City and county leaders meet to discuss the convention center expansion Wednesday, Nov. 9. (Devan Ridgway, WFIU/WTIU News)
The debate over expanding the Monroe County Convention Center continues four years after the food and beverage tax started collecting money for the project.
County commissioners Wednesday proposed an official path forward, but city leaders must now decide whether to jump on board or go their own way.
The city and county have the same goal of expanding the convention center. They even have a funding mechanism in place. However, interested parties cannot agree on how to manage the project.
Meanwhile, daily convention center operations continue as normal. Currently, the center is booked through 2024.
“Things are getting kind of back to normal now, with groups coming back in,” said Talisha Coppock, executive director of the convention center and Downtown Bloomington, Inc. “In a normal year, we'll do about 500 events."
For conferences, the center can host up to 250 people - which includes multiple sizes of rooms, break rooms, etc. For one-time seated events it can hold 600 people.
However, Coppock said she would like to see the center hold 500 people for conferences. If it hosted 40 conferences of this size each year, it could make $19 million to $25 million in economic impact.
“We're the second most desired location, but we are the smallest convention center in the state,” Coppock said.
While Monroe County owns the convention center, the City of Bloomington is sitting on 90% of the money dedicated to its expansion. In total, the food and beverage tax has collected about $15 million since 2018.
The expansion project resurfaced this summer when the city offered to purchase the property and lead the project, but commissioners didn’t think the offer was sufficient. So, last month, the city announced it would proceed with or without the county’s support.
However, just this week, hours before a scheduled intergovernmental meeting, Monroe County Commissioners unanimously passed an ordinance to establish a Capital Improvement Board, or CIB. A CIB is a mechanism Indiana county governments use to manage large projects.
“The idea is you get the politicians out of the process on these big, large-scale projects, and you appoint experts as kind of the managers on the board that would manage the project going forward,” Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce President Eric Spoonmore said.
LISTEN: Struggle over the Monroe Convention Center expansion continues
Other convention centers around the state are managed by CIBs, such as Fort Wayne, Terre Haute and Indianapolis.
“Everything requires compromise,” Spoonmore said. “And, you know, compromise does not have to be a dirty word. Sometimes you have to give some things up to get the best outcome.”
Spoonmore said timing is important because the Indiana general assembly may try to sunset the food and beverage tax next year for two reasons. The first is to hold local governments accountable for collected tax dollars. The second is to overhaul procedure and make a more uniform process, potentially limiting how the money can be spent.
“I am very concerned that we're under the gun,” Spoonmore said. “We're in the crosshairs of the legislature, they're watching these communities, and they want to make sure that the locals are being accountable for what they said they're going to do.”
Mayor John Hamilton’s administration said it’s shocked commissioners approved a CIB Wednesday, and the process lacked transparency and collaboration. Instead, he wants a nonprofit to build and manage the expansion. He even said his administration will unveil details in the coming weeks for a “fully integrated” facility open by late 2025 and lead by a nonprofit.
READ MORE: City says Convention Center negotiations with county are dead
“It’s been a little frustrating all year not being able to sit down and really talk in detail,” Hamilton said over Zoom during Wednesday’s meeting. “And this is an example of a kind of meeting with an agenda set by others and it’s not an easy place for give and take.”
County commissioner Penny Githens immediately pushed back.
“You know we’ve offered multiple meetings, Mr. Mayor, and this is the first time you’ve shown up, so let’s stop that,” Githens said.
But not everyone from the city is on the same page - city council president Susan Sandberg fully supports the CIB and spoke against Hamilton’s nonprofit proposition.
“I don’t see it as any kind of disrespect,” Sandberg said. “I quite frankly was a little taken aback by the 501(c)3 proposal. That, you know, ‘all right we’re done meeting, we’re done talking, let’s just do it our way.’ I was very uncomfortable with that - I still am.”
The county is against the mayor’s proposal because it said nonprofits are not subject to the same open-door requirements as a CIB.
“If we’re going to do this, we should do this in the public eye with a capital improvement board that meets publicly, takes public comment, and has their accounts reviewed by at least one elected body,” county commissioner Julie Thomas said.
Hamilton said the transparency issue can be fixed by creating bylaws that bind the nonprofit through public bodies. His public engagement director, Mary Catherine Carmichael, reiterated the county was not transparent Wednesday in establishing a CIB.
However, some county leaders quickly pointed out the city and county discussed a CIB in 2019 before the project was delayed by the pandemic.
“We’ve been talking about a capital improvement board,” county council member Cheryl Munson said. “We talked about it at the last meeting, we’ve talked about it before. This isn’t new. This is not new.”
READ MORE: Officials back at the table working to figure out convention center expansion
Commissioners said they passed the CIB to put a concrete offer on the table, and they are asking both the city council and mayor’s office to take affirmative action on the proposal by Jan. 1.
