We have a forum I'd like to officially call this special session of the modern order here on uh December 15th at 403 p.m.

will accord please call it all right.

Hello Daily She would be late to have soon Clarity here okay.

And Zuluk present thank you.

Um so for the meeting today, this is a special session uh called by the mayor about the the Hopewell um plans for Hope Well South.

So we're gonna start with framing remarks from Mayor Thompson.

Uh we'll have a presentation um from the consultant uh and uh planning director Hiddle and then have number question and answer followed by a Durma.

So there's awesome.

Thank you, President Stasford.

Um I am uh really excited that uh we were able to pull this together.

So thank you for the special scheduling.

Um we did invite the um RDC to come as well, so just want to acknowledge that they're present, uh, some of them, not all of them, um, because of course the RDC has been working with this property, it's RDC owned property.

Um and uh I want to just start with um letting you know sort of some some history of Hopewell very quickly.

Um Ali is our consultant's gonna log on um and she's gonna really take the bulk of the time here to present what we have.

Um, but after I um sort of tee things up, uh Director Hiddle is going to um frame some of the planning implications here um so that you know what those are and what considerations have been um given.

Um but this is really uh you know we have submitted a PUD.

Um what that means is that um we have a really good directional idea of where we want to go with Hopewell South.

Um we have uh been through four years of master planning as a city.

Um we set up a um task force at the beginning of the Thompson administration to re-look at Hopewell given the um change in cost in housing production and really see how we could get Hopewell to a place where um it's more attainable than what we thought it was going to be otherwise.

Um we have had um a public session in October with sort of how we were thinking about Hopewell and where we were going.

There's room at the table, um and uh and in addition, we have had a couple of um council deliberation sessions about housing that have all impacted this Hopewell uh PUD.

So with that said, we are we have submitted the PUD.

That doesn't mean that things are not changeable.

This is an opportunity today to ask questions, give input on um blind spots that we may have, things that we haven't considered.

Um maybe we totally missed the vote somewhere.

Um that's what we want to hear from you all because we're still at a um point in the process that we can make some changes.

Um with that said, it will seriously delay things if we have to make such significant changes that we're going back to the drawing board, and we are really trying to mobilize Hopewell to get some housing available even perhaps as soon as the end of 2026.

So we are um we we engaged uh the RDC engaged Flintlock Labs um to put together this PUD.

We think that this really makes the most of the Hopewell South property.

It includes um the preservation of the um old convalescent center at 714 South Rogers.

Um, while we're doing a study to uh see if the police department will fit well uh into that facility.

Um, and our goal really has been to um seek to be an asset for attainable housing for young professionals first and foremost, something that's attractive to them as we are seeking to grow our our wages and our economy here in Bloomington.

Um and that also means that it happens to be attractive to a lot of other folks in town, people who want to be able to have an affordable place that they can walk uh to to work to various other resources.

Um and um we have been hearing increasingly from seniors who want to downsize and can't find a place that's affordable for them to um purchase in a um in a um in the downtown setting.

Again, the um PED is in a place where we still can make some tweaks to it.

I think we have really gotten to a place that is amazing.

I am I am thrilled with where this PUD is right now.

We have gotten to a point where a good number of these houses, and you'll you'll see in the presentation, a good number of them are actually affordable to the 80% and below of the area meeting income.

And that is sort of miraculous, especially especially without a bunch of government red tape that goes along with it.

So they should be relatively easy to produce.

So we are we're thrilled.

I think what this does also is set a living example of what some changes in the UDO could look like for Bloomington, um, so that our community can walk through a neighborhood and see what does it look like to have some compact uh compact lot sizes.

What does it look like to have really realistic sized houses that are not more than what somebody needs?

Um, and what that does, of course, is naturally keep them affordable so that we can uh offer home ownership opportunities to more and more people.

Um so I am going to um just hand it over to uh director Hiddle to talk about some of the zoning implications.

Um again, I think um this is an incredibly exciting point in the project, and um really a lot of gratitude uh to council, both um in the past and uh currently, and to the RDC uh especially, who's been working really hard on um getting help well to a point uh where we are right now.

Thank you, Mayor.

I'm David Hiddle, the director of planning transportation for the city.

Um maybe you have a quick refresher on what exactly a PUD is.

They don't come down the pike very often.

The last one was the summit planning development, which was approved just as I started about a year and a half ago.

So PUD planning and development.

Um it's not unique to Bloomington, pretty much every city, every zoning district, every zoning jurisdiction has an opportunity for a PU.

Sometimes they go by different names, but as often as not, it's it's just that.

And it is what you zone to, and none of the other zoning districts that exist allow for what it is you want to do.

So we have a lot of zoning districts, we have dozens of them, R4 and MC and MMs and lots of different lots of different combinations of letters.

Um, but none of them allow for what it is that's being proposed here, which is a very diverse mixed um set of uses, uh residential uses with different development standards and other different regulations in our ordinance would ordinarily allow.

So when that happens, you resonate PUD and you don't adhere to a given ordinance, a given set of regulations as to how you can use the property and how you can build on it, but you write your own.

And so what you write is what carries you through the process.

Um in this instance, um, as soon as I hand it off to Allie, she's going to talk about what she's written along with redevelopment commission, which is serving as sort of our co-petitioner here to describe development, proposed development on the property as well as the um the potential uses of the property.