Tag: capital improvement board (CIB)

Monroe Convention Center expansion: End of 2026 eyed for finish, $4.4M contract with architect OK’d

The image, from Monroe County’s property lookup system, is looking eastward from the existing convention center, which is outlined in red.

On Wednesday, a possibly 60,000-square-foot expansion of the Monroe Convention Center took a big step forward, as contracts with the architect and construction manager were approved by the Monroe County capital improvement board (CIB).

The end of 2026 is the target date spelled out in this latest set of documents approved by the CIB.

The location of the new building is planned for across College Avenue, that is, east of the current facility, which stands at the southwest corner of 3rd Street and College Avenue.

Renovation of the existing 40,000-square-foot facility is set to start when the new construction is complete. That renovation will take about six months.

At its regular monthly meeting on Wednesday, the two big agenda items were a $4.4-million contract with architect Schmidt Associates, and a nearly $1-million contract with construction manager Weddle Bros. Both were approved on unanimous votes of the seven-member board.

When the CIB started its work in fall 2023, after being established in the summer of that year, an early decision was made to keep Schmidt Associates as the architect. Schmidt had been on board for preliminary design work since 2018, before the project was paused due to political wrangling, followed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The decision to hire Weddle Bros. as the construction manager as contractor was made more recently, after a competitive bidding process.

Continue reading “Monroe Convention Center expansion: End of 2026 eyed for finish, $4.4M contract with architect OK’d” →

$6K fireworks item sparks Monroe County council talk about convention center expansion

Harrodsburg Heritage Festival organizer Paul Strain and Monroe County commissioners administrator Angie Purdie. (April 23, 2024)
Monroe County councilors Cheryl Munson and Geoff McKim (April 23, 2024)
Monroe County council from near to far: Peter Iverson, Kate Wiltz, Jennifer Crossley, Trent Deckard, Geoff McKim, Cheryl Munson, and Marty Hawk. (April 23, 2024)

A $6,000 appropriation from food and beverage tax receipts, to pay for a Harrodsburg Heritage Festival fireworks display, was approved on Tuesday night by Monroe County’s council.

The vote was not unanimous.

Dissenting was Geoff McKim, who said he knew it would amount to a symbolic gesture. Still, McKim wanted to establish that he would not support uses of the food and beverage tax for purposes other than the convention center expansion—until it is clear that revenues from the tax will be adequate to pay for the convention center project.

McKim and Cheryl Munson are the only two members still serving on the seven-member county council who in late 2017 voted in favor of imposing the 1-percent tax on all prepared food and beverages sold in the county.

On Wednesday morning in related convention center news, Monroe County commissioners approved the content of a letter to Monroe County’s capital improvement board (CIB) about county-owned real estate near the existing convention center at 3rd Street and College Avenue.

The letter says: “It has always been the Board of Commissioners’ intent to provide all necessary property that it owns or controls to the Capital Improvement Board for no compensation.”

The CIB was established to oversee the convention center expansion project.
Continue reading “$6K fireworks item sparks Monroe County council talk about convention center expansion” →

County’s side of convention center interlocal accord OK’d, now to Bloomington city council, mayor

On Wednesday morning, final approval of a key four-way agreement for the expansion and renovation of the Monroe Convention Center took another step forward.

At their regular Wednesday morning meeting, the three Monroe County Commissioners gave unanimous approval to the interlocal agreement that addresses the way that the Monroe County capital improvement board (CIB) and the different local government units will handle the expansion project.

The existing convention center stands at 3rd Street and College Avenue.

The Monroe County council, which is the fiscal body for county government, approved the interlocal agreement last week.

Bloomington mayor Kerry Thomson says she supports the current version of the agreement, which has been revised since the one that her predecessor, John Hamilton, and Bloomington’s city council approved last year.

The revised interlocal agreement is supposed to appear on the city council’s Feb. 28 agenda. Continue reading “County’s side of convention center interlocal accord OK’d, now to Bloomington city council, mayor” →

Imminent interlocal accord gives boost to convention center expansion, but project timeline looks longer

From left: CIB member Joyce Poling, controller Jeff Underwood, and CIB member Eric Spoonmore. (Feb. 14, 2024))
CIB legal counsel Jim Whitlach. (Feb. 14, 2024))
From left: CIB members John Whikehart and Doug Bruce. (Feb. 14, 2024))
Foreground: CIB member Adam Thies. Background: CIB member Jim Silberstein. (Feb. 14, 2024))

The likely signing of a key agreement by the end of February has given a little bit of impetus to the plan to expand the Monroe Convention Center at 2nd 3rd Street and College Avenue.

But the aggressive timeline that Monroe County’s capital improvement board (CIB) had hoped to follow looks like it will probably be dialed back a bit. An expanded facility that is ready to host events by the end of 2026 may not be realistic.

