex homes near West 17th Street; two stories of apartments on top of a downtown martini bar.
Boutique student housing
In June, Fountain Residential Partners pitched its idea to change the existing zoning at the corner of East Third Street and Ind. 446 to allow for a 630-bedroom student housing complex. The development firm from Dallas, Texas, specializes in boutique student housing and is asking the city to approve 250 units on the approximately 14-acre site. Currently, that area is zoned to allow 50 units.
Trevor Tollett, vice president of Fountain Residential Partners, said last month that the range of studios to four-bedroom townhomes would rent for between $700 and $1,100 per month. The plan commission continued the proposal after questions about traffic and the appropriateness of student housing at that location.
Neighborhood with duplexes and single-family homes
Trinitas Ventures has become a familiar name thanks to a series of public sessions the Lafayette-based company hosted in late July to discuss the former eastside Kmart property.
Now, the development firm is looking to rezone a 41-acre property at 1550 N. Arlington Park Drive. The plan is for 224 duplex units and 29 single-family homes to be built under the name Chandler's Glen.
Those 253 units with 855 bedrooms will come with 873 parking spaces, if the project is approved. The makeup of those units will include one-, two-, three-, four- and five-bedroom layouts.
City planning staff makes it clear this proposal doesn't fit within the city's intended housing goals, according to a report prepared for the plan commission.
It states the neighborhood seems to be oriented toward student housing since more than half of the units are four- or five-bedroom layouts. There are no plans for commercial or mixed uses.
Downtown apartments above a martini bar
A proposal for a two-story addition on top of the Serendipity Martini Bar at 201 S. College Ave. was approved in June 2017. Due to inactivity, that approval expired, and the developer will have to go before the city's commission to renew that approval.
Serendipity's building is already two stories tall, but petitioner Tariq Khan wants to raise the downtown building's height to four stories to allow for 10 one-bedroom apartments. The project's design hasn't changed much, but the city's new rules on maximum height and density mean the building will have to receive special approval, since it measures 50 feet in a district with a height maximum of 40 feet.
Westside proposal
Whitney Gates is petitioning that a 3.2 acre plot of land at 410 N. Gates Drive should be subdivided to allow for a 4,000-square-foot Sherwin Williams store. If approved, the property just north of Lowe's will be altered to permit the paint store 13 parking spaces and entries from both North Gates and West Susan drives.
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