CIB briefed on branding, public art, hotel plans for Bloomington convention center expansion

At its regular meeting on Wednesday (Aug. 20) Monroe County’s capital improvement board, which is overseeing the expansion of the Bloomington convention center, received updates on: branding and logo development; plans for public art in the new facility; and progress on the associated hotel project.

The work on the construction site, on the south side of 3rd Street, between College Avenue and Walnut Street, is now underway.

Logo and branding

At Wednesday’s meeting, Mike McAfee, executive director of Visit Bloomington, presented the new branding and visual identity for the convention center, which was developed with the help of the marketing firm Simpleview.

McAfee described a 16-week process working with Simpleview to create the branding platform for the logo, color palette, and fonts, among other elements. He said the website for the convention center that will rely on the logo is under development.

The chosen logo features a butterfly shape inspired by the building’s front, McAfee said, with a color palette that includes “Bloomington red and a limestone gray.” McAfee told CIB members, “We hope you’ll use it anywhere you want….” Board members provided feedback on the logo design, with Adam Thies saying, “I think this is awesome. This is awesome.” Thies said he thinks the design is “a bit of an icon.”

Geoff McKim added to the praise: “I absolutely love it as well.” McKim liked the fact that the roofline of the building in the logo shows a trend “up and to the right,” which is the way anyone tracking growth usually wants to see a chart move.

Jay Baer, who has expertise in the area of logos, as a marketing consultant and branding strategist, said, “There’s only two things I don’t like.” One thing was the version of the logo that renders everything in black, which makes one section a big black square. “We all know what that is, but other people [might wonder] ‘What is that big black square all about?’ ”

The other version that Baer didn’t like was the “logo bug” that just uses the letters “BCB.” Baer said, “I feel like the ‘BCB’ is way thin that application. I just feel like you’re gonna have to have a thicker font for that right there.”

Baer added praise for the work that Simpleview does, saying, “I’ve worked with Simpleview a lot in my career, and they are a first-class organization. They’re terrific at what they do.”

Public art

Addressing the CIB on Wednesday was Galen Cassady, co-owner of Uptown Café, who is heading up an arts and entertainment advisory group for the downtown geographic area known as the BEAD (Bloomington Entertainment and Arts District). The group that has been recruited to provide advice on the BEAD and the design of the new building includes eight people, who were announced at a CIB meeting in June 2024.

The CIB plans to incorporate the city’s one-percent for art ordinance into the convention center expansion.

Cassady turned things over to Holly Warren, who is assistant director for the arts in the city of Bloomington’s economic and sustainable development department. Warren’s presentation gave the CIB the basic idea of the 1% ordinance, which is that anytime the city undertakes a large-scale capital project, 1% of the overall construction budget is allocated for a public art project. For the convention center, with its $52-million construction budget, the $520,000 is proposed to be allocated like this: $100,000 for permanent art by local artists, and $420,000 for a substantial public art piece.

Warren said the process will include public feedback sessions, an international call for artists, and a recommendation committee. The timeline calls for public feedback sessions to start in mid-September.

Hotel update

A key component of the overall convention center expansion project is an affiliated hotel. How a hotel gets constructed is ultimately not the CIB’s decision to make, because it doesn’t control the adjoining land that is likely to be the site of the hotel. But in October 2024, the CIB named Dora Hospitality its “favored hotelier.”

Dora has been eying the lot across 3rd Street from the existing convention center as its preferred location. It’s the former site of the Bunger & Robertson law firm building—a property that was purchased in 2019 by the city of Bloomington’s redevelopment commission (RDC), with an eye towards making it the site of the convention center expansion.

On Wednesday, Jane Kupersmith, director of the city’s economic and sustainable development department, provided an update on the status of the hotel project, which as yet has no real estate deal in place.

Kupersmith reported that soil borings have been completed. About the results, she said, “We were pleasantly surprised that limestone bedrock seems to start pretty deep, averaging at 12 to 20 feet on the site, so that leaves maybe more possibility—no guarantee—of below-grade parking, but it’s not off the table.”

The design work is pending, with Dora Hospitality and Louderback Group working with Luminaut Design Group on a proposal, Kupersmith said. That design work relies on $300,000 in funding provided by Bloomington’s RDC.

The RDC spent nearly $7 million to acquire the land in two separate transactions—one in 2019 and the other in 2023. About the structure of the real estate deal. Kupersmith said, “We’re just working in earnest on trying to understand and find a way through this very complex and expensive hotel project.”