The bright spot of news that CIB members got to chew on at their Wednesday meeting was the previous evening’s unanimous ratification of an interlocal agreement by the Monroe County council, which is one of the four parties to the accord.

The other three parties are the Monroe County commissioners, the Bloomington city council, and the mayor. The agreement is expected to appear on the agenda for county commissioner on Feb. 21, followed by a possible adoption by the city council the following week, on Feb. 28.

Bloomington mayor Kerry Thomson told The B Square on Tuesday that if the agreement on the county council’s agenda was the same one that she had seen most recently, she is in support of it.

The current version of the interlocal that is now making the approval rounds has been revised since the city council and the mayor approved it last year. That’s why the city council and the mayor will need to re-approve it.

At their December meeting, CIB members  had been looking at a potential timeline that included opening an expansion for business in late 2026.

But at Wednesday’s meeting, it was apparent that even if the CIB is making progress on selecting a construction manager, owner’s representative, and retaining an architect, it’s not as fast as the timeline draft provided by Schmidt Associates in December. Schmidt is the architectural firm that did the preliminary conceptual design work in 2019 and before. Continue reading “Imminent interlocal accord gives boost to convention center expansion, but project timeline looks longer” →

Column: Staring into the civic sun in 2024, the year of a solar eclipse

This image was generated by Microsoft’s Bing Image Creator (powered by DALL·E 3).

In 2024, the local civic cosmos could see some big changes, in the same year when a rare literal cosmic event will unfold.

On April 8, a solar eclipse will briefly cast a shadow directly over the Bloomington area, turning daylight into gloam. (Yes, that is an awfully fancy word for “twilight,” but it’s the kind of highfalutin fare that is customary for a newspaper year-in-preview column.)

During an eclipse, in the battle between dark and light across the visible disk of the sun, the dark begins with a steady assimilation of the light’s territory, but the light always reverses the trend and prevails in the end.

That’s either a great or a lousy metaphor for municipal annexation, depending on a person’s political perspective.

In fall of 2021, Bloomington’s city council approved the annexation of seven different territories, all of which are still the subject of litigation.

Metaphors aside, 2024 holds the potential for some court decisions on those pending annexations, which might settle the question of how much Bloomington’s boundaries will change.

Of course, annexation is just one of myriad civic issues that are in the queue for Bloomington and Monroe County in 2024.

Here’s a non-exhaustive rundown of topics The B Square will try to track in the coming year. Continue reading “Column: Staring into the civic sun in 2024, the year of a solar eclipse” →

Showers West construction contracts on hold until after Kerry Thomson becomes Bloomington mayor

StudioAXIS rendering of Showers West fire administration entrance.
StudioAXIS rendering of Showers West police station entrance.
Bloomington fire chief Jason Moore addresses the RDC (Dec. 18, 2023)
RDC members from left: Cindy Kinnarney, Randy Cassady, Deborah Myerson, and Deb Hutton (Dec. 18, 2023)
Bloomington councilmember Matt Flaherty, mayor John Hamilton at RDC meeting (Dec. 18, 2023)

At its regular meeting on Monday, Bloomington’s redevelopment commission (RDC) let four resolutions die that would have approved separate construction contract awards for the Showers West renovation and remodeling project.

That does not mean the contracts themselves are dead.

It just means that the contracts, which totaled around $12.7 million, could be up for a vote sometime in January 2024—but maybe not as soon as the very next meeting of Bloomington’s RDC, which is scheduled for Jan. 2.

The winning bids, which included a base plus some additional money for an IT room were: SCS Construction Services, Inc. (general trades) for $4,623,400; Multicraft Fire Protection (fire protection) for $310,500; Harrell-Fish Inc (mechanical and plumbing) for $4,128,000; and Cassady Electric (electric) for $3,655,900.

The Showers West project is supposed to remodel the portion of the city hall building that was purchased early this year, to make the 110-year-old brick former factory building into a suitable home for the fire department administration and police department operations.

Part of outgoing mayor John Hamilton’s plan was to sell the city’s 3rd Street police station, and move police operations to Showers West. Last Wednesday, the city council voted unanimously to reject the sale of the police station, at least for now.

Hamilton appeared in person in front of the RDC on Monday to advocate for going ahead and approving the construction contracts. Councilmember Matt Flaherty also appeared in person to urge approval of the construction contracts.

As she did on Wednesday, mayor-elect Kerry Thomson weighed in from the public mic on the Zoom video conferencing platform to advocate for putting off a decision.

Thomson said on Monday, “I wanted to ask you all to wait for the new administration to have an opportunity to review these bids in detail and ensure that there’s proper contingency and funding for all of the equipment and other needs before we move forward.” Continue reading “Showers West construction contracts on hold until after Kerry Thomson becomes Bloomington mayor” →