This week, a possible path forward for the Monroe County convention center expansion project in downtown Bloomington got charted out in a bit more detail.
At its regular meeting on Wednesday, the Monroe County capital improvement board (CIB) got an update on two separate processes. One is to bring on board a construction manager as constructor (CMc) for the convention center project. The other is to strike a deal with a hotelier.
The CIB also got updated preliminary schematics for expansion options from Schmidt Associates, the architectural firm the CIB has retained to continue its preliminary conceptual design work from five years ago.
Schmidt presented four schematics for expansion—in each compass direction from the current convention center facility, which is located on the southwest corner of 3rd Street and College Avenue.
The East option now appears to have some initial support, but that decision is probably at least a couple weeks away.
On Thursday, Bloomington’s city council held a work session to focus on the topic of the convention center expansion. That came in the wake of the April 10 split vote of the council on the CIB’s budget. Before its April 10 meeting, the council also held a work session on the convention center expansion.
The outcome of the work session was a consensus that the city council should spell out its expectations for the project in a letter to the CIB.
The idea is to use the council’s specific role—as the fiscal body that has to approve the bonding for the construction—as a way to influence the size, design, and use of the new facility.
