Bloomington RDC wants environmental sign-off before $1.7M street project starts for Hopewell neighborhood

The city of Bloomington’s effort to redevelop the former IU Health hospital site at 2nd and Rogers streets took another step forward on Monday night.

Getting approval from the city’s redevelopment commission (RDC) at its regular meeting was a $1.7 million contract with Crider & Crider, Inc. to construct from scratch a section of Jackson Street north of 1st Street and to reconstruct Rogers Street from 1st Street to 2nd Street.

Crider and Crider’s bid ($1,687,319) was the lowest of the three received. Other bidders were Milestone Contractors ($1,974,400) and E&B Paving ($2,290,600).

Including the $6.5 million purchase price for the real estate, Monday’s approval pushes the total cost of the Hopewell project to nearly $40 million. The RDC’s project review form shows a current total of $39,778,030.85.

The contract with Crider & Crider got earlier approval from Bloomington’s board of public works at its July 1 meeting.

The work is planned to start around Aug. 1 and last through Nov. 1.

Drawing scrutiny on Monday from RDC members was a point in the resolution that is related to the start date, and the years-long effort to complete required environmental testing of the Hopewell site, to ultimately get approval from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM). (A May 2025 report from VET Environmental Engineering, the RDC’s consultant, to IDEM includes a chronology starting in 2018.)

6. City Staff and Legal will authorize the Start Date, in writing, after consultation with the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) and if confirmed the Project has been authorized by IDEM as part of the Contamination Plan for the Part 58 Environmental Review of Hopewell West. There shall be no ground disturbance before the Start Date.

Part 58 is part of Title 24 of the Code of Federal Regulations, which is the title in federal regulations that covers Housing and Urban Development.

A July 1, 2025 letter from IDEM to VET Environmental Engineering gives a summary of IDEM’s “contaminants of concern” (COCs) “to provide information which may help facilitate landfill approval for the planned soil removal.”

The July 1 IDEM letter cites test results from late August 2023, January 2024, and June 2024. IDEM’s July 1 letter concludes that its concerns in the soil are “limited to arsenic and PAHs [polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons].” For groundwater, IDEM’s concerns are “are limited to benzene and PAHs (and arsenic and lead due to sedimentation).”

RDC members were keen to make sure that the street construction work does not start until IDEM signs off on it.

On Monday, it was Kendall Knoke, who is a project engineer with the city of Bloomington, who presented the Crider & Crider contract to the RDC for approval. Knoke said that the whole point of this phase of street construction is to support the Kohr building adaptive reuse project. Four years ago, Bloomington’s city council approved the historic designation for the hospital’s Kohr Administration building.

The historic designation help an application for low income housing tax credits (LIHTC), which were received to help construct the planned 38 units of affordable housing in the original building and a new addition.

The Kohr project is overseen by Summit Hill Community Development Corporation (SHCDC), which is a subsidiary of the Bloomington Housing Authority. For the Kohr project, SHCDC is partnering with Brinshore Development. The targeted completion date for the Kohr project is 2026.

According to Knoke, the street construction project and the affordable housing project will require some coordination. But Knoke said, “We have in writing that they have to get out of our way if … there’s any kind of issues out there.”