CIB heads to Sept. 16 public meeting on convention center design with updated Big City concept
At its Wednesday meeting, Monroe County’s capital improvement board (CIB) got updates on two main fronts, in its effort to complete an expansion of the Monroe Convention Center by the end of 2026.
The expansion of the center is planned for the spot east of the current facility, across College Avenue.
On the design front, from the Schmidt Associates team of architects, the CIB got a look at an updated concept for the 60,000-square-foot expansion. It’s a single concept that merges two previous ideas, which were called “City” and “Go Big.” The new concept, which includes brick and limestone from the “City” design and a swooping metal canopy from “Go Big,” is called “Big City.”
On the hotel front, the board got an assessment of proposals from three hoteliers that were heard at the CIB’s Sept. 4 meeting. That included a summary of the three presentations, but no new substantive details on the real estate questions connected to the location of a hotel.
Immediately after Wednesday’s meeting, the CIB held an executive season on the topic of real estate transactions.
Design concepts: Elected officials
To get feedback on the preliminary design, a public meeting is set for next Monday, Sept. 16 from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the Monroe Convention Center.
Based on remarks at Wednesday’s meeting from CIB president John Whikehart, a meeting for elected officials—like the city council, mayor, county council and county commissioners—could be held sometime soon, which could include design considerations and more.
Whikehart quoted from the interlocal agreement between the city and county governments that says the CIB is expected to augment previous work on location, scope and design of a convention center expansion with “additional data and input from City and County leadership and the public.”
Whikehart indicated that he and Bloomington city council president Isabel Piedmont-Smith had exchanged emails on the topic of putting together a meeting of elected officials to gather input from them. Piedmont-Smith had complained at the council’s Sept. 4 meeting that the CIB had been treating the city council on par with the public, when it came to design considerations.
Part of Wednesday’s presentation from Schmidt Associates were some slides that ticked through each of the points in a June letter from the city council, grouped to indicate whether the element in the letter had been incorporated into the project. Most had been included.
The one clear exception was the council’s view that there should not be a skywalk connection.
The inclusion of a skywalk in the design has proven to be a kind of deal-breaker for councilmembers Matt Flaherty and Kate Rosenbarger. At the council’s Sept. 4 meeting, they voted against making the statutorily required request that FABTAC (food and beverage tax advisory commission) review the $900,000 expenditure of food and beverage tax revenues needed for the CIB’s proposed 2025 budget. That resolution passed 7–2.
Flaherty and Rosenbarger see the skywalk as insulating convention attendees from the street level, preventing them from interacting with and patronizing downtown businesses.
At Wednesday’s CIB meeting, Sarah Hempstead, with Schmidt Associates reported the remarks from David Greusel, with Convergence Design, which is consulting for Schmidt on the project. Hempstead said that in order for the existing facility and the expansion to function appropriately as one building, there has to be connected, closed space between them.
Included in the Wednesday’s slidedeck is a listing of 41 convention centers that span roadways. All but six of them have enclosed structures over the street.
In his remarks at Wednesday’s meeting, Whikehart said, “I hope we can move beyond the skywalk as a focal point in our conversations.” He continued, “We’re not designing a skywalk, and then have a need to have two buildings to anchor it over College Avenue.”
Whikehart added, “We are designing and constructing an expansion of our convention center, and a skywalk provides the connectivity to make it a true expansion—to one 100,000-square-foot convention center, rather than two buildings that are separated by a street, a 40,000-square-foot building on one side of the street and 60,000-square-foot building on the other.”
Hotels
Making public presentations to the seven-member CIB on Sept. 4 were: Dora Hospitality LLC; Garfield Public/Private LLC; and MHG Hotels LLC.
A week later, on Wednesday, the CIB’s legal counsel, Jim Whitlatch, briefed the board on the conclusions about the three presentations that had been drawn by a working group.
Whitlatch said one takeaway is that there’s a strong interest in developing hotels in Monroe County. Whitlatch added that an independent hotel market analysis—which is due later this month, or early October—is being conducted by HVS for JS Held, which is the CIB’s owner’s representative for the project.
Whitlatch also said that all three proposals aligned with the concept that the CIB had described in its RFP (request for proposals), which is an upscale, full-service hotel with strong amenities, with 200 rooms. Whitlatch noted that one hotelier had proposed a hotel with more than 200 rooms—that one was MHG Hotels.
Brands that are currently being considered by the three hoteliers include Hilton, Hyatt, and Marriott, Whitlatch said. They all talked about a booking policy that would give priority to the convention center.
The projected timeline for design and construction of a hotel is three years, Whitlatch said. That means that progress needs to be made on the hotel front, in order to hit the goal of getting the hotel completed around the same time as the convention center expansion.
A key factor identified by Whitlatch is that all three hoteliers indicated some kind of public subsidy would be needed to make the project financially feasible. For one group, Garfield Public/Private, the subsidy would take the form of a public-private partnership, where the government would be part owner of the hotel.
The CIB is not in a position to offer land as the subsidy. One feasible location for a hotel to support the convention center expansion is the former Bunger & Robertson property at 4th Street and College Avenue—but that real estate is owned by Bloomington’s redevelopment commission.
While John Hamilton’s previous mayoral administration had indicated a willingness to donate the property to the convention center, current Bloomington mayor Kerry Thomson, who took office in January this year, has indicated she wants the city to recoup the roughly $7 million the city paid for the property.
During its Sept. 4 presentation, the team from Dora Hospitality said they had reached out to inquire about the former Bunger & Robertson property, but reported that “our calls were not returned.”
At Wednesday’s meeting, CIB president John Whikehart said he had subsequently pointed representatives from Dora to either the mayor’s office or Jane Kupersmith, who is director of economic and sustainable development, as appropriate contacts at the city.
