Convention center: CIB takes steps to contract with architect, to include input from arts, entertainment
Two big pieces of news came out of Wednesday’s meeting of Monroe County’s capital improvement board (CIB).
First, the CIB chose Weddle Bros. as the construction manager for the convention center expansion project. Second, it will be the real estate to the east of the current convention center that will become the location of the expansion of the current center, which stands at the southwest corner of 3rd Street and College Avenue.
But the CIB took another newsworthy step on Wednesday—giving a green light to its legal counsel, Jim Whitlatch of Bunger & Robertson to start working on a contract with its selected architectural firm, Schmidt Associates, for design work.
That contract will draw on around $6 million in food and beverage tax money that the city council already appropriated in 2019 for architectural fees. The purchase orders with Schmidt Associates are still open for those appropriations, according to CIB treasurer Eric Spoonmore and CIB controller Jeff Underwood.
The expansion design work will get input from an advisory group that the CIB has formed—on arts and entertainment matters for the downtown geographic area known as the BEAD (Bloomington Entertainment and Arts District).
The CIB plans to incorporate the city’s one-percent for art ordinance into the convention center expansion design work.
Arts, entertainment advisory group
The group that has been recruited to provide advice on the BEAD and the design of the new building includes eight people, who were introduced to the CIB at Wednesday’s meeting.
The BEAD advisory group in includes: Galen Cassady (Uptown Cafe); Holly Warren (assistant director for the arts in the city’s economic and sustainable development); Malcolm Abrams (Bloom Magazine publisher); Jennifer Mujezinovic (Clash Gallery); Karen Jepson-Innes (WonderLab Museum); A John Rose (Textillery Weavers); Steve Versaw (Buskirk-Chumley Theater); and Talisha Coppock (Downtown Bloomington, Inc.).
Cassady recruited the group at the request of CIB president John Whikehart.
On Friday, reporting to the public art committee of the Bloomington arts commission (BAC), Warren said about her role in the group, “I am super-duper excited!”
She continued, saying, “I definitely am going to bring the BAC into this, especially because [the CIB is] honoring the 1-percent for the arts ordinance for this—which means we will have a stake in how a portion of the funds for this will be used for the arts.”
The BEAD was an initiative of former mayor Mark Kruzan, who served from 2004 through 2015. At Wednesday’s meeting, Whikehart described the BEAD like this: “After the [COVID-19] pandemic, the promotion of the BEAD…has been somewhat in decline. So I’m eager for us to use the convention center project to resurrect attention, if you will, to the Bloomington Entertainment and Arts District.”
As a part of mayor John Hamilton’s administration’s Recover Forward initiative after the COVID-19 pandemic, the BEAD vertical banners in the downtown were replaced by Recover Forward banners, at a cost of around $5,000.
The general area of the BEAD stretches from 9th Street southward down to a bit north of 2nd Street, and from the west, around Maple Street, over to Indiana Avenue.
The two big spheres on the east side of the intersection of Walnut Street and Kirkwood Avenue were “beads” that were installed in 2008 in connection with the BEAD.
The BEAD is one of twelve cultural districts recognized across the state by the Indiana Arts Commission. Some state funding is available to such cultural districts.
In the 2024 funding cycle, organizations in the BEAD received about $170,000 in grants from the Indiana Arts Commission
CIB budget, architectural fees
Wednesday’s greenlight to its legal counsel to hammer out the details of a contract with the CIB’s architect, Schmidt Associates, comes before a planned request for a 2024 budget revision, which the CIB will be making of Bloomington’s city council.
The first step of that budget revision, which will bump the CIB’s 2024 budget from $250,000 to about $600,000, appears on the Bloomington city council’s Tuesday (June 18) meeting agenda.
The agenda item is a request of the FABTAC (Food and Beverage Tax Advisory Commission) to review an additional expenditure of food and beverage tax revenue. After that review, the Bloomington city council will, in late July or early August, be asked to approve the revised budget.
Neither the already-approved 2024 budget for the CIB, nor the revised one, includes a line for a few million dollars that would be needed to fund a contract for Schmidt Associates.
That could draw the interest of city councilmembers, because one of the points in a recent letter sent to the CIB on a unanimous vote of Bloomington’s city council says: “Going forward, the CIB should not contract for services or make other financial commitments prior to receiving all necessary approvals from the Bloomington Common Council, including budget approval.”
Asked about that issue, CIB treasurer Eric Spoonmore and CIB controller Jeff Underwood said there are city of Bloomington purchase orders for Schmidt Associates for such work, dating back to 2019, but which are still open.
In 2019, the Bloomington city council requested that the FABTAC review a $6.25 million expenditure of food and beverage tax revenue. After getting an approval from the FABTAC, the council appropriated the money.
The city signed a $4.1-million contract with Schmidt Associates for design work on the expansion and another $1.5-million contract for parking garage design work.
Those contracts include handwritten purchase order numbers.
