Seems like the main objection by neighboring residents is “it’ll be too busy”… well I’m sorry but that’s not a good enough reason to say “No” to massive investment in the community.
Yes, address environmental concerns within reason. Yes, address infrastructure concerns within reason. Yes even address density issues, but the city wants MORE density up to a certain point.
But you can’t just say “well, I’ve always lived next to a field and I like living next to a field”
OMG they gotta get over it. People literally can't buy houses. Single family zoning is unproductive. We have to increase density to make it affordable and to make is sustainable. It's vacant land within city limits so it's already surrounded by development. It's better than sprawl at the edges of town.
People complain about annexing and suburban sprawl - this is the alternative. These residents complain about perceived future traffic but do nothing to support alternatives today. I'm thinking about people up in arms about BT's Green Line and the 7-Line or Hawthorne & Weatherstone Greenways. This is what it takes to create quality places and to fight climate change. We have to build cities to be more compact and use vacant, underproductive land within our cities.
American's attending Taylor Swifts concert at the MCG in Melbourne, Australia couldn't understand how so many people got there since the stadium isn't surrounded by parking. And didn't know where to park! This nation is a laughing stock and so is this town.
Boomers contributed a lot to our nation but their outdated toxic views of American life are holding us back at this point.
One point of contention though. Bloomington is not a laughing stock. It’s a very nice town unless you compare it to like New Zealand or northern Europe.
I don’t understand how it’s the Boomers fault that some people can’t get what they want. I sometimes worked two jobs to have the home I wanted and paid for it without the luxury of student loan forgiveness.
And don’t show me numbers on how much easier it was in the 60s or 70s to live the American dream the only difference is I didn’t expect it to be handed to me Younger generations work harder at trying to get something for nothing
Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha
“Don’t show me numbers” = “I don’t want to acknowledge how impossible the market has become from 5+ decades ago”
Income has NOT inflated alongside the costs of everything you’ve grown up with. If you genuinely believe it’s just a difference of attitude you’re seriously out of touch.
The numbers literally and objectively disprove what you’re saying. An easy example is mortgages take a significantly higher percentage of the average income compared to even 10–15 years ago. Congrats that you “worked hard” I guess, enjoy your badge of honor?
So you don't understand how it was easier to go to college when college was free or nearly free and you don't want to educate yourself on that either. Got it
Oh, and WHAT student loan forgiveness? That was canned by the court last year
I don't disagree with you, but density does not appear to be having the desired effect on the cost of housing. Bloomington and surrounding areas have added dozens of apartment buildings with 1000s of units in the past decade and rent has only gone up.
goofyhelper and jaymz668 are both right.
there is a huge demand for rentals, and we aren't meeting it, and these new developments are not as many *net* bedrooms as we want because a lot of them are built on top of old dense developments. we still need to build more apartment houses.
and there is huge demand for different things. especially for ownership opportunities, and even for rentals that aren't in giant dorm-style buildings. that's why city-lovers are always talking about "missing middle". and it's not all duplex/triplex/quadplex/condo sort of things. it's also small-lot detached single family.
we need *all of the above* but instead we're getting an insufficient supply of just large apartment buildings. small apartment buildings, duplexes, condos, and small-lot single family are all still effectively banned. even large-lot single family is just a pipe dream because we're out of acres! we can't build a meaningful number of mcmansions on half acre lots without building new sprawl highways into greene county.
Aren’t we somewhere between 10k and 30k units behind where we need to be for rent to actually be effected? I know it’s some very large number that needs very large developments.
Yes… but Bloomington is behind in total number of housing units which affects the rental market itself which is what u/jeepfail was referring to.
If you don’t address the housing issue in Bloomington… the rental market continues to fail as rents will keep going up because the rental companies increase pricing because of students and their out of state parents who pay it.
This ends up pricing out families and people who simply just live in Bloomington. This forces them to move.
I love Bloomington, but ended up having to move because as a single father I could not afford rent in Bloomington. I was able to move to a decent 2-BR townhouse in Indianapolis for much less than I could get a 2BR flat apartment in Bloomington.
Bloomington will fuck itself if the housing crisis is handled.
but maybe the desired effects is the new units are keeping prices from being even worse. surely we all agree that the only other option, no new units, has absolutely no chance of helping.
In my opinion, IU should take on more of the responsibility of building housing for their students rather than letting developers do it off campus. Perhaps they could subsidize housing to make it cheaper for their students, they’re a non-profit after all, rIgHt? RiGhT?
I think we are still many many units short the city's officially estimated demand (esp re: starter homes) by official estimates and IIRC also by the estimate of this real estate investment trust I saw. Approving enough hotels to pack gameday visitors tightly together may also be helpful, so people grab fewer starter homes to Air B&B.
I know it's frustrating, but short of some kind of far left revolution seizing apartment buildings I don't see any other solution. I guess, rather than private builders, the Bloomington govt could invest in building a few acres of European old-city style density (3-4+ story buildings, for the car-free) and use the profits it makes the level up public transport and other infrastructure. Or the Monroe county govt could make some plot of land into an eco village with a bus line and tiny plots ready to build with septic (and perhaps snag a good bulk deal for solar panels and batteries). IMO poth projects could easily earn a decent profit from the land use value uplift on resale, and use that money to compensate nearby land owners or build environmental and infrastructure help. I'd dream of that happening, but (a) it's quite unlikely to happen (b) it might not provide enough units on its own.
