Monday Night Council Meeting May Include Zoning Hearing

I have been reviewing the Council agenda for Monday night and got sidetracked by an interesting zoning matter that was called down by Councillor Jeff Miller at the February 25th meeting, and set for hearing tomorrow night.

This matter is 2012-ZON-060, 460 Virginia Avenue, which went before the Indianapolis Historic Preservation Commission and the Metropolitan Development Commission; both of which approved the zoning change from heavy industrial to mixed residential/commercial.

The parcel is 0.67 acres and the developer has applied to the State for tax credits to help finance the construction of 50 apartments on the site.  The application for tax credits is highly competitive, with only so many dollars available in any one year.  Applicants are expected to offer lower rents due to the financial help to build the apartments in the first place.  The deadline for submitting the application apparently was last November, but the proper zoning must be in place before any application can 'win' the tax credits.  The deadline for the proper zoning to be in place was the end of February.

IHPC staff made clear that it was only approving the zoning change, and that any proposed apartment/commercial plan would have to return for review and approval at a later date.

By calling the case down, the Council has effectively caused the developer to lose out on the tax credits this year, and forced him to reapply for next year's funds - should the MDC's zoning decision not be overturned by the Council and the developer and property owners are still interested.

 

The staff report can be found on page 9 of the MDC's February 6 agenda.  This was the second day of testimony, the first concluding with a continuance so that the developer could review whether he could amend his tax credit application by dropping the number of units from 50 to 32, as suggested by remonstrators who opposed the zoning change due to density issues.

 

 

The MDC voted 7-1 to approve the zoning change.

 



Because of some technical glitch with Blogspot, I still am unable to post two different video clips on the same entry.  I will post the debate on whether or not to call down the zoning in the next entry on this topic.  Here's a link to part 2.