CIB gives mid-December ultimatum on Bloomington’s convention center hotel deal

On Wednesday, Andrew Scere, project manager with Weddle Brothers gave a cheerful update to the Monroe County capital improvement board (CIB) about the construction of the convention center expansion, located on the south side of 3rd Street in downtown Bloomington, between College Avenue and Walnut Street.

Daily concrete pours for foundations are underway, as the construction team prepares for the arrival and installation of structural steel by the end of October, Scere said. The construction budget for the convention center project is $52 million. The update came at the regular monthly meeting of the CIB.

But the effort to secure a host hotel supporting the Bloomington Convention Center expansion has lagged significantly behind the expansion project itself, which broke ground in early June.

The lag has now reached a point where CIB president John Whikehart on Wednesday, asked for and received the board’s unanimous support to give a 60-day deadline to its preferred hotelier, Dora Hospitality, and the Bloomington redevelopment commission (RDC), for showing concrete progress on a deal that’s being negotiated for the real estate.

Currently, the convention center expansion is expected to open in early 2027. But the hotel project, including design work, has about a three-year time frame. That means the opening of the hotel supporting the convention center expansion could now lag by as much as two years behind the opening of the convention center itself.

The land under consideration is the former Bunger & Robertson site, at 4th Street and College Avenue, which is north of the existing convention center. The owner of the real estate is Bloomington’s RDC.

By the date of the Dec. 17 regular monthly meeting, the Bloomington RDC and Dora Hospitality are supposed to deliver a joint agreement to the CIB with a path forward, including timelines for design and construction phases and a time schedule for development of the hotel.

If no joint agreement is delivered by that deadline, the CIB could rethink its choice of Dora and restart the process of selecting a hotel developer, which the first time around entailed issuing an RFP and receiving presentations from respondents. The three respondents last year were: Dora Hospitality LLC; Garfield Public/Private LLC; and MHG Hotels LLC.

The wording of the Wednesday’s motion approved by the CIB says that “if the two parties are not prepared to make this report by the December CIB regular meeting, the CIB will consider the options available to it, to its fulfill its responsibility to select a host hotel, including reissuing the RFP for a hotel developer.”

Whikehart pointed out that under the terms of the interlocal agreement between city and county governmental units, the CIB is “responsible for selecting and overseeing partnerships with any hotelier partners.”

Although Dora Hospitality LLC was selected as the favored hotelier by the Monroe County Capital Improvement Board (CIB) a year ago, in October 2024, negotiations about the land acquisition have not gone swiftly.

The proposed location for the upscale hotel—which the CIB mandated must include at least 200 guest rooms, a minimum 10,000 square feet of meeting space, and amenities like a restaurant, lounge, and a rooftop courtyard—is the former Bunger & Robertson site, at 4th Street and College Avenue, north of the existing convention center.

The delay involves the real estate transaction and the financing of the project. Bloomington’s redevelopment commission (RDC) owns the land, having purchased the complete parcel in two transactions (the largest part in 2019 and a smaller chunk in 2023) under former Bloomington mayor John Hamilton. The total acquisition cost for the RDC was about $7 million.

Dora Hospitality has indicated that some form of “public incentives” would be required to make the project financially feasible. In an apparent move to indirectly reduce the land’s $7 million purchase price, the RDC has begun authorizing public funds for preliminary work.

In the course of the negotiations so far, the RDC has authorized $400,000 in support for the deal. That includes $100,000 in April of this year for due diligence and site analysis, including potential soil borings, to better understand subsurface challenges like rock or water. In late May, the RDC approved another $300,000 for architectural designs, which are intended to determine the structure, plans, overall look of the host hotel, and what portion of the RDC’s real estate is necessary for the facility.

The RDC will retain ownership of the architectural designs and site review work, because no formal agreement has been reached with Dora Hospitality.

When the respondents to the RFP gave presentations last year, the convention center was projected to open in early 2027, and all the potential hotel developers, including Dora, estimated the hotel project would take two and a half to three years. From the beginning, it was clear that the completion of the hotel could come a year after the convention center opened. But now that a year has gone by, with no deal yet in place for the real estate, the anticipate lag time has increased to as much as two years.

From the start of Dora’s selection as the preferred hotelier in October 2024, CIB members pointed to the need for swift action. Then-member of the CIB, Eric Spoonmore, who is CEO of the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce, said at the time: “We need to get a sense of urgency behind this, I think. … So I think time really is of the essence to get working in earnest on these negotiations.”