A significant bit of news out of Monday’s meeting of the community justice response committee (CJRC) was an announcement from the public mic by Bloomington’s public engagement director Kaisa Goodman.
Goodman told the committee that a tour of some county-owned land south of Catalent had been arranged for later in the week.
Touring the property, which some see as a viable site for a new jail, will be Goodman, Bloomington’s corporation counsel Beth Cate, Bloomington planning director Scott Robinson, county attorney Jeff Cockerill, jail commander Kyle Gibbons, county councilor Kate Wiltz, and possibly one other county council member.
The location of a new jail has been a wide open question since December 2022, when Bloomington’s city council unanimously rejected a rezone request for some land in the southwestern tip of the city, where county commissioners had proposed building the new jail.
The site south of Catalent, also known as the Thomson PUD, has been frequently mentioned as a possible alternative—it’s not downtown but is closer to services and is better served by public transit. County commissioners are cool to the idea, because they have reserved the acreage for the pharmaceutical company’s possible southward expansion, among other reasons.
Despite the scheduled tour, it’s an overstatement to say that any momentum is building towards the choice of that site or any site as a new jail location. Continue reading “Movement, but no progress yet, on site selection for new Monroe County jail”
