Convention center notebook: Bloomington releases past appraisal figures for north property

Responding to an informal request from the B Square, the city of Bloomington has released the dollar figures for the appraisals of real estate north of the Monroe Convention Center.

In 2019, two parts of the block forming the southwest corner of 4th Street and College Avenue had two separate owners.

The bigger parcel, which includes the office building, was owned by RBOWA, LLC, with connections to the Bunger & Robertson law firm, before it was purchased that year by Bloomington’s redevelopment commission (RDC) for $4,995,000.

Four years later, in 2023, Bloomington’s RDC purchased the other part of the block, a portion of the parking lot, from Thomas Sicks and Nancy Held, for $1.9 million.

Based on the figures released by the city of Bloomington on Friday, Bloomington’s RDC paid $255,000 less than the average of two appraisals for the bigger parcel, and $565,000 more than the average of two appraisals for the smaller parcel.

Here’s how the two appraisals stack up against the purchase prices:

First Appraisal and Mordoh & Associates are firms that do real estate appraisals.

If Bloomington’s RDC had wanted to pay the average of two fair market appraisals for the bigger parcel, that would have pushed the purchase price over $5 million. Under state law,  a purchase of real estate by the RDC exceeding $5 million would have required approval of Bloomington’s city council.

By paying less than the average of the two appraisals, the RDC’s transaction for the property was not subject to city council approval.

The smaller land deal involved a different landowner. Indiana state law allows the purchase price offered by an RDC to exceed the average of two appraisals. Bloomington’s RDC paid about 40 percent more than the average of two fair market appraisals for the smaller parcel—apparently because the owners were not keen to sell—the deal required protracted negotiations over a few years.

The real estate north of the convention center is of current interest, because it had been a contender for the location of the convention center expansion project. Even though it has fallen out of the mix for the location of the expansion, it could still factor into the project as the site of a hotel.

When The B Square previously made records requests of former mayor John Hamilton’s administration for copies of appraisals obtained by Bloomington’s RDC, the city of Bloomington denied them—based on state law. The wording of the statute goes like this: “Appraisals made under this section are for the information of the commission and are not open for public inspection.”

The B Square’s recent request of current Bloomington mayor Kerry Thomson was not made under the terms of Indiana’s Access to Open Records Act for the appraisal documents. Instead, The B Square made an informal request just for the dollar figures from the appraisals.

The informal request was based on the idea that for the Showers West real estate acquisition, then-deputy mayor Don Griffin and then-assistant city attorney Larry Allen, had stated the dollar figures for the fair market appraisals of the Showers West property at a public meeting of the RDC.

That meant the wording of the state law did not, in the city’s view, prohibit the release of the dollar figures for the appraisal—so went The B Square’s argument for disclosure.

The B Square made the request on Wednesday (May 15) and received a response with the figures two days later, on Friday (May 17).