Editor's Note: This article references Flintlock LAB, which has since rebranded as Range Co. The Bloomington project mentioned continues under our new name.

Originally published in Inside Indiana Business: https://www.insideindianabusiness.com/articles/local-builders-zoning-and-ready-made-designs-how-hoosier-cities-are-rethinking-housing

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. - In Bloomington, city officials are hoping to get a major development project with ample affordable housing units off the ground in the face of a tough construction market.

In Fort Wayne, city planners are trying to rightsize their housing market to match the changing demographics of Allen County.

In South Bend, the loss of the Studebaker auto plant decades ago is still impacting the city, with a focus in recent years on bringing back homes to vacant lots on the city’s west side.

Project specifics in each city differ, but all three municipalities exemplify an increasingly common goal in Indiana: creating more housing options. To do that, cities are rethinking zoning practices and introducing pre-approved building designs.

In most areas in the state, the majority of housing units are single-family homes with three or more bedrooms. However, with Millennials waiting longer to start families and Baby Boomers looking to downsize, cities that want to attract more population have to increase their supply of smaller, more affordable units.

Alli Thurmond Quinlan, founder of design and planning firm Flintlock LAB Inc., described the situation as cities trying to sell a 50-pound bag of sugar—it’s more than most people need or can readily afford.

Earlier this summer Bloomington hired Flintlock to help revamp its zoning and design processes in order to break up projects into smaller lots.

“A lot of what we’re doing is proposing to take the 50-pound bag of sugar and sell some 20-pound bags and some 10-pound bags, and some five-pound bags, and then some one-pound bags so that you can buy what you need,” Quinlan said. “And those are all going to be mixed together in the same neighborhood.”

Capturing more population will soon be critical for Hoosier municipalities on the heels of the newly passed Senate Bill 1 which, in most cases, will significantly decrease property taxes at the local level, but gives cities the option to raise income taxes.

Lot by lot

What led to Bloomington leaders bringing in Flintlock was the bidding process for the city’s Hopewell neighborhood. The city set aside 24 acres for the project and wanted to see 1,000 new residential units, with 20% of those being classed as affordable or workforce.

Bloomington received two bids, both from larger developers, but neither included enough affordable units and sought significant subsidies.

Bloomington Mayor Kerry Thompson said the city’s new direction for development is to use mutliple small developers on projects to spread out the risk. Flintlock will be looking at the Hopewell site lot by lot, and that process will likely require changing some zoning requirements to meet the city’s goals.

Fort Wayne is also partway through a review of its zoning code as part of its 2023 comprehensive plan. Senior City Planner Sherese Fortriede said the first steps were reducing the minimum house size from 950 square feet to 700 square feet and cleaning up rules to allow multi-unit buildings to go in more places.

Design menus

Those types of zoning changes are especially helpful for cities looking to accelerate infill housing on vacant lots. Bringing back urban density improves neighborhoods and helps attract young professionals who are willing to sacrifice space for proximity to amenities.

While Fort Wayne is currently working through its code changes, South Bend has been focused on infill housing for a few years now—though the process really started with then-Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s 1,000 homes in 1,000 days campaign in the 2010s.

Along with fewer restrictions on the number of units per lot, South Bend city planner Michael Divita said a key policy win has been pre-approved housing designs. In 2022, South Bend contracted a handful of designers to make architectural plans for buildings ranging from one to six units. Builders can pick from the menu of pre-approved designs and start building, cutting down on the cost and time for new units to go up.

“We don’t see, particularly in infill neighborhoods, a lot of your big national companies building. What we did see was interest in very small-scale developers; this may be almost one-off type of projects, or just someone in the neighborhood who maybe wants to build on a lot next door or nearby to them. So we wanted to really make that process easier and more affordable,” said Divita.

Since 2022, Divita says South Bend has seen 26 units across 18 buildings use the pre-approved designs. He estimates that over 100 units could be in the pipeline in the next few years as the process attracts more builders.

Other large cities in Indiana are following South Bend’s lead. Fort Wayne planners say they’re working through a request for proposals on pre-approved designs and hope to have a catalogue going sometime in 2026, while part of Bloomington’s contract with Flintlock is for the firm to draw up ready-to-go plans.

Indianapolis, also, is getting in on the trend, with officials in the state’s capital saying pre-approved designs save builders between $5,000-$10,000 per building.

Locally sourced

Baked into changes in zoning and pre-approved designs is the emphasis of helping small, local developers. Bloomington has termed the process “democratizing neighborhood development.”

As Bloomington recently found with its Hopewell plan, big builders are less likely to take on builds for smaller lots or for diverse unit types since they rely on outside financing that demands returns on investments.

But small builders don’t have the same economies of scale on the materials side, meaning reducing costs for permitting and design work is crucial. In that way, Alli Quinlan says cities are doing part of the work for developers to incentivize projects that might not otherwise get done.

“We’re trying to get some of the benefits of economy of scale while happening at a small scale,” she said. “And so we’re trying to use plans programs that mean every developer is not hiring an architect to do a fully custom plan that they have to pay for before they know that they can build the building.”

Flintlock LAB has worked in numerous states from Arkansas to Oklahoma to Virginia, but Quinlan said Indiana is actually ahead of the curve on creating different types of housing. She attributes that to Indiana’s tax structure where property taxes make up a smaller percentage of local revenues compared to other states.

Bloomington officials referenced Senate Bill 1 reducing local revenues as a catalyst for the city to hire Flintlock. However in South Bend and Fort Wayne, the push to diversify house stock began before the 2025 legislative session, and Fort Wayne planners say they haven’t thought about the new tax bill in relation to their code review process.

Soon, however, Quinlan predicts every town in the state will have to think more about adding an income tax base (i.e. residents) than about building out expensive single-family subdivisions that would be a property tax play.

“It’s just so much less optional in Indiana,” Quinlan said of shifting tax incentives. “There are states that still…can convince themselves that McMansions are going to work for them and that…they’re getting enough new neighborhoods that they’re getting more tax revenue. But they’re not yet having to repave those streets yet. They’re not having to replace water lines yet. And so it’s sort of a Ponzi scheme in a lot of places, where if you keep getting new development at the edges constantly, that’s paying for the old stuff. It works for a minute, but like will eventually stop.”