Speaker 1
So everything on schedule so far. Is it fair to say?
Speaker 2
Yeah, everything is, everything is on schedule. And actually, I think I've said this before, and I think you've quoted me, we're kind of moving at warp speed for a project of this nature with four governmental partners involved in it. So yes, we're, you know, as we sit here on the what, fourth, fifth day of February, we're hoping, within four months time, we're going to be breaking ground on a new convention center, and
Speaker 1
that's when the people will actually see there's a lot of been going on the last year or two, but we haven't seen the ground move yet. Will they start tearing down things first before the ground breaking?
Speaker 2
Good question. I mean, they're going to have to bring down the Napa building, the early voting building will certainly have to come down. There will have to be work done for utilities, the movement of utilities so but you know, ground will have to be broken to move utilities. But before you see steel going up in the air, there will have to be other things, obviously done,
Speaker 1
lots of ground work. I assume, lots and lots of ground work. Let's just ask about Dora hotels. I've been watching the last Well, I mean, every meeting. Haven't heard much the last two about Dora. Where is that process right now?
Speaker 2
Well, if you may recall that we selected Dora as the hotel developer, and we made available to Dora, as we did the other two who proposed for hotel development properties that were available to the Capital Improvement Board to our south and to our west. Dora prefers the site to the north, which is not a Capital Improvement Board site. That's the former Bunger Robertson property. It's owned by the redevelopment commission the city of Bloomington. So we referred Dora to the city of Bloomington. Told both the city and Dora, there was certainly a sense of urgency about moving forward with the project. It's, you know, a two and a half year project to get a hotel built. And made that referral back, I believe, in October, and they are there in the midst of talks. So hopefully those talks will progress. We haven't anything to report out, because those are quiet discussions that are going on behind the scenes between those two partners.
Speaker 1
Has anyone thought about and I know there's plans for the Skywalk between the expansion and the existing Convention Center? Will that be something needed for the hotel to the existing center?
Speaker 2
I know that the hotel, in their proposal had one, you know, drawn in, if you will, to their proposal, whether that happens or not. You know, it's been a flash point about sky walks and bridges. The only one that's that we're involved with is a capital improvement project for the construction of the expansion, is the single bridge that will connect the two the two facilities, so that we have one convention center. So if the if the hotel goes on the Bunger Robertson property, then that will be an issue between the city and the hotel on how, how they make connections, if they need to make connections, or whatever way they they bridge, if you will, movement between buildings.
Speaker 1
And if they do, would that impact the design plans happening now with the renovation of this center?
Speaker 2
No, because we are, we are not doing anything in our design that would show a connection to anything other than the connection between our two buildings,
Speaker 1
the Courtyard Marriott just across the street here the hotel that's been here for a while. Have you heard anything, any plans with that building to fit in with what's happening here?
Speaker 2
Well, we've, we've discussed, had discussions with the ownership of the Courtyard by Marriott. It's, you know, obviously connected to this building. It didn't meet the under its current condition, it doesn't meet the definition for a host hotel that we needed for the convention center. It's not a full service hotel, and in our conversations with them, they don't have any plans to upgrade to another tier within that system to be a full service hotel. Certainly, they'll be very important to our plans in terms of numbers of rooms that would be available for convention attendees. But there's no no plans by the court, by Marriott that I'm aware. Care of, and they certainly did not submit a proposal saying that they wanted to become a full service hotel,
Speaker 1
or not even that extent, even to upgrade their exterior or maybe renovate the rooms, or anything like that.
Speaker 2
Yeah, and I don't, I don't, you haven't heard anything not on your radio. In our conversation with them, they they mentioned that they thought within the next year, they may be moving forward with some upgrades of some rooms. I think, I think, when I say recently, in the last several years, I think they may have upgraded some of their meeting rooms, but, but again, they're, they're, you know what they're doing we're not privy to at this point.