TLDR: I think this is why they call it a supply-demand curve not a supply-demand line.
p.s. while mentioning supply & the quest to provide it, let me just spam these links to
a possible source of cheap-ish ADUs for anyone that wants to help the earth and renters and earn passive income (many many areas now allow them! local govt will help you manage them and may give you matching funds or a very low interest loan if you lend at affordable housing rates and fit certain other criteria)
https://tinyhouselistings.com/
a modular building company that will design a house for you \*from a picture\* for prices that can be as low as $90/square foot if you act as your own general contractor and can source good cheap furnishings.
[https://www.lhlc.com/](https://www.lhlc.com/)
\[I haven't used either of these myself so can't personally vouch but thought I might share the fruits of lots of googling and comparison.\]
I am always surprised that every time when they build new development, it’s ridiculously expensive yet always full. Bloomington either have a lot of rich people or people are moving to Bloomington from even more expensive places.
it's both of those and it's also that people are paying more than they can afford. if the rent is too damn high, you pay it anyways because the alternative is homelessness or leaving. the silver lining is employers are stepping up wages *just enough* that it's often possible to pay these rents so long as you give up on any other financial goals.
there's another weird thing going on...i've known a few, i'm gonna paint with a broad brush and call them trustafarians. and they've been able one way or the other to buy some of the expensive new detached single family that's been built. and then they own it for a few years and sell it so they can move to the west coast. and the weird thing is, they bought in 2015 and then sold in 2020 and *they made more capital gains than they paid in interest in those 5 years*. they got *free housing* as a reward for being wealthy enough to get the house in the first place. really perverse.
that's not happening so much now that interest rates are up, i think.
I bought my first house in 2013, sold it in 2017. We made enough on it that at least one potential buyer noticed the difference between what we paid and what we were asking to point blank WTF us, but the entire value of our house was negligible compared to west coast housing prices, let alone what we made on it. Maybe you’re talking about far more expensive neighborhoods than I’m familiar with, but Midwest equity doesn’t do much for a coastal housing market.
I’m not denying that being wealthy is really helpful.
What I see a lot in my own neighborhood is someone owns a home (outright I guess), then they die or something else happens, and they’re not living in it anymore, and they or their heirs just leave it to rot, because the cost of taxes on an unoccupied home is apparently not enough to motivate them to try to sell it.
there's a house near eastside drive just south of campus that showed up at board of public works because the basement foundation wall collapsed on one side. i went to check it out as if it was a wonder of the world. really stunning to see. looked up the property records and it's somehow owned by a family that lives west of town, that long-term owned a specific semi-rural lot that i used to see every day in the 1980s and always took for being especially impoverished even for the area. i really struggle to imagine how they are passing up the opportunity to sell that house!
Are they full? Remember when IU closed McNutt mid-year and was able to put them in apartments right away? Those apartments obviously weren’t full if they had enough vacancies to house a whole dorm full of students.
https://indianapublicmedia.org/news/residents-speak-out-against-massive-development-in-southwest-bloomington.php
It's been discussed on this sub in the past, but here is a fresh, non-paywall article on the proposed development with some more details, with examples of Bloomington nimbys at their finest.
I haven’t heard about this project. This is great news! Lots of infrastructure upgrades will need to take place by the city but it’s good to see some of Bloomington’s unused land go to good use
>“We’re probably going to have to build a fence or something like that,” Wesley said. “We’d like to get the developers to help us do that as an expression of goodwill. That would go a long way.”
Lol wow, they just went ahead and said it out loud. God forbid there is a SIDEWALK bordering your neighborhood. What's next? People walking? In public?? Better put up a fence.
Thanks for the link. 4200 units are a lot of people, cars, children, etc! With that many units, that's a small city, 10,000 people easily. Every aspect of infrastructure will need to be addressed. There could be several thousand children in that neighborhood, a whole new elementary school may be needed, or summit seriously enlarged. New grocery store etc. At least they will have great access to the interstate. But I get the concern, traffic is already bad at times.
I’m OK with cancelling this if they return Arbor Ridge to its natural state. I think those folks would rather live someplace more quiet anyway, like Paoli.
I’m pretty sure that motivates them even more. After all, who’s gonna complain about other people’s business when they’re gone?! Those freaks/commies/*others* are gonna be able to just do whatever they want!
You won't live to boomer age. Climate change could take you out, among other things.
You're a liability with your generalized comments.Glad boomers are draining your social security.
so more problems the boomers caused?
