Q&A with outgoing Bloomington mayor John Hamilton
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As John Hamilton’s tenure as Bloomington mayor nears an end, he took time to look back on two terms focused on expanding the city’s transit system, providing affordable housing and growing population.
Recounting his time in office, Hamilton said his highlights include improving public safety through police and fire investments, adding 6,000 new units of housing, increasing local wages and building broadband infrastructure to better digital equity. He also boasted about Bloomington being a community development financial institutions, or CDFI, friendly city as well as creating its first climate action plan and Racial Equity plan.
He also spurred a line of projects along the B-Line Trail — what he calls his “string of pearls.” They include the revitalization of a railroad switchyard into the Switchyard Park, the designation of the Trades District gravitating around the in-progress tech center and kickstarting of the transformation of the old IU Health hospital into the new Hopewell neighborhood.
Hamilton decided not a seek a third term, calling it a hard decision that “felt right.” As he prepares to hand the reins to Mayor-elect Kerry Thomson, he talked to Inside INdiana Business about his time as the city’s top executive. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Housing was a major focus of your administration—duplex zoning, the Hopewell neighborhood and strategized housing placement. What progress was made during your tenure and what more needs to be done?
Housing is a big, complicated issue. I talked about it in my first campaign, and ever since I’ve been in, it’s a huge issue for Bloomington. We’re usually right at the top of the expensive housing markets in the state. Another way to think about it, though, it’s not super complicated: there are two ways to create more affordable housing. One is to just get more housing because, if you’re less constrained in the number of housing units, that helps you. The second way is to do strategic investments and tactical things that actually create affordable housing. We’ve done both of those.
We really did some serious zoning changes. We tried to steer student housing, undergraduate particularly student housing, into certain geographic locations that made sense from a planning perspective near campus, basically, and near bus lines. We gave incentives for developers to do those kinds of housing units there to let them be done more easily more efficiently. We worked hard to increase the opportunity for other housing types in other parts of the city. A whole zoning review that we did — that I think has helped some right at the beginning. We tried to do inclusionary zoning, which is a strategy that requires developers to make affordable housing when they make market-rate housing. Unfortunately, the state legislature very quickly made that illegal, so we’ve had to do some more creative things with zoning to try to support that. We created financing support in the city, both through the market power but also through tax dollars to help subsidize units. We created a land trust for ownership and so a whole bunch of things, but it comes down to getting more units.
I am really pleased with the momentum, but we got to keep it going. Keep that pedal down to increase the affordability stock. We haven’t solved it for sure.
Sustainability was another word that popped up throughout your time when talking about green initiatives like the climate action plan and the focus on walkability. What does sustainability look like in Bloomington?
I do want to talk about our response to, really, the climate emergency. Sustainability as a term has been part of Bloomington’s city government for a long time before I came in. We have doubled the staffing in sustainability. We passed the first ever sustainability plan and now a climate action plan. We’ve very importantly funded that with dedicated annual funding; it’s $1.6 million. We do a lot more than that overall in sustainability, but that’s earmarked for the plan itself.
To help implement that, we’ve established the state’s first regional climate initiative. We’re working with Columbus, Nashville and Bloomington and our counties to do a rural-urban, bipartisan regional climate effort. We’re very excited about that. We call it Project 46 because it’s along Indiana 46—the road that connects us. We’re working hard on that. We’ve done a lot of solar from the city. I think we have the most rooftop solar per capita of any place in Indiana. We’ve got a lot of our residents who do that. We’re financing nonprofits to put solar and better energy efficiency in their own buildings and places.
We’re dedicated to that. We know it’s an emergency, and we’re working very hard on it with resources and with partnerships. I’m proud of the steps we’ve taken. We’ve got to keep working hard on that. And I think we have the mission, and we’ve got the money at least to start. And we have a plan, and we need to execute that plan.
Hamilton summarizes his administration’s sustainability strides.
You served as the mayor of a city where a Big Ten university resides and about half the population are students. There’s sometimes a bit of tension between longtime residents and their student neighbors. What was the relationship like with Indiana University and is there room for improvement to solve some of the typical issues?
We have a really good relationship with Indiana University. We meet and talk regularly at all levels of their institution and ours. Housing is a big topic for sure. And often, when we talk about student housing, we’re really talking about undergraduate housing because there are 10,000 graduate students as well, and of course, there’s all the faculty and staff who work at IU, but mostly, the issues that get attention are the large undergraduate-focused student complexes.
We do care where those are and what they’re like. We work with IU on that. We work with zoning. We work with our transit and our communities. There can be some stress about that. I live in a neighborhood that’s very mixed. It’s basically one to four homes, houses, but also apartment buildings sprinkled all through on the south side of campus—students, staff and other folks intermingled all through and it works. It’s great. It’s a wonderful neighborhood.
