Vacant land sits in the Trades District - the 12-acre portion of the certified technology park south of Upland Brewery.
(Joe Hren, WFIU/WTIU News)
Despite years of promising economic activity, Bloomington’s Trades District is still pretty much vacant. It’s the 12-acre portion of the certified technology park north of City Hall. It was created in 2005.
There’s been a lot of talk about the Trades District but plans for a TASUS expansion, Envisage headquarters and a mixed use development from an Indianapolis developer have never panned out.
The city has invested in the area. There’s a new parking garage, roads, sidewalks, landscaping, and The Mill - the state’s fastest growing coworking space launching and accelerating startups since 2018.
The city asked The Mill to lead the development of the Trades District. Executive Director Pat East says the city has too much on its plate.
“They really look to us as somebody who has successfully taken an investment from the city and built upon it and turned it into something that is doing some demonstrable good in the community,” East said.
He says the first step was to hire someone that has real estate, startup, investment, and economic development background to take the district to the next level.
John Fernandez is Senior Vice President, Innovation & Strategic Partnerships of The Mill (Joe Hren, WFIU/WTIU News)
The city announced in February that former Bloomington Mayor John Fernandez will lead the development and marketing of the Trades District. Fernandez is the former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development. He served as Bloomington mayor from 1995 to 2003.
“There's just a lot of activity, that if we get it right, and we bring things together right now, I mean, it can change a direction, and it can really build some tremendous new opportunities for not just Bloomington, but this entire region,” Fernandez said.
“It includes relationships with IU, it includes activating the property there with more investments and it's really the kind of the next step I think in the Trades District’s activation,” Hamilton said.
The city received a $3 and a half million federal CARES Act grant in 2021 to build the Technology Center, but Hamilton says expenses have gone up since and the proposed building needs to be redesigned.
The Kiln Collective purchased the Kiln from the city for $50,000 and will invest $2 million in the renovation. (Joe Hren, WFIU/WTIU News)
The Kiln and administration building in the district have been sold and are being redeveloped by two private entities. And startups at The Mill are excited about the growth and the next phase.
Start-up vision
Folia CEO Ravi Bhatt studied at IU, went to Chicago and moved back with a startup software company. He says The Mill has taken his business to the next level.
“Those accidental collisions are the thing that really drive a lot of ecosystems forward, right? Because you don't know who you're supposed to be collaborating with, until you accidentally run into them,” Bhatt said. “So that's really what's been rewarding for me.”
He says the next step is to create an ecosystem of economic activity on a higher level – larger businesses collaborating with startups for research and development.
“If we get a few companies like that, here locally, whether they're transplants from another market, or we grow them from the bottom up here in the local community, I think it's gonna have a transformative effect that will have ripple effects throughout the community,” Bhatt said.
Fernandez says to do that, the district needs to be a destination for the coveted 24 to 30 year-old demographic.
“They don't want to hang out on Kirkwood. Sorry, you know, there's plenty of people that do. But we got to create our own kind of unique community around the Trades District,” Fernandez said.
The Mill is blocks away from downtown, but Fernandez says the district needs to have its own identity. (Joe Hren, WFIU/WTIU News)
He says post-COVID, hybrid-work is here to stay, and now there’s a bigger purpose for the area than having offices full of workstations.
“It's a signal to the market. It's a signal to people who live here as well as people who visit here that Bloomington is a dynamic, future oriented community. And well, there's lots of opportunity,” Fernandez said.
The new economy
East says The Mill has recruited 24 remote workers to move to Bloomington within the year.
“This building that we're in now was a furniture factory and making physical goods was how economies got built. Now it's quite literally on ones and zeros. It's all the software that you see on your screen,” East said.
And he says, you don’t need a large footprint to do it – just a backpack.
“You can quite literally have a multi-million dollar company run just from your laptop with remote workers, hopefully, hopefully here in Bloomington,” East said.
He says the payoff is having these new folks, with new ideas, and new ways of looking at things available to help build the new economy.
Fernandez says that’s his vision of the Trades District.
“People. People, working people, collaborating people, enjoying the space. I mean, we've got to get activity.”
Fernandez says the Technology Center construction proposals should be ready by April.