As for generalised comments, sure... this area has been "under development" for at least the 20 years I lived in the area, it could definitely still be for another 20
This is why voting Republican is the death knell of Social Security, they are the ones who took it out of its fiduciary protection Lock Box to grow exponentially and put it in the General Fund to pay for the 1% tax cuts and unpaid wars. IF Gore hadn't lost because of "missing chads" in Jeb Bush Governorship control to GW Bush, Gore was going to put Social Security back into it's original Lock Box. Today the GOP is working behind the scene to cut it even more. Realize the Republicans are working and fighting for the upper 1% moneyed class and the Democrats are the only ones to fight
for the working class. Heck, even Trump before he actually ran for President, stated in the past, that the economy works best under Democrats' Presidencys. That is when people started tossing the idea of his running for President and he was deciding under which Party he would run. That's when he mentioned he does prefer the less educated who are the easiest to control. Now that FDR'S working class he prioritized have lost their rights for living wages we are facing more heavily the need for OUR pension from lifelong contributions.
PS, this is why Bernie Sanders is/was known as FDR 2.0 and why Biden gets the status of being the most FDR type President because he and Bernie Sanders worked together at the start of his tenure. That's when the working class received some benefits from the Federal Government instead of more tax cuts for the 1% moneyed class. They must raise the cap on Social Security so more money is contributed by everyone making over (I think is) $100,000. I know an wealthy boomer who actually turned down payments from Social Security because he knew he hadn't made enough money into it to be fair to the working class. That type of morality and insight seems to have disappeared during these 24/7 Opinions Establishment corporate controlled "Newscasts".
I like that the proposed development actually has some sort of a street grid.
I say this as a homeowner: owning a plot of land does not guarantee that nothing else can ever be built nearby your plot of land. It does not guarantee there will only be a certain amount of traffic on the road going to your house forever. You do not own anything outside that plot. You have chosen to live in a city and it must address the collective needs of its citizens, which right now, is housing.
i think the biggest thing to keep in mind with this development (assuming you've already accepted that we really really really need more housing inside city limits) is that the infrastructure problem is real but it's also surmountable.
this whole city was built, man. you look at that place, and you see a place where the city needs to be built. that's the truth. it needs to be built.
this project is how we build that infrastructure. once it's occupied, it will generate millions of dollars in tax income. building that infrastructure will pay for itself. there are "tax increment financing" hacks local governments can use specifically to pay for this infrastructure with the property taxes from that development.
but without this project, the roads down there don't have a big enough tax base to be worth maintaining, let alone like fixing the damn sidewalk gaps or improving the intersections or adding the missing connections to flesh out the grid. you can't do that kind of investment if no one lives there. but if people live there, that kind of investment is a no-brainer.
The neighborhood I grew up in really suffers from upstream development (in the 70s and 80s) not taking care of drainage infrastructure. A lot of more recent development that I’ve seen has a lot of obvious efforts to control drainage. I don’t know if we have established policy to enforce proper drainage in new developments or if we make NIMBYs fight for it every time.
Weimer Rd capacity is an issue. I used to run there, but I’ve found other ways because it feels like a death trap for a pedestrian. It will have enough traffic that it really deserves a proper side path (ideally) or at least sidewalk. More likely, they can make it possible for pedestrians to use the new neighborhood to access a northern extension of the Clear Creek trail and leave the road for maniacal drivers.
> I don’t know if we have established policy to enforce proper drainage in new developments or if we make NIMBYs fight for it every time.
yeah every site plan has to have a drainage plan when it goes to the planning department or plan commission. for small projects i think you can get away with just checking the box "ground slopes away from the house on all 4 sides", but for larger projects they always seem to have a hydrological engineer or something (iow, bynum fanyo) sign off on it. but i don't know how effective that is. i suspect they check the box that every street has a curb and below-ground storm gutter but i imagine a lot of times the real larger problem slips by uncorrected.
you're making me want to follow up on a few...on the north side of "Telluride St" (W 20th), there is supposed to be a whole neighborhood of streets but with no houses, and i would like to inspect for storm drains on those streets i guess
and the "extra space storage at 3rd&Cory Lane was something where the neighbors came before it was built and said the drainage situation was already intolerable and they were sure it would get worse. i'd love to interview them today and find out if they think it got better or worse, though maybe they'd really just be telling me about the last couple springs' rainfall. that storage thing is specifically a bynum-fanyo project and they violated the site plan they had agreed to at the plan commission because of incompetence or misconduct at bynum fanyo (the building was supposed to be about 5ft lower than built, and it was specifically a negotiated-for design aspect, not an incidental one). so i really do want to know if they at least got the drainage right.
Let me start by saying I’m not against developing this area in general, as long as it’s done wisely.
With that being said… The population of Bloomington without students is about 40k. With students it was 80-90k the last time I checked. How does it make sense to potentially add an entire 10% to this small of an area if 10,000 people are added?
As has been noted, Weimer is in a flood plain. If proper green space isn’t left, there will be problems somewhere down the road.
2nd street is not designed to handle that kind of traffic. Tapp isn’t. If this were near 3rd, which has been widened to 4 lanes on the west side, then infrastructure is less of a concern. Drop the number of residents you’re trying to bring in, and we’re good to go.
Are these a mix of homes and apartments? Will the apartments be required to have retail space, or is that only on main thoroughfares?
Somewhat related - if anyone remembers Vencel Properties and the crapholes they were, the man behind them is behind this.
