Elected leaders for Bloomington and Monroe County meet Thursday at Bloomington City Hall to discuss the convention center project.
(Lucas González, WFIU/WTIU News)
Tensions stirred among elected officials in Monroe County this week as the result of a draft letter from the Bloomington City Council regarding the convention center expansion project.
Members of the city council, county council, the board of commissioners and Mayor Kerry Thomson met Thursday to discuss the letter, which was addressed to the Monroe County Capital Improvement Board (CIB), the body overseeing the project.
Some in the room — particularly those in county government — described the letter as heavy-handed and micromanaging.
Commissioner Penny Githens sent an email to other officials about two hours before the start of the meeting, which she did not attend. In her email, she cautioned the city council against trying to make unilateral decisions on the project.
“I acknowledge that the City (council) is responsible for planning and zoning rules within City limits, but the draft letter regarding the convention center expansion seems to go well beyond that authority,” Githens wrote. “I believe that each body should indicate their preferences to the CIB. Unfortunately, the draft letter from the City Council appears to be more of an ultimatum than an expression of preference.”
The city council’s letter makes a slew of recommendations, including the following:
Limit city expenditures on the project to the city’s share of Food and Beverage Tax revenues
Do not use city funds to subsidize new surface parking lots or other structured parking for the convention center
Do not build skywalk connections, or elevated walkways connecting buildings
City councilors Kate Rosenbarger, Matt Flaherty and Sydney Zulich oversaw the drafting of the letter.
The letter states its purpose is to clarify the city council’s expectations before the council moves forward with roughly $50 million in bonding for the project.
City council members said the language and recommendations within the letter are not final, as they plan to vote on it at a future meeting. It can be amended beforehand.
City Council President Isabel Piedmont-Smith said the letter was meant to prevent problems later when the council approves bonds, not come across as a list of demands.
But fellow city councilor Isak Asare said it didn’t come across how it was intended.
“The signal that it gives to folks is something like we’re saying, ‘We want to make it hard to do a convention center,’” Asare said. “I just think we need to be mindful of that signal.”
Isak Asare at the Thursday meeting (Lucas González, WFIU/WTIU News)
Asare’s interpretation of the letter was shared by many county officials, including commissioners Lee Jones and Julie Thomas.
Jones said she read the letter as being “rather high-handed,” adding, “One of the big reasons for pushing for a CIB was to try to remove politics from this whole process and just put it in the hands of people who we have all appointed.”
(From left) Julie Thomas and Lee Jones (Lucas González, WFIU/WTIU News)
Thomas, too, said she took issue with the letter. She mentioned an expanded convention center needs an estimated 750 parking spaces; and while the council wants a commitment to environmentally friendly transit options, many visitors will drive from out-of-state.
Thomas added the portion of the letter recommending no skywalks is problematic because visitors will need access between buildings that protect them from rain or snow. This is especially true of the east or south options for expansion, according to Thomas.
The north expansion option is no longer in play because the CIB says it will not negotiate with the city on acquiring the now-city-owned building north of the convention center that was once home to Bunger & Robertson. The city previously said it wanted reimbursement for the building if the CIB were to use it for a northern expansion.
Thomas said she also wants to know if the CIB would have to purchase a city-owned lot south of the convention center, which she said is currently being used for overflow parking for the convention center and Courtyard Bloomington hotel.
Mayor Thomson also weighed in at the meeting, saying it’s important to let the CIB do what it was created to do: advance the project.
“When we appoint a team, what we want to do is let them run at the top of their leadership ability,” Thomson said. “In order to do that, we set the guardrails and parameters for accountability. We do that well, and we do it hopefully at the beginning, because once we start moving with this — as we’ve already seen — anything that happens that is unexpected is an opportunity to lose trust.”
Kerry Thomson (Lucas González, WFIU/WTIU News)
Council members met last month to discuss other possible ways in which they can use the city’s share of Food and Beverage Tax revenues. At that meeting, county officials urged city councilors against stalling or stopping the project in any way.
Based on the content of the city council’s draft letter, its members seem interested in reserving about 7.5 percent of city Food and Beverage Tax revenues on other projects, including a potential Kirkwood Avenue conversion to a shared street, changes to the College and Walnut corridor and/or a Smith Avenue right-of-way connector.
The coming weeks are likely to be pivotal for the project. On June 4, the CIB is scheduled to interview representatives of three construction firms vying for the role of project construction manager. On June 12, the CIB could weigh a recommendation on which site it wants for expansion.
Additionally, the city council says it wants to vote to approve a letter to the CIB as soon as June 5. Doing so would solidify any recommendations within it.
