Peak Oil Task Force Report - City of Bloomington - State of Indiana

In the late 1980s, commercial activity began along the State Road 37 bypass to the west of
the city as well as the area between Second Street/Bloomfield Road. Third Street/Whitehall
Pike was developed into a major retail destination for residents of both Bloomington and
the surrounding counties. The result, as our Activity Nodes map (Map A) shows, is the
development of the community into one consisting of three primary areas of activity.
One is centered around Bloomington’s downtown core (central node), biased towards the
university’s western edge. Another is centered on the College Mall area (eastern node)
while the third is centered at the nexus of State Road 37 and Third Street/Whitehall Pike
(western node). Significant secondary and tertiary developments are also present at both
the eastern and western nodes, such as the Ivy Tech/Cook Campus development farther
west and both the new retail centers north of Third Street at College Mall and the
significant residential developments (including Renwick) along Sare Road.
Developments within those three nodes have come at the expense of Bloomington’s
neighborhoods, particularly the newer neighborhoods. In general, the newer the
neighborhood the less access it has to essential amenities (such as grocery stores, retail
shopping, pharmacies, schools, etc.) and the more dependent it is on the automobile to
reach those amenities. Consequently, the newer a neighborhood the more likely it is to be
vulnerable to fuel prices and fuel disruptions. This is both because newer neighborhoods
tend to be developed farther from the city core or either of the western or eastern activity
nodes and because newer neighborhoods are developed almost exclusively for residential
use (although some of the very newest developments are beginning to include retail and
employment functions within them again).
Report of the Bloomington Peak Oil Task Force
95