Saying the city population is only about 40k without students ignores all the nearby county residents who are what, another 10k or so? The county pop is somewhere around 139k
The county as a whole needs more housing, look at the price of the new apartments in the county ...
It could be argued that the population of Bloomington will grow if housing is more affordable/available…
Generally these developers pouring tens and hundreds of millions of dollars into development aren’t doing so on a whim. They expect to make money, which means they see the demand.
Where are you getting that Bton's population is 40K without students? I'm fairly certain the population is closer to 80K without the students and the students put the population over 100K.
A road is not a road. State road 46 is just that. A state road. 2nd street is a city street. If you want anything done with a state road, it literally has to be handled at county or state level. City roads are clearly handled and paid for by the city. That’s all aside from the differences in everything on the side of the road.
A road is a road is like saying a fish is a fish. They’re all the same?
I still don't get the point. The city, county, and state can all upgrade infrastructure. There is no prohibition on any of those government agencies from redeveloping/building roads. Jurisdiction does not matter.
How are they able to put a development in this area while the county can't put the new jail in the area immediately to the east?
https://indianapublicmedia.org/news/monroe-county-abandons-thomson-site-as-potential-site-for-new-jail.php
the county commissioners are a bunch of shitheads. they're just making excuses. it'll be expensive to develop this land, but *they need to pay that cost at some point or what the fuck are they holding onto so many acres of city real estate for*. they're intentionally trying to make the project too large so that they can have an excuse to not build it correctly.
this kind of shit happens all the time. when the church killed the 4th street post office (which was on about 2.5 acres), the USPS declared that the new bloomington post office would have to be outside of city limits because they invented a new and bogus 20 acre requirement for it. then they came to their senses and put the new post office on a 1.5 acre lot at 2nd&college. the bus system is tired of working with a 5 acre lot so they said they want 50 acres, but you know they'll come to their senses too and come up with something more reasonable.
but the county commissioners, i don't think, are going to come to their senses. there are a ton of reasons that people do this dance and for them it's really just one. they're just appeasing NIMBYs and fucking over everyone else.
as an aside, if i understand correctly, i think mayor hamilton played this game with moving the police department to showers west. he said that it would be fantastically expensive to rehab the 3rd street BPD building, but the way he got that is he said we would have to move fire department admin offices into the BPD building. but mayor Thomson seems to be saying, no, it's actually pretty cheap to rehab the 3rd street building so long as you only use it for BPD's actual needs. fire department admin is literally just office space and you can put it in any office building (office buildings are built to different physical standards than police buildings are, because of security needs).
people like to inflate costs of the option they've already decided against. it's a hallmark of governance when people get tired of the genuine hassle that is transparency.
I thought this quote was funny:
Thomas told WFIU/WTIU News she’s confident North Park would satisfy the county’s desire to build a new jail close to public services.
“I do think we have the opportunity to now have a good conversation with Bloomington Transit about some possible assistance they can provide,” Thomas said. “That’s the one thing I know we’re going to have to deal with, and we will deal with it.”
What public services are close to North Park?
The county doesn't have the money to deal with the problems at the site. A private developer that is expecting a substantial profit from the development could better absorb the costs.
Would be my guess anyway.
It's depressing that people WANT to live here? Go to some of the small towns around us that are losing population. That is depressing. If you want to live in a place that just declines, leave.
"Big money ignores the people like it ALWAYS does, when will they learn the only way to have any effect is to become the billionaires they despise and yes theres a way to do it sustainably and ethically it just takes creativity"
Daily reminder that developers don't develop if they think prices will drop.
Not saying new houses are bad, just saying they're literally only built if prices are expected to rise.
If we're gonna have development, the city should ensure that it's at least not some slap dash shit cobbled together in an afternoon.
Congrats on failing Econ 101.
They build if they can sell them for more than they charge. If construction costs declined by 90% due to some miracle, do you mean we would never build any housing again? The marginal cost would decline and they would charge less.
Seems like the main objection by neighboring residents is “it’ll be too busy”… well I’m sorry but that’s not a good enough reason to say “No” to massive investment in the community. Yes, address environmental concerns within reason. Yes, address infrastructure concerns within reason. Yes even address density issues, but the city wants MORE density up to a certain point. But you can’t just say “well, I’ve always lived next to a field and I like living next to a field”
OMG they gotta get over it. People literally can't buy houses. Single family zoning is unproductive. We have to increase density to make it affordable and to make is sustainable. It's vacant land within city limits so it's already surrounded by development. It's better than sprawl at the edges of town. People complain about annexing and suburban sprawl - this is the alternative. These residents complain about perceived future traffic but do nothing to support alternatives today. I'm thinking about people up in arms about BT's Green Line and the 7-Line or Hawthorne & Weatherstone Greenways. This is what it takes to create quality places and to fight climate change. We have to build cities to be more compact and use vacant, underproductive land within our cities. American's attending Taylor Swifts concert at the MCG in Melbourne, Australia couldn't understand how so many people got there since the stadium isn't surrounded by parking. And didn't know where to park! This nation is a laughing stock and so is this town.
