Five traffic calming circles in a neighborhood just west of downtown Bloomington will have murals painted on them this fall.
At its regular Tuesday meeting, Bloomington’s board of public works approved the street closings required for local artist Erin Tobey to paint the murals at five intersections in the Near West Side.
The closures include the two intersections on West 6th Street, at Waldron and Oak streets, and three intersections on West 7th street, at Oak, Waldron and Pine streets.
Trades District satellite images from 1998 through 2019.
The aerial image of the 10th and Madison where the gateway artwork will be installed is from the Pictometry module of the Monroe County online property lookup system.
Selected artwork by Stefan Reiss.
At its meeting last Monday, Bloomington’s redevelopment commission (RDC) approved a revision to a contract with Weber Group II, LLC to fabricate a piece of art by German artist Stefan Reiss to be installed in the Trades District.
The revision raised the amount of the contract by $33,825—from $133,642 to $167,467.
It was the latest increase in the cost of fabrication. A contract with a different fabricator, Ignition Arts, was originally approved by the RDC in February 2021 in the amount of about $90,000. That means the amount for Weber’s revised contract reflects a roughly 85-percent increase in the fabrication cost, since early 2021.
Concept for the 3-trapezoid version of PRISMA by Esteban Garcia Bravo.
Walkway between The JuanSells.com Realty Co. building (right) and the 4th Street parking garage (left) looking east. (June 17, 2024)
The image, from the March 2024 aerial imagery available through Monroe County’s property lookup system, is looking west.
In the second week of July, artist Esteban Garcia Bravo will be arriving in Bloomington to install a version of his sculpture called PRISMA.
The sculpture to be placed in Bloomington is a 3-prism version of the original 7-prism sculpture that was installed in Columbus, Indiana for the city’s exhibition last year called Exhibit Columbus.
In Bloomington, the smaller version of PRISMA will find a home in the walkway that runs south of the 4th Street parking garage, between Walnut Street and the north-south alley that splits the block.
When it was a part of Exhibit Columbus, PRISMA was installed at a parking garage for Cummins, Inc.
View looking south from the top of the 4th Street parking garage of property that could be used for the convention center. The convention center is in the right of the frame. (Aug. 9, 2022)
Galen Cassady addresses the Monroe County capital improvement board at its June 12, 2024 meeting.
Kirkwood and Walnut streets looking south. (June 14, 2024)
Two big pieces of news came out of Wednesday’s meeting of Monroe County’s capital improvement board (CIB).
First, the CIB chose Weddle Bros. as the construction manager for the convention center expansion project. Second, it will be the real estate to the east of the current convention center that will become the location of the expansion of the current center, which stands at the southwest corner of 3rd Street and College Avenue.
But the CIB took another newsworthy step on Wednesday—giving a green light to its legal counsel, Jim Whitlatch of Bunger & Robertson to start working on a contract with its selected architectural firm, Schmidt Associates, for design work.
That contract will draw on around $6 million in food and beverage tax money that the city council already appropriated in 2019 for architectural fees. The purchase orders with Schmidt Associates are still open for those appropriations, according to CIB treasurer Eric Spoonmore and CIB controller Jeff Underwood.
The expansion design work will get input from an advisory group that the CIB has formed—on arts and entertainment matters for the downtown geographic area known as the BEAD (Bloomington Entertainment and Arts District).
On Friday afternoon, a day with partly cloudy skies and a temperature around 80 degrees, about 60 local leaders gathered at the now empty grassy lot on the south side of 2nd Street, between Rogers Street and The B-Line Trail.
They were assembled to mark the groundbreaking for the Hopewell neighborhood, which will be constructed at the site of the former IU Health hospital, where the health care provider operated its facility until December 2021.
Delivering remarks on Friday were Bloomington mayor John Hamilton, followed by Cindy Kinnarney, who is president of Bloomington’s redevelopment commission, and by Mick Renneisen, who is president of the board for the nonprofit called City of Bloomington Capital Improvements, Inc.
