On April 27, 2026, the City Council held a public hearing on a supplemental Missing Middle Housing ordinance.
Here's how the city got this far. Phase I went to the Planning Commission on April 10, 2025, and the council adopted it on May 19, 2025. That round loosened the rules for housing Bloomington already allowed, like accessory dwelling units, duplexes and townhouses, so they'd be easier to actually build. Phase II went further. It wrote brand-new rules for triplexes, fourplexes, multiplexes, detached townhouses and cottage courts. Phase II had hearings at the Planning Commission on January 22, 2026, and at the council on February 23, and the council adopted it on March 23, 2026.
The idea is to fill the gap between a single-family house and a big apartment complex. The city lists its goals as housing for people at different stages of life, room for multigenerational households, and more homes near businesses and transit, which means less driving.
Bloomington isn't the only suburb doing this. Richfield and St. Louis Park have also loosened their zoning, and Golden Valley is the latest to start down the same road. Its City Council is expected to decide by the end of the year whether to make its missing-middle plans official policy.
Golden Valley hired the consultant Bolton & Menk in June 2025, and its council received and filed the finished study on July 7, 2026. According to the city, the study will guide future zoning changes and design standards and feed into its 2050 Comprehensive Plan. Not everyone there is convinced. Council Member Sophia Ginis noted that financing and redevelopment costs have held missing-middle projects back, and some residents have raised concerns about how the changes could affect neighborhood character.
Ginis has a point, and the results so far bear it out. Roseville, Richfield and Bloomington were early to allow duplexes on lots that used to be single-family only, but only a handful of proposals have come through those cities, and none had been built at last check. Minneapolis went further and ended single-family zoning altogether, and research shows that change had a fairly small effect on how much housing got built.
Bloomington's rules now run from a simple duplex up to a fourplex or a cottage court. Whether any of these actually get built is up to builders, and the numbers have to work for them first.