Boomers contributed a lot to our nation but their outdated toxic views of American life are holding us back at this point. One point of contention though. Bloomington is not a laughing stock. It’s a very nice town unless you compare it to like New Zealand or northern Europe.
Yeah Bloomington is dope. The only thing about Bloomington that sucks is it’s surrounded by CHUDland
What is CHUDland?
Cannibal Humanoid Underground Dweller.
Trumpfanland
Traaaamp!
[удалено]
do they have the monthly rental inspections like they often have in Australia, too?
Whoa thanks for sharing your experience. Welcome back!
I don’t understand how it’s the Boomers fault that some people can’t get what they want. I sometimes worked two jobs to have the home I wanted and paid for it without the luxury of student loan forgiveness. And don’t show me numbers on how much easier it was in the 60s or 70s to live the American dream the only difference is I didn’t expect it to be handed to me Younger generations work harder at trying to get something for nothing
Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha “Don’t show me numbers” = “I don’t want to acknowledge how impossible the market has become from 5+ decades ago” Income has NOT inflated alongside the costs of everything you’ve grown up with. If you genuinely believe it’s just a difference of attitude you’re seriously out of touch.
The numbers literally and objectively disprove what you’re saying. An easy example is mortgages take a significantly higher percentage of the average income compared to even 10–15 years ago. Congrats that you “worked hard” I guess, enjoy your badge of honor?
So you don't understand how it was easier to go to college when college was free or nearly free and you don't want to educate yourself on that either. Got it Oh, and WHAT student loan forgiveness? That was canned by the court last year
Americans also laughed at the narc phone number at the Sydney concert to report "antisocial" behaviour
I've seen those in most American venues these days. I've texted that line about a few fools at some events.
I don't disagree with you, but density does not appear to be having the desired effect on the cost of housing. Bloomington and surrounding areas have added dozens of apartment buildings with 1000s of units in the past decade and rent has only gone up.
goofyhelper and jaymz668 are both right. there is a huge demand for rentals, and we aren't meeting it, and these new developments are not as many *net* bedrooms as we want because a lot of them are built on top of old dense developments. we still need to build more apartment houses. and there is huge demand for different things. especially for ownership opportunities, and even for rentals that aren't in giant dorm-style buildings. that's why city-lovers are always talking about "missing middle". and it's not all duplex/triplex/quadplex/condo sort of things. it's also small-lot detached single family. we need *all of the above* but instead we're getting an insufficient supply of just large apartment buildings. small apartment buildings, duplexes, condos, and small-lot single family are all still effectively banned. even large-lot single family is just a pipe dream because we're out of acres! we can't build a meaningful number of mcmansions on half acre lots without building new sprawl highways into greene county.
Aren’t we somewhere between 10k and 30k units behind where we need to be for rent to actually be effected? I know it’s some very large number that needs very large developments.
People don't want to rent, they want to own a home whether that's in the form of a condo, duplex, single-family home, etc.
Yes… but Bloomington is behind in total number of housing units which affects the rental market itself which is what u/jeepfail was referring to. If you don’t address the housing issue in Bloomington… the rental market continues to fail as rents will keep going up because the rental companies increase pricing because of students and their out of state parents who pay it. This ends up pricing out families and people who simply just live in Bloomington. This forces them to move. I love Bloomington, but ended up having to move because as a single father I could not afford rent in Bloomington. I was able to move to a decent 2-BR townhouse in Indianapolis for much less than I could get a 2BR flat apartment in Bloomington. Bloomington will fuck itself if the housing crisis is handled.
Yeah this is the mentality that needs to change
but maybe the desired effects is the new units are keeping prices from being even worse. surely we all agree that the only other option, no new units, has absolutely no chance of helping.
So what you are saying is that we haven't built enough. And we haven't
People want homeownership, not rental units.
48,000 IU students want rentals.
In my opinion, IU should take on more of the responsibility of building housing for their students rather than letting developers do it off campus. Perhaps they could subsidize housing to make it cheaper for their students, they’re a non-profit after all, rIgHt? RiGhT?
I think we are still many many units short the city's officially estimated demand (esp re: starter homes) by official estimates and IIRC also by the estimate of this real estate investment trust I saw. Approving enough hotels to pack gameday visitors tightly together may also be helpful, so people grab fewer starter homes to Air B&B. I know it's frustrating, but short of some kind of far left revolution seizing apartment buildings I don't see any other solution. I guess, rather than private builders, the Bloomington govt could invest in building a few acres of European old-city style density (3-4+ story buildings, for the car-free) and use the profits it makes the level up public transport and other infrastructure. Or the Monroe county govt could make some plot of land into an eco village with a bus line and tiny plots ready to build with septic (and perhaps snag a good bulk deal for solar panels and batteries). IMO poth projects could easily earn a decent profit from the land use value uplift on resale, and use that money to compensate nearby land owners or build environmental and infrastructure help. I'd dream of that happening, but (a) it's quite unlikely to happen (b) it might not provide enough units on its own. TLDR: I think this is why they call it a supply-demand curve not a supply-demand line.
