No land, no deal: CIB ends current hotel effort, when Bloomington says south parcels will cost

The Monroe County capital improvement board (CBI) has ended its current effort with Dora Hospitality to get a host hotel developed for the downtown Bloomington convention center expansion, but will now reset for the next attempt.

That’s the outcome of a special meeting on Thursday (Feb. 5), when the CIB had planned to evaluate the merits of a Jan. 21 letter of intent (LOI) from Dora to develop a host hotel on land currently owned by the city of Bloomington.

The land in question is south of the current convention center. The land was believed by the CIB, as well as by close observers of the RFP process, to be available from the city of Bloomington at no cost for development as a host hotel. The host hotel RFP was issued by the CIB in mid-2024.

But in a recent email message from Bloomington corporation counsel Margie Rice to CIB president John Whikehart, Rice said about the parcels in question (emphasis with all caps in original): “[N]egotiations must first occur, then we can follow the required processes IF we are able to reach agreement on what real property will be transferred and the price or consideration to be received by the City from the CIB.”

Whikehart told his colleagues on the CIB that the CIB doesn’t have the ability to negotiate price or consideration for the city-owned land south of the current convention center. About the LOI from Dora, Whikehart said, “The CIB cannot agree to the LOI from Dora, because we do not have the land it requires.”

The site between College Avenue and Walnut Street, south of 3rd Street—where the steel structure has already taken clear shape—for the construction of the new facility, was donated to the project by Monroe County government.

The CIB will now consider how to craft the wording of the next RFP (request for proposals). To that end, it will ask the Monroe County government to consider other land it owns in the vicinity of the convention center and whether it might contribute the real estate to the project. County-owned land to the west is a parking lot. But the county-owned land to the south, just north of 2nd Street, includes My Sister’s Closet, Jeff’s Warehouse and several rental units in apartment buildings.

The motion approved unanimously by the CIB went like this:

To inquire if the County will review its parcels near or adjacent to the convention center expansion project for the purpose of donation and transfer to CIB ownership, and to notify Dora Hospitality that at this time we are ending the original RFP process regarding a host hotel. If and when the CIB has ownership of real estate, determines its best use is for a convention center host hotel, and issues a new RFP, we will invite Dora Hospitality to respond if they still have interest.

It was a significant setback to the host hotel project after more than a year of effort working with Dora Hospitality, which was selected by the CIB as its preferred hotelier in October 2024. Since then, Dora has been in unsuccessful negotiations with the city’s redevelopment commission (RDC), the owner of the former Bunger & Robertson property at 4th Street and College Avenue, to build a host hotel there.

Despite the setback revealed at Thursday’s meeting, CIB member Adam Thies remained sanguine about the project as a whole. About the ending of the current effort to develop a host hotel, Thies said, “While this comes across as very dramatic, … this is a process, and cities evolve, and they take time, and they move in different directions.” Thies continued, “I think the reality is we’re on the cusp of building a really exciting center. It’s really fun to see the steel go up.”

Thies added, “Starting to think about how to redevelop adjacent land—you want to do it thoughtfully. You’re not making a throw away item that goes away in two days, two years, hopefully not even 20 years.” Thies summed up by saying, “I think that the overall general tone of this is being thoughtful, and being thoughtful leads to hopeful, city-building success.”

Board member Doug Bruce, agreed that the board should release Dora from the LOI and halt the RFP process. Board member Jim Silberstein underscored the importance of unambiguous control over property around the convention center before proceeding: “I think it’s critical that we have clarity on … which properties we control around the convention center, and we don’t have clarity on that at this point.”

In Rice’s most recent communication to the CIB, which talked about the idea of “price and consideration” for the city-owned property south of the convention center, she was responding to a request from Whikehart that the city initiate the transfer of the parcels. The expectation by Whikehart and others that the parcels were available at no cost, was based on a March 6, 2024 letter from Rice to the CIB saying that the land was available for the “Convention Center Expansion Project.”

That was understood by the CIB to mean the land was available at no cost—for the convention center expansion or a host hotel. At the time when Rice sent the letter, the CIB was deciding where to place the convention center expansion facility.

Presented with Rice’s March 6, 2024 letter, which made clear that a northward expansion using the former Bunger & Robertson property would cost roughly $7 million, to recover the city’s purchase price, the CIB opted against the north option, and instead used the land to the east, which was owned by county government, and which donated the land.