Bloomington-Normal Economic Development Council CEO Patrick Hoban Says our area may need 8000 more homes by 2030 as a result of the 6,000 jobs Rivian added to our community during the last two years. Hoban says the last full study of housing needs completed earlier this year and published in May forecast a need for over 4,000 homes. But that study was based on 2020 data and it did not include the 6,000 jobs created by Rivian.
Hoban told Cities 92.9, “So the double the number is based off of a model we use. It’s called IMPLAN. That shows the amount of people that actually work out there compared to the number of people that are commuting in and out right now.”
For the past year or so, people have literally been living out of hotels while working at Rivian. Others actually fly into work on a plane. Some of those arrive on an airliner provided by Rivian.
Normal Planning Commission Approves Multi-family Housing at Parkside and Raab
Hoban said, “You can see it literally from our office building in Uptown Normal. There are buses that circulate throughout the community. They go to the airport and they stop by the hotels and they take them out to Rivian.”
One of the barriers to solving the housing problem is a shortage of contractors. Hoban told us, “Especially when it comes to residential we know there are multiple plans around the community to continue developing some of the developments that were previously announced. It’s hard right now to actually get people that do the foundations and build everything out at the speed that we need to build. ”
Hoban is a fan of high density development in housing. We asked him why? “When it comes to cost over time, if you end up extending neighborhoods too far out that’s something you have to maintain,” Hoban said.
Last Phase of Fox Creek Country Club Subdivision Moving to Construction
Hoban’s reasoning has to do with the cost of extending and maintaining infrastructure. That infrastructure includes not only roads and sidewalks that are visible but also all the underground infrastructure you don’t see such as water lines, storm sewers and sanitary sewers. In Hoban’s words, “So maintain what you got. Revitalize what we have.”
I asked Hoban about his thoughts on targeted growth and he responded, “Targeted growth is very important in a community, Smart Growth. I mean just infill what we have instead of serving sprawl. So targeted growth is very important, not just where you want something to go but what you want to go there.”
Hoban spoke at BN by the Numbers at noon on Friday at Heartland Community College. BN by the Numbers is a quarterly update on the economic progress of McLean County. The events are open to the public. Each meeting includes a presentation on local economic trends and data in an easy-to-understand format.