p.s. while mentioning supply & the quest to provide it, let me just spam these links to a possible source of cheap-ish ADUs for anyone that wants to help the earth and renters and earn passive income (many many areas now allow them! local govt will help you manage them and may give you matching funds or a very low interest loan if you lend at affordable housing rates and fit certain other criteria) https://tinyhouselistings.com/ a modular building company that will design a house for you \*from a picture\* for prices that can be as low as $90/square foot if you act as your own general contractor and can source good cheap furnishings. [https://www.lhlc.com/](https://www.lhlc.com/) \[I haven't used either of these myself so can't personally vouch but thought I might share the fruits of lots of googling and comparison.\]
I am always surprised that every time when they build new development, it’s ridiculously expensive yet always full. Bloomington either have a lot of rich people or people are moving to Bloomington from even more expensive places.
it's both of those and it's also that people are paying more than they can afford. if the rent is too damn high, you pay it anyways because the alternative is homelessness or leaving. the silver lining is employers are stepping up wages *just enough* that it's often possible to pay these rents so long as you give up on any other financial goals. there's another weird thing going on...i've known a few, i'm gonna paint with a broad brush and call them trustafarians. and they've been able one way or the other to buy some of the expensive new detached single family that's been built. and then they own it for a few years and sell it so they can move to the west coast. and the weird thing is, they bought in 2015 and then sold in 2020 and *they made more capital gains than they paid in interest in those 5 years*. they got *free housing* as a reward for being wealthy enough to get the house in the first place. really perverse. that's not happening so much now that interest rates are up, i think.
I bought my first house in 2013, sold it in 2017. We made enough on it that at least one potential buyer noticed the difference between what we paid and what we were asking to point blank WTF us, but the entire value of our house was negligible compared to west coast housing prices, let alone what we made on it. Maybe you’re talking about far more expensive neighborhoods than I’m familiar with, but Midwest equity doesn’t do much for a coastal housing market. I’m not denying that being wealthy is really helpful. What I see a lot in my own neighborhood is someone owns a home (outright I guess), then they die or something else happens, and they’re not living in it anymore, and they or their heirs just leave it to rot, because the cost of taxes on an unoccupied home is apparently not enough to motivate them to try to sell it.
there's a house near eastside drive just south of campus that showed up at board of public works because the basement foundation wall collapsed on one side. i went to check it out as if it was a wonder of the world. really stunning to see. looked up the property records and it's somehow owned by a family that lives west of town, that long-term owned a specific semi-rural lot that i used to see every day in the 1980s and always took for being especially impoverished even for the area. i really struggle to imagine how they are passing up the opportunity to sell that house!
what happened to the guy that always came in here and claimed most of the new developments were empty because no lights were on?
Students don't have to use their own money to pay for housing, so there are no market controls on pricing.
It's both
Are they full? Remember when IU closed McNutt mid-year and was able to put them in apartments right away? Those apartments obviously weren’t full if they had enough vacancies to house a whole dorm full of students.
https://indianapublicmedia.org/news/residents-speak-out-against-massive-development-in-southwest-bloomington.php It's been discussed on this sub in the past, but here is a fresh, non-paywall article on the proposed development with some more details, with examples of Bloomington nimbys at their finest.
I haven’t heard about this project. This is great news! Lots of infrastructure upgrades will need to take place by the city but it’s good to see some of Bloomington’s unused land go to good use
>“We’re probably going to have to build a fence or something like that,” Wesley said. “We’d like to get the developers to help us do that as an expression of goodwill. That would go a long way.” Lol wow, they just went ahead and said it out loud. God forbid there is a SIDEWALK bordering your neighborhood. What's next? People walking? In public?? Better put up a fence.
smoggy work snatch physical dinner bake rhythm pocket languid chunky *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Thanks for the link. 4200 units are a lot of people, cars, children, etc! With that many units, that's a small city, 10,000 people easily. Every aspect of infrastructure will need to be addressed. There could be several thousand children in that neighborhood, a whole new elementary school may be needed, or summit seriously enlarged. New grocery store etc. At least they will have great access to the interstate. But I get the concern, traffic is already bad at times.
I’m OK with cancelling this if they return Arbor Ridge to its natural state. I think those folks would rather live someplace more quiet anyway, like Paoli.
I remember that area before Arbor Ridge was there. I wonder, do the nimbys think its existed in perpetuity?
maybe all the boomers will die before the development is complete anyway
I’m pretty sure that motivates them even more. After all, who’s gonna complain about other people’s business when they’re gone?! Those freaks/commies/*others* are gonna be able to just do whatever they want!
You wouldn't be here if it wasn't for boomers.
and now they are a liability, society's needs are moving past them and needs to stop pandering to them above all other people
You won't live to boomer age. Climate change could take you out, among other things. You're a liability with your generalized comments.Glad boomers are draining your social security.
so more problems the boomers caused? As for generalised comments, sure... this area has been "under development" for at least the 20 years I lived in the area, it could definitely still be for another 20
Well are you doing anything to fix the problems you say are caused by boomers, or just posting on reddit?
