Bloomington city officials approved a $32,000 dollar incentive package to renovate an old office space welcoming in a new software security company called Cigital.
Vice President of Operations for Cigital Brian Mizelle says the company chose Bloomington because it has the right mix of technical talent, location and quality of life for their employees. Mizelle says they have already hired five Bloomington residents.
"The funds will help us get that space up and running so we can continue to hire some folks," he says.
Citigal assesses security vulnerabilities in software programs and hopes to hire around 25 employees within the next two years.
Mizelle says the Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing is one of the reasons they came to Bloomington.
"What we do is very high skilled requiring a certain level of background and education," Mizelle says.
The money used to improve the space comes from the CRED district. CRED is a tax allocation program that captures an increment of taxes from the downtown district and redistributes the money for economic improvement and development projects.
Bloomington City officials also approved a $10,000 dollar appropriation for Parks and Recreation to purchase a 1/3 mile long rail spur from Black Lumber near Bryan Park.
Director of Parks and Recreation Mick Renneisen says the spur is an example of other railroad tracks Bloomington purchased in the past to turn into the B-Line trail, a trail system that links many areas of Bloomington to downtown.
"And that's what this 1/3 of a mile spur will help us do. It will get people from Henderson, the Bryan Park neighborhood and that area into the switch yard park which is under design right now," Renneisen says.
The switchyard park was an old switch station Renneisen says the city bought and hopes to eventually develop into a park. The new spur development will connect to the B-Line trail and the planned park.
