By Monday (Feb. 5), it should be clear if Bloomington mayor Kerry Thomson intends to implement the plan for Showers West just as it was drawn up by her predecessor, John Hamilton.
Hamilton planned to move both the fire department administration and police operations into the Showers West portion of the city hall building.
Next Monday is when Bloomington’s redevelopment commission will meet to vote on awarding the bids for the Showers West construction contracts. The contracts are for the renovation and remodeling work that would need to be done on the 110-year-old former brick furniture factory building, before the city departments would move in.
It was around a year ago when Bloomington’s city council authorized the purchase of Showers West from CFC Properties for a price of $8.75 million. The idea at the time, which was the basis of support from some councilmembers, who were on on the prevailing side of a 5–4 split, was to move the police department into the same city hall building as most other departments of the city.
But at a special meeting of the RDC on Wednesday afternoon, city attorney Larry Allen gave a preview of sorts about what the RDC will hear from the Thomson administration as a recommendation for action.
At this point, it does not sound like Thomson necessarily wants to proceed immediately with moving the police department into Showers West.
That’s consistent with the position of the police union, which has, from the time the idea was first floated, resisted the move—citing security concerns about the building as well as entrance and egress issues.
Allen framed Monday’s upcoming vote in the context of the mid-December consideration given by the RDC to the construction contract bid awards, and the required statutory timelines for awarding bids.
The contracts had appeared on the agenda for the Bloomington RDC’s mid-December meeting, but did not have majority support for consideration at that time. Some RDC members wanted new Bloomington mayor Kerry Thomson’s administration to review the contracts before moving forward.
On Wednesday Allen told RDC members that under Indiana state law, after the bids are submitted, a public body like the RDC has 60 days to award the bids.
Still, Allen told RDC members, “You have options.” He added, “If you want to award the bid as it was stated, then you have to do it within the 60 days.” If a bid is not awarded within 60 days, it becomes the contractor’s option to extend their pricing longer than that, Allen said. It’s also an option to reject all the bids, Allen added.
Allen told RDC members that on Monday, the Thomson administration would be giving the RDC a recommendation on “an action towards those bids.”
Responding to a question from RDC member Deb Hutton, Allen confirmed that the recommendation on bid awards would be informed by a working group that Thomson has assembled to review the Showers West project. That group includes city staff as well as two city councilmembers—Isabel Piedmont-Smith and Isak Asare.
According to a Jan. 5 city news release, about the creation of the Showers West working group—there’s another group focused on the Hopewell neighborhood redevelopment—it is supposed to provide “a fresh perspective and independent review of the projects and advise [Thomson] on next steps.”
When Allen answered Hutton, to confirm that the working group would influence the recommendation, he did it in a somewhat lighthearted way. “That’s correct,” he confirmed for Hutton, adding, “I do not plan on going rogue and making my own recommendation.”
When the RDC considered the bid awards in mid-December, Allen was working for the Hamilton administration as deputy mayor, and advocated for the RDC to accept the recommended low construction bids for Showers West. Allen had previously served as assistant city attorney in Hamilton’s administration. As city attorney under Thomson, Allen’s job is not to represent Hamilton’s interests.
Part of Hamilton’s plan for Showers West sounds like it’s still in place—that’s the move of the fire administration into the renovated space.
The idea of definitely going ahead with the move of the fire department’s administration into Showers West got a mention at Wednesday’s RDC meeting, when Allen briefed RDC members on the early lease termination with the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra. At Wednesday’s meeting, the RDC approved a payout of $10,000 to cover moving costs for the orchestra.
Allen noted that the orchestra currently leases a space in the Showers West part of the building that is in the footprint of the planned design for the fire department’s administration. And the idea of moving the fire department’s administration into Showers West is “still very much on the table to utilize,” Allen told RDC members.
The way the rest of Showers West is used could prove to be an early test—of whether Thomson and the new edition of the city council will be able to work together in a productive way over the next four years.
The specific question is whether the police department is moved from its 3rd Street station into a newly renovated and rehabbed historic building.
At last Wednesday’s city council meeting, Thomson fielded questions from councilmembers, including one from Matt Flaherty, who was one of five councilmembers who voted for the purchase of Showers West. His vote of support was based on his belief that the co-location of police officers in the same building as other civil servants will improve disparate systemic impacts on marginalized communities.
