Monroe County commissioners re-float Hopewell as possible new jail site, seek city’s quick support

Monroe County commissioners Jody Madeira and Julie Thomas asked Bloomington city councilmembers Wednesday (July 22) to consider using a big part of the planned Hopewell neighborhood as the site of a new jail and justice center.

The pitch on Wednesday from county commissioners resuscitated an idea that met strong resistance from councilmembers three years ago. The handout commissioners provided on Wednesday showed a footprint for a jail and justice center complex that takes up the area of Hopewell north of 1st Street and west of Rogers Street.

Madeira and Thomas, speaking from the public mic towards the start of the city council’s meeting, said the county’s architects at DLZ have now produced a concept showing that a combined facility could be built at Hopewell. It’s the planned new neighborhood around the former IU Health hospital site near 2nd and Rogers streets.

The new schematic would address one of the principal objections raised when Hopewell was proposed to the city as a jail site in 2023. At that time, Madeira told councilmembers, the county’s concept was limited to a jail, and did not provide enough room to bring courts, the prosecutor, public defender, probation, clerk and other justice functions together on the same site.

“Because the city has expressed an interest in assisting us, we are returning now to repeat our request for consideration,” Thomas told the council. The first part of Thomas’s statement about the city’s expressed interest was an allusion to communications from Bloomington mayor Kerry Thomson and the city council over the last few months.

Thomson sent an email in the early morning hours of May 27 immediately following the county council’s vote against North Park, pledging support for finding an alternative jail site inside city limits. Thomson write: “My commitment is this: We will expedite the administrative side of zoning for any site within the city.”

The city council passed a resolution on April 22 that included the statement: “The Common Council will work with the County Council and the County Commissioners to support an expedited zoning and permitting process for the
construction of a new jail within city limits.”

So Thomas’s request on Wednesday night attached a significant condition to the request to put the county jail and justice center at Hopewell: The county would not pursue Hopewell if development of a justice center there would require the ordinary Bloomington plan commission and city council review process. “[The full review timeline] would mean an additional minimum of nine months of time that we really do not have,” Thomas said.

At the June 11 meeting of a subcommittee of city and county leaders, who were tasked with recommending a potential jail site inside city limits, mayor Thomson said about the planning review and city council approval process for a rezone: “If the file was absolutely complete when it was submitted … you could get through in four months.” She added, “That’s a lot of ifs, but that is, I would say, that’s the fastest expedited process that I would anticipate.”

But during the subcommittee’s deliberations, Thomson described Hopewell as an unlikely scenario.

On Wednesday, Thomas asked councilmembers to support sending the request to Bloomington’s redevelopment commission (RDC), which the legal owner of the Hopewell property. She also asked that the county be provided with copies of the site’s geotechnical studies.

The county might also consider purchasing the land or swapping it for the county-owned Thomson property off South Rogers Street, Thomas said. But she noted that any land swap would also require approval from the Monroe County council. The Thomson property is not connected to Bloomington mayor Kerry Thomson.

Attending the city council’s Wednesday meeting in his role as a rank-and-file Bloomington resident was RDC member Randy Cassady. Asked by The B Square for his own reaction to the proposal from county commissioners to use the RDC-owned Hopewell property as a jail site, Cassady did not seem enthusiastic: “It would have issues in trying to move forward.”

Thomas asked councilmembers to respond to the request about Hopewell as soon as possible, either with questions or an indication that they support moving the Hopewell possibility forward.

Madeira framed the county’s request around the two factors that commissioners have recently said will guide their jail-site decision: time and space. The legal pressure from a freshly filed lawsuit over conditions at the current jail makes time an important consideration. Madeira said, “Unnecessary delays are not acceptable.”

An acceptable site also needs enough buildable acreage for a jail, outdoor circulation and the eventual co-location of other justice offices, Madeira said.

The remarks from the public mic by Madeira and Thomas came against the backdrop of still unsettled effort at city-county collaboration over the jail project.

Historical background

The Bloomington city council voted 9–0 on April 22 to approve a resolution opposing the county’s proposed North Park location northwest of Bloomington while promising to work with county officials on an expedited zoning and permitting process for a jail inside city limits.

City and county officials took another step toward collaboration June 11, when the two councils met jointly at the historic Monroe County courthouse and established the Collaborative Justice Project Working Subcommittee. The panel was given about a month to evaluate properties inside Bloomington and recommend a jail location.

The jail-site subcommittee completed its work on July 13. It voted 3–2 to recommend at its top choice the current jail and justice center at 7th Street and College Avenue and expanding west into the county-owned Curry and Fiscus buildings. The county-owned Thomson property was the panel’s unanimous second choice. Hopewell was not among the five scenarios that reached the final round.

The board of commissioners did not appoint a member to the subcommittee. Madeira attended and commented as a member of the public.

Just four days before the subcommittee’s final vote, Thomas had said her own review still pointed to North Park as the only location that satisfied their requirements for time, space, and eventual co-location. They presented a county GIS map and a comparison grid covering sites examined during the last several years.

Wednesday’s Hopewell request put another possible path on the table: a city-owned location close to downtown and Centerstone. But that’s only if Bloomington officials can offer a path forward that does not involve what county commissioners consider an unacceptable delay.

The Hopewell possibility has a history dating at least to 2023. At a work session in August that year, councilmember Isabel Piedmont-Smith called using Hopewell for a jail a “non-starter.” Then-council president Sue Sgambelluri, and current Bloomington RDC member, said the proposal was nearly a non-starter and would require an “enormously powerful argument” to justify setting aside years of work envisioning the property as a housing-oriented neighborhood.

Then-councilmember Susan Sandberg was a bit more receptive at the time, saying the city had an obligation to cooperate with the county to the best of its ability.

Hopewell is a planned 24-acre neighborhood at and around the former IU Health hospital site. The city has continued advancing streets, infrastructure, parks, zoning and housing plans there since the brief 2023 discussions about locating a jail there.

The most recent progress on development of Hopewell was the approval of a rezone for Hopewell South, in early May. The sketch that commissioners distributed on a handout to city councilmembers on Wednesday night shows the jail and justice center sited north of 1st Street and west of Rogers Street.

The urgency cited by the commissioners has increased during July. Commissioners declared a jail-overcrowding emergency on July 9 after Sheriff Ruben Marté recommended preparing to move 50 to 100 prisoners to jails in surrounding counties.

A day later, two jail prisoners represented by the ACLU of Indiana filed a proposed federal class action against the county commissioners, county council and sheriff. The lawsuit alleges persistent overcrowding and deteriorating conditions and seeks a court order requiring constitutional conditions.

The city council did not respond on Wednesday to the remarks from county commissioners, even with informal comments. The matter was not listed as an item on the meeting agenda.

For now, the next step requested by Thomas is a quick answer from councilmembers on whether they are willing to help place the proposal in front of the Bloomington redevelopment commission (RDC).

[Monroe County Jail Timeline]