Speaker 1
Let's go to parking. It was something that we had in a previous feature story that ran a couple weeks ago, and that is the concern of having perhaps 2000 people at the expansion, maybe 500 at the existing facility, maybe 200 over at the new proposed hotel, and the issue of where will all of these cars Park? And what I'm now understanding that there probably won't be events at every venue all at once at the same time,
Speaker 2
correct? And if you think about it, we're planning an expansion that would permit us to have up to 500 attendees at a conference or Convention, which doubles our capacity. Now, there's an exhibit hall, obviously, in the new facility that could host, separate from a convention or a conference, a dinner for 1200 people, but we wouldn't be renting out the convention center for a convention for 500 attendees, because they would be using that exhibit hall and at the same time simultaneously saying to somebody else, oh, you can rent the exhibit hall for a dinner. So there wouldn't be 1200 people coming separately for a dinner and 500 convention attendees here, because they would both be competing for the same space. So that that that's not an issue, that we would have as many as 2000 plus people here all at one time, but the expansion does afford the opportunity to rent the exhibit hall for single event opportunities, whether it's dinners or concerts or lectures or whatever,
Speaker 1
but still Something that will need to be addressed at some point. Yeah,
Speaker 2
the part, certainly the parking let me and let me say that right now a couple of things. One is that as we're moving forward with our planning for the expansion, and we've had, in the last couple of weeks, we've had the board of zoning appeals approved the variances we requested. Part of the support for that from the city's planning department is that under the city's Udo, a space of 100,000 square feet, which this will be when the expansion comes on, between the two spaces, would require two two parking spaces for every you know, 1000 square feet, well, that's 200 parking spaces. So what the Planning Department has indicated has actually, you know, signified to both the board of zoning appeals and will later to the plan commission, is that we don't, by the Udo, we don't need additional parking spaces. There are 970 parking spaces among the lots that we will own and at the Fourth Street garage. So that's 970 potentially available parking spaces. We know that some of the parking spaces in the Fourth Street garage are rented, although it's my understanding, they're not renting them out in into the future. They're no longer running them in the future or renting to additional people into the future. So even with 200 rentals of the parking garage, you're talking 770 parking spaces, we would never have 1200 people coming to a one event dinner and 1200 separate cars Convention Center attendees, the proposal by Dora, the host hotel, is that they want to, they want to consider thinking about their own underground parking. So, you know that may take care of part of that. You know, in addition, we need to be aware that in our bead District, which I continue to emphasize as an important factor in all of this, there are four parking garages. There are, I think, three surface parking lots. We have a parking lot on the former Bloomington hospital site, a parking garage there. And we're going to have to be creative in the future and think about, well, what do we do with shuttle services? What do we do to create a park and ride like we had at one time at Bryan Park pool for IU students. And how will conventions book their own ability to shuttle their own convention ears around. In our design of the new expanded space, we're creating a lane for busses to pull up and for shuttles to pull up, and the city council wants us to provide. Provide transportation or deal with transportation. So between spaces that are available, spaces that can be available in the future, shuttle services between much broader facilities, or broader areas than our land locked area. We're hopeful that we can move forward in that fashion. We know we don't have the budget. The parking is not the capital improvement board's project. We're constructing an expansion of a convention center. The City Council has told us that they will not approve additional structured parking, and in fact, the money that was in the budget for design of structured parking was taken back out and put back into the project. So the food and beverage tax money available for the project specifically eliminates structured parking. We don't have it in our budget, so new structured parking is not in our budget, nor is it in our charge,
Speaker 1
right? And speaking of funds, another point that I think it's important to clarify, because we're hearing about the House bill 1080 that would pave the way for ellisville to collect a portion of the Monroe County Food and beverage tax. It's about $200,000 but that's from the county's portion of the tax, not the city's cities putting 100% of their portion into the convention center. Am I correct?
Speaker 2
That's, that's, that's correct. The 10% that is now being held out for the county is the counties to do with as they wish. The 90% of the food and beverage tax money, which now is up over $20 million is dedicated to this project. So without another way to describe it. We don't have a dog in the fight of whether ellisville gets a percentage of the 10% the county was already getting that was never coming to the convention center project anyway.
Speaker 1
Are you concerned about the what we're hearing in the national news about tariffs and costs going up? I'm
Speaker 2
concerned about a whole lot that I hear in the national news, but yeah, the potential for tariffs, which then become a tax on all of us, and what that could do, what inflationary effect that could have on building materials, on construction materials, certainly, that's a that's a worry. So again, the more quickly we're on board and moving forward, you know, the better for us. Obviously could. Could tariffs have an impact on our construction costs? They could. We already estimate that every month we delay cost us about 150 260,000 more dollars on the project. So yeah, it certainly has potential, detrimental potential for us, but we have no control over it, so we just have to keep moving forward.
Speaker 1
What's next? Anything else? Well, we've got
Speaker 2
a work session with the county or the city council coming up where we'll go through and that's in preparation for their bonding on the project. So we'll go through explanations of budget and where we are in design. We have a plan commission meeting and a Board of Works meeting on this coming Monday, February 10, to secure some additional the final approval from the plan commission. As I perhaps indicated, the board of zoning Appeals has already approved the variances that we needed and had requested. And then in I think it's March 3 the City Council has will have on its agenda proving the bond for the new facility. And so, you know, we're moving forward. Once that happens, then we'll be prepared to prepare how we go out to bid the project. And as I said, our goal is that we'll be breaking ground by by June. So in the next four months, we'll be breaking ground, and you'll see me with a hard hat and a silver shovel turn and some dirt.
Unknown Speaker
Hopefully I'll be there too. Excellent. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker
Thank you.