Flaherty’s remarks last year on Jan. 25, 2023 when the vote was taken to approve the purchase of the Showers West building, included these:
So I think that, as a positive cultural change, the integration of public safety services—across police, fire and civil city services—is a crucial change. And that making progress on persistent and difficult systemic problems in our public safety system depends on it.
I don’t name these problems as an indictment of any one or any department, but simply as an acknowledgement that Bloomington, like everywhere in the US, has issues and a need to continually improve public safety outcomes, to ensure they’re not impacting marginalized communities disparately to reduce our unjust and world-leading incarceration rates. We have local data on these things, and it’s not great.
All of this to say, we do need to be mindful of evolutions, changes, best practices among progressive communities, who are working to address these thorny, difficult systemic issues. And that’s what I see is the real value of integration and colocation of all the whole range of public safety services, which again, are evolving and will continue to change and evolve.
Last week (Jan. 24, 2024), Flaherty noted that the wording in the bond issuance might not carry with it a legal requirement that the Thomson administration get approval from the city council, if it chooses not to use Showers West to house the police department. Flaherty’s question for Thomson was:
Whether or not legally required, would you come back to this body for majority approval?
Thomson’s response essentially rejected the legislative-versus-executive frame of Flaherty’s question, saying:
My hope is that the council is giving feedback along the way. And I’m enough of an idealist to believe that I really think that we can get to a win-win situation, or at least a no-lose situation. … I’m interested in a collaborative process to get to the best result.
The RDC’s special meeting was called for Wednesday, in order to approve the early lease terminations for two of the Showers West tenants—Bloomington Symphony Orchestra and GP Strategies Corporation.
The lease termination for GP Strategies had been considered last week by the RDC, along with three other early lease terminations. The other three early terminations four early lease terminations were approved: Kerr Law, P.C. ($5,000); Indiana Team, LLC ($30,000); and Bynum Fanyo Utilities ($15,000).
But the RDC members balked at approving the fourth one, for GP Strategies, because there was no dollar amount specified for the buyout. The legal document simply stated that the city would “forgive any and all outstanding build-out cost owed to Landlord [RDC] by Tenant [GP Strategies] on the Premises.”
At Wednesday’s meeting, Allen put a dollar figure on that forgiveness. CFC had paid for build-out costs a few years ago to make the space more suitable as office space, and GP Strategies was paying back that amount over time.
When the RDC purchased the building, that payback was baked into the purchase agreement. There is $65,405.09 left on that build-out amount, which the RDC will be foregoing in exchange for the early lease termination.
That’s on top of the lost revenue from the rent that GP Strategies would have paid, which currently goes through 2026. Allen pegged the square footage of the rented space at just under 11,000 square feet, for which GP Strategies pays $10.98 per square foot, which translates into a bit under $120,000 in rent.
Remaining tenants, who appear to have indicated a reluctance to end their leases early, include: The Bank of America (Merrill Lynch), Bloomington Health Foundation, Monroe County CASA, Warrant Technologies, ProBleu, and Bloomington Board of Realtors.
At Wednesday’s meeting, Allen said that the RDC might be asked to discuss some of those leases in a future executive session, closed to the public, because the conversation would include an element of strategy regarding real property negotiations. That’s one of the reasons a public body can hold an executive session under Indiana’s Open Door Law.
The negotiations with Showers West tenants are being handled by Chris Cockerham, who is a real estate agent with FC Tucker, which is owned by John West, who is a newly appointed RDC member.
West participated in the votes on early lease termination last week. But at Wednesday’s meeting, Allen said that West would be recusing himself from the votes that day, because of the connection of Cockerham with FC Tucker.
The RDC approved the contract with Cockerham for the work on lease negotiations in Showers West at its Feb. 20, 2023 meeting.
“At this point, it does not sound like Thomson necessarily wants to proceed immediately with moving the police department into Showers West.”
This is encouraging. The current facility was purpose-built as a police station and includes features to reduce the impact of being struck by a tornado. The cost of relocating the radio tower, not factored in to the Hamilton administration’s cost estimates, is approximately one million dollars. The rank and file of the police force prefer the current location.
The construction plans for Showers West do not include structural modifications to endure a tornado. Doing so would require removing finish surfaces and replacing them after the structural modifications were made. Don’t believe me – believe one of the consultants the Hamilton administration hired but chose to ignore.
It seems a bit optimistic to believe that merely relocating the police with other departments would have an appreciable effect on public safety outcomes for marginalized groups, however necessary or noble the goal.