Final leg of Bloomington stormwater project to affect status of downtown Kirkwood this summer

The view of the parking warnings on Jan. 30, 2024, looking southeast from Indiana University’s parking lot behind the Von Lee building.

A two-year old map showing the history of the underground culvert project.

The place where the Campus River (formerly known as the Jordan River) flows into the underground culvert at Indiana Avenue and 6th Street.

The final piece of a major years-long stormwater management project in downtown Bloomington got its greenlight from Bloomington’s board of public works on Tuesday.

The role of the board of public works at its Tuesday meeting was to approve the use of the right-of-way and the maintenance-of-traffic plan—which includes detours for vehicles and pedestrians while the project is underway.

The overall project involves increasing the size of an underground culvert that starts at the tunnel where the Campus River flows from Indiana University’s Dunn Meadow, under Indiana Avenue at 6th Street, southward to where it eventually emerges in the vicinity of Walnut and 1st Streets.

The literal signs of this year’s project have already appeared. In the surface lot owned by Indiana University that sits behind the Von Lee building on Kirkwood Avenue, orange placards warn motorists that starting on Feb. 5 they won’t be able to park there.

The end date for the parking prohibition is Aug. 1, which matches the time frame for the six-month-long project.

This year’s project will handle the part of the culvert that is farthest upstream—from Dunn Street across the university’s parking lot, across Indiana Avenue to the university campus.

The most recent portion of the project to be completed  was called the “Hidden River,” and cost around $13 million. The “Hidden River” portion of the underground culvert stretched from Grant and 4th Street southward to the vicinity of 2nd and Washington streets. “Hidden River” was started in early 2021 and was completed in the fall of the following year.

The Kirkwood Flood of 2021 struck during construction for the “Hidden River” project. The improvements to the underground culvert are supposed to prevent the kind of flooding that resulted that year from a 3-inch rainfall in such a short time.

It was Milestone Contractors, LLP that did the work for “Hidden River.”

It is the same firm that submitted the low bid for this year’s final leg of the work. Milestone’s bid was about $3.65 million, which was about $1.32 million less than the $4.97 million estimated by the engineering consultant. The next-lowest bid was from E&B Paving, at $3.99 million, with the highest bid from Crider & Crider at $5.29 million.

At Tuesday’s board of public works meeting, Milestone’s project manager, Thomas Gott, was on hand via the Zoom video conference platform, to confirm details of the project. Gott and Bloomington public works director Adam Wason described how the timing for various elements of the project had required coordination with Indiana University.

Milestone’s plan is to cross Indiana Avenue around the end of May and then get the project wrapped up before the students come back in the fall. Wason said that it is hoped that the project will not impact the Fourth Street Arts Festival, which takes place over Labor Day weekend, in early September.

Pridefest typically takes place in late August—but Wason indicated he thinks the footprint of the Pridefest event would be farther west than the impact of the project area, even if it did not wrap up by then.

Wason said that the city’s department of economic and sustainable development had been working with downtown restaurants and businesses about what the possibilities might be for summer 2024.

For the past four years, sections of Kirkwood Avenue have been closed to automobile traffic, using yellow bollards  that are set into the intersection pavement.

When the utilities project crosses Indiana Avenue, Milestone’s maintenance-of-traffic plan shows Kirkwood Avenue as an alternate route for traffic that would have otherwise headed south on Indiana Avenue.

That means, for the Indiana-Avenue phase of this year’s project, from the end of May to early August, it does not look like Kirkwood could be closed to automobile traffic. Still, it’s conceivable that a closure for late spring and early summer could be implemented, with Kirkwood reopened only for the time when Indiana Avenue is not passable.

The closure of Kirkwood would require approval from Bloomington’s city council. In past years, the requested city council approval has appeared on a late February or early March meeting agenda.

On Tuesday, attending his first board of public works meeting—after his appointment to the three-member board was announced a week ago by new Bloomington mayor Kerry Thomson—was James Roach.

Roach has worked for the last six years as a software project consultant at Envisage Technologies, which is now Acadis. For almost three years before that, Roach previously worked for the city of Bloomington in the planning department as development services manager. That’s the position now held by Jackie Scanlan.

Before that, Roach served for a decade and a half as senior zoning planner for Bloomington, starting in 2000. Before joining the city of Bloomington, he also served for a year as a planner for Monroe County government.