What I keep trying to encourage them to do is work with us to identify land in locations where we can steer more of this. Land is the biggest barrier, and IU does own a lot of land. They’ve done some dedication of that land to student housing. But in my view, we could do more of that together and try to help the students live in places that make their lives work better and not just be stuck or scattered in some not-so-convenient places.
Where do you see the economy moving forward? And how has it been developed over these past eight years?
We’re in a really good spot. Now [that] I say that, I think it’s important to acknowledge that Indiana as a whole, the Midwest and really Indiana in particular: if you look at the state’s share of the national income, it’s not a good picture over the last 50 years. My own view is that we don’t invest enough in Indiana in public education, in public health, to some of these fundamentals to build the smarter workforce, the more sophisticated.
We’re a heavy manufacturing state, and we need to really modernize, and there’s some ways we’re doing that. I think Bloomington is very well positioned with a young city; with Indiana University, a tier one global research university; with Crane and thousands of engineers just down the road from us. Frankly, it helps that we’re 50 miles from Indianapolis, the center of Indiana’s economy, and I think we’re positioned well.
Now, Bloomington needs to continue to diversify. Our economy, we have several very large employers. We have a whole bunch of small employers. We don’t have a lot of the employers who are 50 to 500 employees, and we need to diversify that way. I think we’re getting there.
As you know, we’re very proud of our tech community’s growth and our startup community. We have a vibrant startup community and some new venture funds and that kind of thing. We have the trades district, which is a real center to that. The city is a partner in that, but boy, that is really led by a whole bunch of other people, and we try to facilitate and invest in some of that infrastructure.
Bloomington is a very blue city in a pretty red state. As you mentioned, there’s been some different initiatives and developments that the state government has intervened in and been somewhat of a barrier. How has it been navigating that bigger landscape with the state government being on the other side of the aisle?
It’s frustrating. I don’t think it’s so much just necessarily pure partisan Democrat-Republican. If you got the 10 largest cities of Indiana or the 15 largest cities, the mayors would be a mix right of Democrats and Republicans. But, I don’t know that you could tell if you got us to sit in a room and got us talking about what we were trying to do, whether you could tell who was which, because I think the cities of Indiana are all trying to build housing, build the economy, create opportunity.
I think it’s very frustrating to not feel like the General Assembly and state government really understand that the future of Indiana and the success of Indiana is going to be built on these municipalities, the people of the cities. Of course, we need agriculture and rural areas. We love those, but the trajectory of the state, it doesn’t feel like the state assembly, the state government really, really believes that we need to help the cities all thrive in order for Indiana to thrive.
They shoot us in the foot or kneecap us sometimes in what we’re trying to do in both the ability to manage our own finances and resources, ability to make choices about our economy and regulations and how we want to deal with growth and those kinds of things. Of course, on our own example, they illegally stopped an annexation, which has meant now for 20 years Bloomington hasn’t moved our boundaries. A bunch of people have moved in, and that’s not a good situation.
Hamilton talks about difficulties working with the state and how municipalities have similar goals.
What’s next for Bloomington?
I think Bloomington is positioned very well. I’ll give you an image: I think Bloomington in our community needs to grow in population. Our metropolitan statistical area is a little under 200,000. I think it ought to grow to 250,000 in the next 10 years. I think we need to make space for more people. I think that’ll create a more dynamic and energetic and thriving community. That means we need to be really intentional about where people live.
I think Bloomington could be the best small-city transit system in America. We are already the most per capita rides in the state of Indiana. We’re investing a lot in our transit system. They’re going to put in a bus rapid transit line, which for a city our size is pretty exciting. I think we might see two or three or four more of those. Living in Bloomington, you really feel like you have the small town amenities and convenience, but you also could have a great transit system, So you don’t need to use your car. I think that’s in our future.
I think the collaboration between IU, Crane, Bloomington, the connections with Indianapolis can really help the economy — diversifying and growing. But, I think Bloomington fundamentally will and needs to stay committed to being a high quality of life small city with great trails and great parks and great quality of life and great commitment to walkability and bike-ability and the arts and to make it a really fun place to live in. I think we can do that and not try to be anybody else, but to be who we are.
Hamilton talks about what he sees the future of Bloomington looking like.
What’s next for you?
I’ll sleep a little in January, maybe, and then I don’t have immediate plans, really. My wife works in Washington DC, and I expect she will continue to do that for 2024. I will spend a lot of time with her there probably, and kind of looking at what I want to do next, but I haven’t made any immediate plans.
I feel very fortunate to be able to work on issues I care about with people I care about and try to advance the ball on some different challenges. I expect I’ll continue to do that on economic opportunity and justice on climate, on racial justice. We didn’t talk a lot about that, but that’s been a really key effort for us too.
The mayor of Los Angeles said there’s two big challenges in front of us. One, can we keep this planet safe and habitable to live on: Climate emergency. And two, can we make sure there’s a place for everybody in this planet and in this community for us? In a place meaning you’re welcome, you belong. You have a way to make a living. You can have a good life for everyone. I think I’ll keep trying to do my part to advance the ball on both of those things.