Monroe County council to weigh jail land purchase, putting Thomson PUD on offer for sale

Next Tuesday’s (Oct. 28) draft meeting agenda of the Monroe County council was already packed with significant items, including one to approve an appropriation to close the deal on the property at North Park. That is the land that is planned as the location of a new jail and justice center complex.

Now it looks like Tuesday’s agenda will include another significant item with a historical connection to jail planning. At a work session this Thursday, Monroe County attorney Jeff Cockerill briefed county commissioners on an item that the county council would be considering—authorization to offer the 87-acre county-owned Thomson PUD property for sale. At one point, the land was the leading candidate for the new jail location.

Tuesday’s county council meeting will also include some big items postponed from the council’s meeting last week. They include a purchase of a vehicle for the health department to provide mobile health services. Also postponed until Oct. 28 was a request to approve some personnel-related steps for three nursing positions, so that hires could be made to replace the public health services that IU Health will stop providing under contract at the end of this year.

At last week’s meeting, the county council also delayed a vote until Oct. 28 about the issuance of a $6 million general obligation bond, after voting to remove the Monroe County Nature Preserve projects, which would reduce the planned expenditures by about $1 million.

The item requesting an appropriation for the North Park land purchase now comes with the backdrop of a letter signed by eight of nine Bloomington city council members, asking the council not to approve the appropriation.

The council voted unanimously Wednesday night to send the letter, which was drafted by councilmember Sydney Zulich. But the vote came only after some internal squabbling about its content.

Council president Hopi Stosberg initially said she would not vote for it, because it did not include many of the arguments she thought should be included. But when her turn on the roll call came, she said, “I’ll say yes to sending it, but I don’t want my name on it.”

Thomson PUD

In November 2023, the Thomson PUD, located west of Switchyard Park and north of RCA Community Park, was briefly the leading candidate for the location of the new jail and justice complex. That came after the county commissioners had identified a site on Fullerton Pike in 2022 in the southern part of town. But the Bloomington city council unanimously rejected the rezone that that would have been required to build a jail there.

Two decades ago, Monroe County purchased the Thomson PUD property south of Catalent and west of Rogers Street for $1.261 million with an eye towards constructing a juvenile justice facility there.

Under Indiana state law, one of the key steps in the procedure for a local government to sell a piece of property is to get two appraisals. Last year, Monroe County got an appraisal by First Appraisal ($5.065 million) and this spring from JLL Valuation & Advisory Services, LLC ($4.28 million).

The impetus for selling the land now is that if the county is not going to use it for its imagined purpose, then it should be sold, so that it can be developed and returned to the tax rolls.

At the Thursday work session for commissioners, county attorney Jeff Cockerill outlined three legal avenues for the possible sale: a general public bidding process, use of the economic development statute for project-based offers, or a direct sale to another governmental entity. Cockerill said he intends to contact the city of Bloomington to gauge its interest.

North Park property

The appropriation request on the county council’s Tuesday agenda would be the final step in the acquisition of the North Park property, which sits just north of Bloomington. The final approval for the purchase agreement, by the county council, came a year ago, but the deal has not yet been closed. The purchase price in the agreement is $11.375 million.

The purchase agreement also includes a key sentence that is meant to ensure that not just a jail, but also a justice center is constructed at the site: “The county intends to complete the Jail structure first, however, it will not operate the facility until contracts are awarded for Courtroom construction.”

The purchase agreement also specifies that the closing has to take place “before June 1, 2025,” which was about four months ago.

The working budget for the full justice complex project, which would include a jail, courtrooms, sheriff’s office, and offices for prosecutor and public defender, is $225 million. In early September county commissioners greenlighted the next step in the design process, which is for DLZ to present to commissioners a design development package in mid-December, followed by the construction documents in late June 2026, with the construction start hoped for by October 2026. The timeline, according to DLZ’s Scott McKinzie, still calls for the new facility to be completed in 2029.

The conundrum faced by the county council is that due to new restrictions on use of local income tax revenues, which are included in the legislation known as SEA 1, the county can no longer afford the $225 million price tag for the planned new justice facility. Recognizing that it would fall dramatically short trying to pay for the cost of the full project, the county council decided to tap money that had been previously designated for the project—economic development local income tax (ED LIT) revenue—in order to balance its 2026 budget.

But the council also has to contend with issues of constitutional care at the jail. The jail currently operates under a private settlement agreement with the ACLU over a lawsuit filed in 2008 about overcrowding at the jail. That’s the big impetus behind the current effort to construct a new jail.

The inclusion of an entire co-located justice center in the planning stems from the fact that the current jail is housed in the same building as the sheriff’s office, courtrooms, and offices for the prosecutors, with the public defender’s offices next door. The whole building, constructed in 1986, is fraught with various mechanical and other issues, including mold.