At a meeting attended by Bloomington mayor Kerry Thomson, the city’s redevelopment commission (RDC) voted unanimously (with one recusal) on Monday to reject all the construction bids for the Showers West renovation project.
The resolution was added to the RDC agenda late Friday.
The resolution stated that the bids for a total of around $12.7 million were responsive to the project design—which put both fire administration and police operations in the Showers West portion of the city hall building.
But as the wording of the resolution put it, the bids no longer meet “the vision and scope of the project.” That’s the project that Thomson’s predecessor, John Hamilton, had put in motion starting in the summer of 2022.
The change in vision for the project was consistent with the opposition from the police union, which has, from the time the idea was first floated, resisted the move—citing security concerns about Showers West, as well as entrance and egress issues.
Thomson told the RDC that the future of the Showers West project would be decided in “a collaborative process” with the city council to make sure that “whatever we do with police, in the end, it is in the interest of the future of public safety.”
Thomson added that she wants to make sure that “we really look at how we’re collaborating overall with public safety, as it’s being defined in the 21st century.”
[Updated on Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2024 at 2:30 p.m. The city of Bloomington communications director, Angela Van Rooy, issued a statement with a description of two slides that were used by the Showers West working group, showing cost comparisons of four alternatives for moving ahead with different components of the project. Here’s a link: .pdf of combined email message and two slides]