Council hears wide-ranging concerns and staff briefing on "missing middle" housing study

City staff presented a zoning-and-subdivision review aimed at assessing whether "missing middle" housing — duplexes, triplexes, courtyard homes and small townhouses — could be enabled more readily in parts of Bloomington. The Committee of the Whole heard roughly a dozen public commenters, followed by a staff presentation and prolonged council discussion; no ordinance or zoning text amendment was adopted.

The presentation, led by City Manager Jeff Jurgens and Development Services Director Kelly Pfeiffer, said the work is a preliminary code-analysis designed "to identify those barriers in our code that would be preventing MMH in our current zoning if we wanted to do that," and emphasized the study "is really just the start of the process," Jurgens said.

Why it matters: Staff said missing middle housing could add choices for downsizers, young professionals and workforce households by using land more efficiently, but they repeatedly urged that it would not be appropriate in every neighborhood. Dozens of nearby…