So everything on schedule so far. Is it fair to say?
Speaker 2
Yeah, everything is, everything is on schedule. And actually, I think I've said this before, and I think you've quoted me, we're kind of moving at warp speed for a project of this nature with four governmental partners involved in it. So yes, we're, you know, as we sit here on the what, fourth, fifth day of February, we're hoping, within four months time, we're going to be breaking ground on a new convention center, and
Speaker 1
that's when the people will actually see there's a lot of been going on the last year or two, but we haven't seen the ground move yet. Will they start tearing down things first before the ground breaking?
Speaker 2
Good question. I mean, they're going to have to bring down the Napa building, the early voting building will certainly have to come down. There will have to be work done for utilities, the movement of utilities so but you know, ground will have to be broken to move utilities. But before you see steel going up in the air, there will have to be other things, obviously done,
Speaker 1
lots of ground work. I assume, lots and lots of ground work. Let's just ask about Dora hotels. I've been watching the last Well, I mean, every meeting. Haven't heard much the last two about Dora. Where is that process right now?
Speaker 2
Well, if you may recall that we selected Dora as the hotel developer, and we made available to Dora, as we did the other two who proposed for hotel development properties that were available to the Capital Improvement Board to our south and to our west. Dora prefers the site to the north, which is not a Capital Improvement Board site. That's the former Bunger Robertson property. It's owned by the redevelopment commission the city of Bloomington. So we referred Dora to the city of Bloomington. Told both the city and Dora, there was certainly a sense of urgency about moving forward with the project. It's, you know, a two and a half year project to get a hotel built. And made that referral back, I believe, in October, and they are there in the midst of talks. So hopefully those talks will progress. We haven't anything to report out, because those are quiet discussions that are going on behind the scenes between those two partners.
Speaker 1
Has anyone thought about and I know there's plans for the Skywalk between the expansion and the existing Convention Center? Will that be something needed for the hotel to the existing center?
Speaker 2
I know that the hotel, in their proposal had one, you know, drawn in, if you will, to their proposal, whether that happens or not. You know, it's been a flash point about sky walks and bridges. The only one that's that we're involved with is a capital improvement project for the construction of the expansion, is the single bridge that will connect the two the two facilities, so that we have one convention center. So if the if the hotel goes on the Bunger Robertson property, then that will be an issue between the city and the hotel on how, how they make connections, if they need to make connections, or whatever way they they bridge, if you will, movement between buildings.
Speaker 1
And if they do, would that impact the design plans happening now with the renovation of this center?
Speaker 2
No, because we are, we are not doing anything in our design that would show a connection to anything other than the connection between our two buildings,
Speaker 1
the Courtyard Marriott just across the street here the hotel that's been here for a while. Have you heard anything, any plans with that building to fit in with what's happening here?
Speaker 2
Well, we've, we've discussed, had discussions with the ownership of the Courtyard by Marriott. It's, you know, obviously connected to this building. It didn't meet the under its current condition, it doesn't meet the definition for a host hotel that we needed for the convention center. It's not a full service hotel, and in our conversations with them, they don't have any plans to upgrade to another tier within that system to be a full service hotel. Certainly, they'll be very important to our plans in terms of numbers of rooms that would be available for convention attendees. But there's no no plans by the court, by Marriott that I'm aware. Care of, and they certainly did not submit a proposal saying that they wanted to become a full service hotel,
Speaker 1
or not even that extent, even to upgrade their exterior or maybe renovate the rooms, or anything like that.
Speaker 2
Yeah, and I don't, I don't, you haven't heard anything not on your radio. In our conversation with them, they they mentioned that they thought within the next year, they may be moving forward with some upgrades of some rooms. I think, I think, when I say recently, in the last several years, I think they may have upgraded some of their meeting rooms, but, but again, they're, they're, you know what they're doing we're not privy to at this point.
