Tag: TIF fund

U.S. Dept. of Energy tied to lease OK’d by Bloomington for parking garage office space

B Square file photo. View of the interior of the commercial space at the Trades District parking garage.
From left: Sue Sgambelluri, Jon-Paul Herron, and John Fernandez. (May 20, 2024)
B Square file photo. View of Trades District parking garage from looking southeast from Rogers Street.

A lease agreement is finally in place for the ground floor commercial space that was constructed as a part of Bloomington’s Trades District parking garage project, which was completed in 2021.

At its regular Monday meeting, Bloomington’s redevelopment commission approved the terms of a lease  that will allow Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)  to set up an office in the space, which covers 4,059 square feet.

ESnet describes itself as providing high-bandwidth, reliable connections that link scientists at national laboratories, universities, and other research institutions, to make it possible for them to collaborate on scientific challenges like climate science among others.

The actual tenant for the lease is the regents of the University of California. That’s because the steward of ESnet is Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley—it’s funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. Continue reading “U.S. Dept. of Energy tied to lease OK’d by Bloomington for parking garage office space” →

150-bed hotel deal moves ahead in Bloomington’s Trades District with OK from redevelopment group

From left: Bloomington RDC members John West, Deb Hutton, Deborah Myerson, and Sue Sgambelluri. Randy Cassady participated via the Zoom video conferencing platform. John Fernandez, vice president of The Mill, is seated to Sgambelluri’s left. (May 20, 2024)
At the table are IU Alluinn’s Charles Whittaker and The Mill’s John Fernandez. Seated in the audience is Bloomington mayor Kerry Thomson. Behind Thomson is Bloomington’s director of economic and sustainable development, Jane Kupersmith. (May 20, 2024)

Sometime in the second half of 2026, a new 150-room upscale hotel could be open for guests in Bloomington’s Trades District north of 10th Street, just across from the parking garage.

That’s if all goes according to the plan laid out in a letter of intent (LOI) signed by Alluinn IU Trades District Hotel and Pure Development. The idea is for Alluinn/Pure to construct the hotel, at a cost of $35 million, on land to be purchased for $1.2 million from the city of Bloomington, through its redevelopment commission (RDC).

Approval of the LOI came at Monday’s regular meeting of Bloomington’s RDC on a unanimous vote. RDC member Sue Sgambelluri voted “an enthusiastic yes” and RDC president Deb Hutton gave it “a definite yes.”

Bloomington mayor Kerry Thomson was on hand to lend her support from the audience. About the proposal, Thomson said, “I think it brings a unique anchor to the Trades District.”

Thomson continued, “My vision of a fully active B-Line corridor that goes from Trades all the way down to Hopewell, that’s alive at every hour of the day.” Thomson added that she thinks the hotel will “magnetize” the Trade District. Continue reading “150-bed hotel deal moves ahead in Bloomington’s Trades District with OK from redevelopment group” →

Financial data notebook: Digesting Bloomington food and beverage tax spending

On Friday at noon, Bloomington’s city council held a work session on the topic of the Monroe Convention Center expansion project.

The B Square will report separately on the substance of the meeting.

The focus of this notebook entry is a request during Friday’s meeting from a city councilmember to city controller Jessica McClellan—for a historical breakdown of expenditures from the city’s food and beverage tax fund.

The food and beverage tax fund is key to discussion of the convention center project, because it is supposed to be the source of the funding for the project.

McClellan will be using the city’s own internal system to provide the requested information to councilmembers. But the city’s publicly accessible online financial information makes it possible for anyone to get the information that was requested from the controller. Continue reading “Financial data notebook: Digesting Bloomington food and beverage tax spending” →