Tag: BEDC

Technology center for Trades District gets OK from Bloomington plan commission

The image, looking east, is dated April 2020. It’s from the Pictometry module of Monroe County’s online property lookup system. Annotation by The B Square.

Getting unanimous approval from Bloomington’s plan commission on Monday night was the site plan for a three-story, 21,000-square-foot office building in the Trades District.

The joint project of the city’s economic and sustainable development (ESD) department and the Bloomington Economic Development Corporation is the planned home of a technology center that won a $3.5 million grant from the federal Economic Development Administration.

The total cost of the project is around $5.5 million. Bloomington’s redevelopment commission is using tax increment finance (TIF) revenue to make the required local match of the federal dollars.

The site is now a vacant lot,  north of the old Showers Company building that houses the Monroe County government center, as well as city hall. It is just south of The Mill, which is a co-working space that has been developed as an adaptive reuse of another old Showers building. Continue reading “Technology center for Trades District gets OK from Bloomington plan commission” →

Bloomington’s Trades District technology center takes small step forward

The image, looking east, is dated April 2020. It’s from the Pictometry module of Monroe County’s online property lookup system. Annotation by The B Square.

At its Monday meeting, Bloomington’s redevelopment commission (RDC) gave a green light to the next incremental step in the construction of a technology center north of Bloomington’s city hall building, in the Trades District.

The Trades District is a certified technology park.

What the RDC approved was a revision to the project review form for a roughly $5.5-million technology center.

The center is expected to break ground in mid-2022 and be open in early- to mid-2024, according to Bloomington director of economic and sustainable development Alex Crowley.

The timing depends in part on some back-and-forth the city is having with the federal Economic Development administration (EDA), in connection with a $3.5 million grant awarded by the EDA for the center, Crowley wrote in a late-December email to The B Square.

Wednesday’s project form revision spells out $500,000 as the amount planned for the design services for the project. The firm that has done the initial conceptual and preliminary designs is Axis Architecture + Interiors. Continue reading “Bloomington’s Trades District technology center takes small step forward” →

Bloomington gets final OK from feds for $3.5 million grant towards technology center

In a news release issued Friday afternoon, the city of Bloomington announced that it had received a $3.5-million award from the federal Economic Development Administration (EDA) to help build a technology center in the Trades District.

The location is north of Bloomington’s city hall building in the Trades District, which is a certified technology park.

News about the EDA grant lends a bit of momentum for the Trades District area generally. That’s because the future technology center location is northwest of the Showers administration building. And a deal is now in the works for Bloomington’s redevelopment commission (RDC) to sell the administration building to a company called Fine Tune, so that its corporate headquarters can be located there.

The planned location of the technology center is on the southwest corner of Madison Street and Maker Way, diagonally across from The Mill, which is a co-working space. One of the former Showers Brother Furniture buildings was adapted for reuse by The Mill.

The co-applicant for the EDA grant, with the city of Bloomington, was the Bloomington Economic Development Corporation (BEDC).

BEDC executive director Jen Pearl told The B Square on Friday, that the technology center building would be operated by a non-profit entity, which would coordinate programming and services for local tech companies. Continue reading “Bloomington gets final OK from feds for $3.5 million grant towards technology center” →