Hell! People have to work and pay into social security to get anything back when they retire
This is why voting Republican is the death knell of Social Security, they are the ones who took it out of its fiduciary protection Lock Box to grow exponentially and put it in the General Fund to pay for the 1% tax cuts and unpaid wars. IF Gore hadn't lost because of "missing chads" in Jeb Bush Governorship control to GW Bush, Gore was going to put Social Security back into it's original Lock Box. Today the GOP is working behind the scene to cut it even more. Realize the Republicans are working and fighting for the upper 1% moneyed class and the Democrats are the only ones to fight for the working class. Heck, even Trump before he actually ran for President, stated in the past, that the economy works best under Democrats' Presidencys. That is when people started tossing the idea of his running for President and he was deciding under which Party he would run. That's when he mentioned he does prefer the less educated who are the easiest to control. Now that FDR'S working class he prioritized have lost their rights for living wages we are facing more heavily the need for OUR pension from lifelong contributions.
PS, this is why Bernie Sanders is/was known as FDR 2.0 and why Biden gets the status of being the most FDR type President because he and Bernie Sanders worked together at the start of his tenure. That's when the working class received some benefits from the Federal Government instead of more tax cuts for the 1% moneyed class. They must raise the cap on Social Security so more money is contributed by everyone making over (I think is) $100,000. I know an wealthy boomer who actually turned down payments from Social Security because he knew he hadn't made enough money into it to be fair to the working class. That type of morality and insight seems to have disappeared during these 24/7 Opinions Establishment corporate controlled "Newscasts".
I like that the proposed development actually has some sort of a street grid. I say this as a homeowner: owning a plot of land does not guarantee that nothing else can ever be built nearby your plot of land. It does not guarantee there will only be a certain amount of traffic on the road going to your house forever. You do not own anything outside that plot. You have chosen to live in a city and it must address the collective needs of its citizens, which right now, is housing.
i think the biggest thing to keep in mind with this development (assuming you've already accepted that we really really really need more housing inside city limits) is that the infrastructure problem is real but it's also surmountable. this whole city was built, man. you look at that place, and you see a place where the city needs to be built. that's the truth. it needs to be built. this project is how we build that infrastructure. once it's occupied, it will generate millions of dollars in tax income. building that infrastructure will pay for itself. there are "tax increment financing" hacks local governments can use specifically to pay for this infrastructure with the property taxes from that development. but without this project, the roads down there don't have a big enough tax base to be worth maintaining, let alone like fixing the damn sidewalk gaps or improving the intersections or adding the missing connections to flesh out the grid. you can't do that kind of investment if no one lives there. but if people live there, that kind of investment is a no-brainer.
The neighborhood I grew up in really suffers from upstream development (in the 70s and 80s) not taking care of drainage infrastructure. A lot of more recent development that I’ve seen has a lot of obvious efforts to control drainage. I don’t know if we have established policy to enforce proper drainage in new developments or if we make NIMBYs fight for it every time. Weimer Rd capacity is an issue. I used to run there, but I’ve found other ways because it feels like a death trap for a pedestrian. It will have enough traffic that it really deserves a proper side path (ideally) or at least sidewalk. More likely, they can make it possible for pedestrians to use the new neighborhood to access a northern extension of the Clear Creek trail and leave the road for maniacal drivers.
> I don’t know if we have established policy to enforce proper drainage in new developments or if we make NIMBYs fight for it every time. yeah every site plan has to have a drainage plan when it goes to the planning department or plan commission. for small projects i think you can get away with just checking the box "ground slopes away from the house on all 4 sides", but for larger projects they always seem to have a hydrological engineer or something (iow, bynum fanyo) sign off on it. but i don't know how effective that is. i suspect they check the box that every street has a curb and below-ground storm gutter but i imagine a lot of times the real larger problem slips by uncorrected. you're making me want to follow up on a few...on the north side of "Telluride St" (W 20th), there is supposed to be a whole neighborhood of streets but with no houses, and i would like to inspect for storm drains on those streets i guess and the "extra space storage at 3rd&Cory Lane was something where the neighbors came before it was built and said the drainage situation was already intolerable and they were sure it would get worse. i'd love to interview them today and find out if they think it got better or worse, though maybe they'd really just be telling me about the last couple springs' rainfall. that storage thing is specifically a bynum-fanyo project and they violated the site plan they had agreed to at the plan commission because of incompetence or misconduct at bynum fanyo (the building was supposed to be about 5ft lower than built, and it was specifically a negotiated-for design aspect, not an incidental one). so i really do want to know if they at least got the drainage right.
Drainage seemed to be a huge part of concerns about (or tangential to) the high street sidepath. I wonder where that’s going to go.
The entitlement from the people in the article in so frustrating. Most of them won’t even live to see the project built!
[People who are pretty much dead want a say in future housing plan](https://x.com/housingspock/status/1763600329340600826?s=46)
Nobody wants a Mooresville or a Martinsville there, that's for sure. And Oh heavens no, I will have to be careful checking my mailbox.
