The current Monroe Convention Center.
(Devan Ridgway, WTIU/WFIU News)
The Bloomington City Council will send a letter with recommendations for the Monroe Convention Center expansion to the Capital Improvement Board (CIB), the body overseeing the project.
Council members unanimously approved the following letter to the CIB Wednesday following a few other meetings about city priorities on the project.
Council members Kate Rosenbarger, Matt Flaherty and Sydney Zulich oversaw the letter's drafting.
Flaherty said the letter was needed because the council lacked an effective mechanism for providing feedback to the CIB before it was tasked with approving the board’s $250,000 budget for 2024.
“During the approval of the budget, I think there was a desire to again, kind of increase clarity and alignment to help the CIB in its day-to-day work of advancing the project’s design and budgeting prior to bonding,” Flaherty said.
Matt Flaherty (Courtesy, Community Access Television Services)
Both Flaherty and Rosenbarger voted against the CIB’s 2024 budget in April.
The council must later approve roughly $50 million in bonds for the project.
The letter, which council members will later sign and send to the CIB, reflects changes made between last week and Wednesday. Council members met with Mayor Kerry Thomson and their county colleagues May 30 to discuss a previous version of the letter.
At that meeting, some county officials described a previous version of the letter as too heavy-handed and demanding. Council member Isak Asare empathized with those concerns.
Zulich made it a point to emphasize Wednesday that the letter is not a list of demands, and the letter was written in such a way to avoid giving that impression.
“We changed wording very specifically to make it clear that these are our requests,” Zulich said. “We understand that we are one of four bodies who are investing in this project and one of five bodies — including the CIB — who are actually kind of dictating the terms under which the convention center is being built.”
Sydney Zulich (Courtesy, Community Access Television Services)
The four bodies Zulich referenced include the city council itself, the Office of the Mayor, the Monroe County Council, and the Monroe County Board of Commissioners. Each body signed off on an interlocal agreement for the project, which is a document outlining the terms under which it will advance.
Only one member of the public commented on the letter: Christopher Emge, the director of advocacy and public policy for the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce. Emge said a letter is an effective way to communicate the council’s priorities but cautioned against doing anything that could further stall the project.
“Our members have the utmost confidence in (the CIB) to move the project forward in a timely manner without the political wranglings that have marred this community in the recent past,” Emge said. “We don’t want to add layers that would cause delay or anything that compromises this in the long run.”
Christopher Emge (Courtesy, Community Access Television Services)
Emge said he was confused by the council’s request for the CIB to get plan commission approval before bonding. He said wanted to know why the council wanted this and whether the commission’s approval was needed before bonding for other large capital projects, such as The Forge in the city’s Trades District and Showers West.
The Forge did get site plan approval from the plan commission, but the Showers West Project did not, according to Development Services Manager Jacqueline Scanlan. Scanlan said this is because Showers West was an interior remodel building permit request, which was never issued or built.
Meanwhile, the CIB is poised to decide on a construction manager for the project and a site for expansion as soon as June 12. Board members interviewed three firms vying for the role of construction manager on Tuesday.
The group is down to three options for expansion: east, west or south. The north option, which would have included the former Bunger & Robertson property, was ruled out last month.
The city, which owns the building, wanted reimbursement for the property if the CIB chose to use it for a northern expansion; but the CIB has said it’s not willing to negotiate on this. The Bloomington Redevelopment Commission purchased the building for nearly $7 million in Tax Increment Finance dollars.
The project will be funded using food and beverage tax revenues. From 2018 to the end of 2023, the city collected nearly $17.5 million on the tax. County records show that from January to March 2024, the city collected an additional $967,154.86.
Food and beverage tax revenue from 2018 to March 2024. The city receives about 90 percent of the tax revenue.
The city council wants to reserve about 7.5 percent of the city's share of those revenues on other projects.
