Convention center capital board picks JS Held as owner’s rep, issues RFQ for hotel

JS Held will be the owner’s representative for the Monroe Convention Center expansion project.

At its regular monthly meeting on Wednesday, the seven-member Monroe County capital improvement board approved a motion for selection of JS Held as owner’s rep, after a three-member board committee interviewed the firm and a second company, The Veridus Group, in the first week of March.

The motion approved by the board authorized CIB president John Whikehart to hammer out the details of the arrangement between the CIB and JS Held.

JS Held will be a familiar name locally as the project manager for the Hopewell redevelopment project and the consultant on the Showers West renovation project, among others.

In order to pay JS Held for its work, the CIB will need approval of a budget from the city council, which last year appropriated $250,000 of food and beverage tax revenue for the 2024 fiscal year.

For the CIB to have access to the money, a request will need to be run through a statutorily-required approval process that includes a request by the city council for consideration by the food and beverage tax advisory commission (FABTAC).

Access to the money is also needed to pay the CIB’s legal counsel, (Bunger & Robertson attorney Jim Whitlatch) and its controller (former city of Bloomington controller Jeff Underwood).

Representatives from the CIB are expected to attend next Wednesday’s city council meeting to present a breakdown of the proposed $250,000 budget. [Added at 6 p.m. on  March 21, 2024:  Council attorney/administrator Stephen Lucas has confirmed to The B Square that he also expects a resolution requesting FABTAC’s recommendation on the use of food and beverage revenue to appear on the agenda.]

Also at Wednesday’s meeting, the CIB approved the issuance of a request for qualifications for developers of a 200-room full-service hotel, to complement the convention center expansion.

As the CIB pushes the expansion project forward, board member Joyce Poling highlighted one of the central questions the group will confront: Where exactly will the convention center expansion and the hotel be built?

Poling wished for an outline of all the property that’s being considered—who owns it and, what, if any, easements and encroachments might exist on it. Poling said, “We’re almost on this mysterious journey.” She added, “We need some more facts in front of us.”

In expressing support for the choice of JS Held as the owner’s rep, board member Adam Thies underscored the importance of hiring a firm to play that role. The CIB does not have have any staff to manage the project—it’s just volunteer CIB members, Thies said,

“Ninety percent of our problems moving right now is because we’re all volunteers: We have got to get someone who owns this challenge every single day.”

Later in the meeting, when he was thanking Whikehart for the time he had been putting into board work, Thies again stressed the need to transition to a team that is minding the details of the project every day. He said, “We have got to get serious about this project. And ‘serious’ means daily work. Daily work.” He continued, “It’s not work that happens with volunteer committees.”

Thies added, “So I hope no one is giving each other high fives that there’s been a CIB created. That’s like touching the top of an iceberg, where 90 percent is below the water. The real work has not even started.”

Commenting on the choice of JB Held over Veridus, board members said that both firms are capable. What gave the nod to JS Held appears to have been its local experience in Bloomington.

A key part of that previous local experience is reflected in the person of Mary Krupinski, owner of Kirkwood Design Studio. Krupinski appeared as part of JS Held’s project team for the early March interview.

Deb Kunce, who heads up JS Held’s Indianapolis office, told the interview committee, “We hired Mary as an employee—she wasn’t hired because of this project. But the timing is sort of unique.” Kunce continued, “We think [Krupinski] brings that local knowledge that is so critical on a project like this.”

Doug Bruce, who served on the interview committee, along with Thies and Eric Spoonmore, said, “I just felt that JS Held had maybe more local experience…just stood out a little bit above Veridus.”

The pricing for JS Held’s services is not based on a percentage of the construction costs, Kunce told the committee. Her firm starts with the scope of work, then assigns resources to that scope, estimating the number of hours and the rate for those hours. Based on that, a cap is placed on the fee, and JS Held charges hours against the cap.

On Wednesday, there was general agreement on the board that it was a good idea to go ahead and issue an RFQ for firms to eventually propose a hotel development in connection with the convention center expansion. But Thies had some reservations about the aggressive three-week timeline for responses.

Thies said that firms might not send in their qualifications, if they’re not made aware of the request. He put it like this: “They’re not trolling city websites very often to get RFQs like this.”

Thies said he’s really supportive of “casting a net” but said “we need to build up the interest.”

Whikehart gave Thies an assurance that Schmit Associates, which has been retained by the CIB to update its 2019 conceptual design work, has been tasked with drumming up awareness and interest among hotel developers.

The CIB’s controller, Jeff Underwood, briefed the board on the details of the $250,000 budget that will be presented to Bloomington’s city council. All but $1,000 falls into the category of “services.” The “internal” amounts are meant to cover fees billed by CIB’s legal counsel and controller. The “external”amounts include owner’s rep, construction manager, and architectural services.

In the “other” subcategory are included services like the design and maintenance of a website.