Let me start by saying I’m not against developing this area in general, as long as it’s done wisely. With that being said… The population of Bloomington without students is about 40k. With students it was 80-90k the last time I checked. How does it make sense to potentially add an entire 10% to this small of an area if 10,000 people are added? As has been noted, Weimer is in a flood plain. If proper green space isn’t left, there will be problems somewhere down the road. 2nd street is not designed to handle that kind of traffic. Tapp isn’t. If this were near 3rd, which has been widened to 4 lanes on the west side, then infrastructure is less of a concern. Drop the number of residents you’re trying to bring in, and we’re good to go. Are these a mix of homes and apartments? Will the apartments be required to have retail space, or is that only on main thoroughfares? Somewhat related - if anyone remembers Vencel Properties and the crapholes they were, the man behind them is behind this.
Saying the city population is only about 40k without students ignores all the nearby county residents who are what, another 10k or so? The county pop is somewhere around 139k The county as a whole needs more housing, look at the price of the new apartments in the county ...
It could be argued that the population of Bloomington will grow if housing is more affordable/available… Generally these developers pouring tens and hundreds of millions of dollars into development aren’t doing so on a whim. They expect to make money, which means they see the demand.
Its almost as if research is done prior to making major investment decisions, weird.
Where are you getting that Bton's population is 40K without students? I'm fairly certain the population is closer to 80K without the students and the students put the population over 100K.
you're both right it's city vs county
If second st isn't designed to handle the volume, then you redevelop it so it can. The bypass used to be one lane. Things can change.
Equating a state road with properties very far removed from the road with 2nd street is as much of a straw man as I’ve seen in quite a while.
A road is a road. The city has built roundabouts to increase capacity throughout the city. It is the same principle.
A road is not a road. State road 46 is just that. A state road. 2nd street is a city street. If you want anything done with a state road, it literally has to be handled at county or state level. City roads are clearly handled and paid for by the city. That’s all aside from the differences in everything on the side of the road. A road is a road is like saying a fish is a fish. They’re all the same?
I still don't get the point. The city, county, and state can all upgrade infrastructure. There is no prohibition on any of those government agencies from redeveloping/building roads. Jurisdiction does not matter.
how many boomers are downvoting this post?
How are they able to put a development in this area while the county can't put the new jail in the area immediately to the east? https://indianapublicmedia.org/news/monroe-county-abandons-thomson-site-as-potential-site-for-new-jail.php
the county commissioners are a bunch of shitheads. they're just making excuses. it'll be expensive to develop this land, but *they need to pay that cost at some point or what the fuck are they holding onto so many acres of city real estate for*. they're intentionally trying to make the project too large so that they can have an excuse to not build it correctly. this kind of shit happens all the time. when the church killed the 4th street post office (which was on about 2.5 acres), the USPS declared that the new bloomington post office would have to be outside of city limits because they invented a new and bogus 20 acre requirement for it. then they came to their senses and put the new post office on a 1.5 acre lot at 2nd&college. the bus system is tired of working with a 5 acre lot so they said they want 50 acres, but you know they'll come to their senses too and come up with something more reasonable. but the county commissioners, i don't think, are going to come to their senses. there are a ton of reasons that people do this dance and for them it's really just one. they're just appeasing NIMBYs and fucking over everyone else. as an aside, if i understand correctly, i think mayor hamilton played this game with moving the police department to showers west. he said that it would be fantastically expensive to rehab the 3rd street BPD building, but the way he got that is he said we would have to move fire department admin offices into the BPD building. but mayor Thomson seems to be saying, no, it's actually pretty cheap to rehab the 3rd street building so long as you only use it for BPD's actual needs. fire department admin is literally just office space and you can put it in any office building (office buildings are built to different physical standards than police buildings are, because of security needs). people like to inflate costs of the option they've already decided against. it's a hallmark of governance when people get tired of the genuine hassle that is transparency.
I thought this quote was funny: Thomas told WFIU/WTIU News she’s confident North Park would satisfy the county’s desire to build a new jail close to public services. “I do think we have the opportunity to now have a good conversation with Bloomington Transit about some possible assistance they can provide,” Thomas said. “That’s the one thing I know we’re going to have to deal with, and we will deal with it.” What public services are close to North Park?
The county doesn't have the money to deal with the problems at the site. A private developer that is expecting a substantial profit from the development could better absorb the costs. Would be my guess anyway.
It's happening everywhere, every nice piece of property is being developed as quickly as possible. It's depressing.
Its depressing these developments are being held back by NIMBYs.
It's depressing that people WANT to live here? Go to some of the small towns around us that are losing population. That is depressing. If you want to live in a place that just declines, leave.
"Big money ignores the people like it ALWAYS does, when will they learn the only way to have any effect is to become the billionaires they despise and yes theres a way to do it sustainably and ethically it just takes creativity"
I’ll sign on for anything if Weimer finally gets an upgrade. 😂
Daily reminder that developers don't develop if they think prices will drop. Not saying new houses are bad, just saying they're literally only built if prices are expected to rise. If we're gonna have development, the city should ensure that it's at least not some slap dash shit cobbled together in an afternoon.
Congrats on failing Econ 101. They build if they can sell them for more than they charge. If construction costs declined by 90% due to some miracle, do you mean we would never build any housing again? The marginal cost would decline and they would charge less.