Speaker 1
Let's go to parking. It was something that we had in a previous feature story that ran a couple weeks ago, and that is the concern of having perhaps 2000 people at the expansion, maybe 500 at the existing facility, maybe 200 over at the new proposed hotel, and the issue of where will all of these cars Park? And what I'm now understanding that there probably won't be events at every venue all at once at the same time,
Speaker 2
correct? And if you think about it, we're planning an expansion that would permit us to have up to 500 attendees at a conference or Convention, which doubles our capacity. Now, there's an exhibit hall, obviously, in the new facility that could host, separate from a convention or a conference, a dinner for 1200 people, but we wouldn't be renting out the convention center for a convention for 500 attendees, because they would be using that exhibit hall and at the same time simultaneously saying to somebody else, oh, you can rent the exhibit hall for a dinner. So there wouldn't be 1200 people coming separately for a dinner and 500 convention attendees here, because they would both be competing for the same space. So that that that's not an issue, that we would have as many as 2000 plus people here all at one time, but the expansion does afford the opportunity to rent the exhibit hall for single event opportunities, whether it's dinners or concerts or lectures or whatever,
Speaker 1
but still Something that will need to be addressed at some point. Yeah,
Speaker 2
the part, certainly the parking let me and let me say that right now a couple of things. One is that as we're moving forward with our planning for the expansion, and we've had, in the last couple of weeks, we've had the board of zoning appeals approved the variances we requested. Part of the support for that from the city's planning department is that under the city's Udo, a space of 100,000 square feet, which this will be when the expansion comes on, between the two spaces, would require two two parking spaces for every you know, 1000 square feet, well, that's 200 parking spaces. So what the Planning Department has indicated has actually, you know, signified to both the board of zoning appeals and will later to the plan commission, is that we don't, by the Udo, we don't need additional parking spaces. There are 970 parking spaces among the lots that we will own and at the Fourth Street garage. So that's 970 potentially available parking spaces. We know that some of the parking spaces in the Fourth Street garage are rented, although it's my understanding, they're not renting them out in into the future. They're no longer running them in the future or renting to additional people into the future. So even with 200 rentals of the parking garage, you're talking 770 parking spaces, we would never have 1200 people coming to a one event dinner and 1200 separate cars Convention Center attendees, the proposal by Dora, the host hotel, is that they want to, they want to consider thinking about their own underground parking. So, you know that may take care of part of that. You know, in addition, we need to be aware that in our bead District, which I continue to emphasize as an important factor in all of this, there are four parking garages. There are, I think, three surface parking lots. We have a parking lot on the former Bloomington hospital site, a parking garage there. And we're going to have to be creative in the future and think about, well, what do we do with shuttle services? What do we do to create a park and ride like we had at one time at Bryan Park pool for IU students. And how will conventions book their own ability to shuttle their own convention ears around. In our design of the new expanded space, we're creating a lane for busses to pull up and for shuttles to pull up, and the city council wants us to provide. Provide transportation or deal with transportation. So between spaces that are available, spaces that can be available in the future, shuttle services between much broader facilities, or broader areas than our land locked area. We're hopeful that we can move forward in that fashion. We know we don't have the budget. The parking is not the capital improvement board's project. We're constructing an expansion of a convention center. The City Council has told us that they will not approve additional structured parking, and in fact, the money that was in the budget for design of structured parking was taken back out and put back into the project. So the food and beverage tax money available for the project specifically eliminates structured parking. We don't have it in our budget, so new structured parking is not in our budget, nor is it in our charge,
Speaker 1
right? And speaking of funds, another point that I think it's important to clarify, because we're hearing about the House bill 1080 that would pave the way for ellisville to collect a portion of the Monroe County Food and beverage tax. It's about $200,000 but that's from the county's portion of the tax, not the city's cities putting 100% of their portion into the convention center. Am I correct?
Speaker 2
That's, that's, that's correct. The 10% that is now being held out for the county is the counties to do with as they wish. The 90% of the food and beverage tax money, which now is up over $20 million is dedicated to this project. So without another way to describe it. We don't have a dog in the fight of whether ellisville gets a percentage of the 10% the county was already getting that was never coming to the convention center project anyway.
Speaker 1
Are you concerned about the what we're hearing in the national news about tariffs and costs going up? I'm
Speaker 2
concerned about a whole lot that I hear in the national news, but yeah, the potential for tariffs, which then become a tax on all of us, and what that could do, what inflationary effect that could have on building materials, on construction materials, certainly, that's a that's a worry. So again, the more quickly we're on board and moving forward, you know, the better for us. Obviously could. Could tariffs have an impact on our construction costs? They could. We already estimate that every month we delay cost us about 150 260,000 more dollars on the project. So yeah, it certainly has potential, detrimental potential for us, but we have no control over it, so we just have to keep moving forward.
Speaker 1
What's next? Anything else? Well, we've got
Speaker 2
a work session with the county or the city council coming up where we'll go through and that's in preparation for their bonding on the project. So we'll go through explanations of budget and where we are in design. We have a plan commission meeting and a Board of Works meeting on this coming Monday, February 10, to secure some additional the final approval from the plan commission. As I perhaps indicated, the board of zoning Appeals has already approved the variances that we needed and had requested. And then in I think it's March 3 the City Council has will have on its agenda proving the bond for the new facility. And so, you know, we're moving forward. Once that happens, then we'll be prepared to prepare how we go out to bid the project. And as I said, our goal is that we'll be breaking ground by by June. So in the next four months, we'll be breaking ground, and you'll see me with a hard hat and a silver shovel turn and some dirt.
Unknown Speaker
Hopefully I'll be there too. Excellent. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker
Thank you.
