They’re branding it as “Downtown for Everyone”…that’s the Downtown Streetscape Project that’s cost Bloomington taxpayers $750,000 so far and the city is now finally involving the public.
The city claims the streetscape project is intended to develop a conceptual design to be integrated into all future projects downtown.
The proposed conceptual design, once approved, will take the “design phase” for the entire Downtown streetscape project to 20% complete.
The project, initiated in August 2022, was intended to be completed in 12 months and public involvement was promised.
Those 12 months passed with no involvement of the general public.
Finally, the city held a Community Open House regarding the project on Oct.11 at the Bloomington Performing Arts Center.
At the open house, a lot of “concept” was presented, but not so much “design.”
Chris Stitzel who is the Business Unit Director for Crawford, Murphy and Tilly. Crawford, Murphy and Tilly is the city’s lead consultant on the project.
According to Stitzel the project is about 60% complete and billing is on the same pace. That’s roughly $450,000 that has been spent to this point. Cities 92.9 asked Stitzel what the money went towards.
“I think you are seeing a little bit of the fruits of our effort here today,” said Stitzel. “We have got a team of consultants that are working with it, not just CMT and the city staff. It’s work based architects that have done a lot of these renderings. Massie and Massie, they are our landscape architects, they have done a lot of the 2-D stuff and then Workbench takes it from 2 to 3-D.”
“We have actually engaged a local company, Clear Design Group, that has helped with the branding and the website and some of the videos you see on the screen here today,” said Stitzel. “CMT has invested time and resources to get to this point. Those are the main kind of folks that have been involved to this point.”
Mike Sewell is the Project Manager with CMT. We asked Sewell the same question: What did the $450,000 go towards?
“Take a look around,” said Sewell. “There are lots of renderings. There are concepts. Just what is the street section going to be has been a lot of conversations with city staff, looking at things like the tradeoff with parking and what makes downtown more walkable.”
“There has been a lot of hammering out the concepts, figuring out what we need to do to make downtown successful,” said Sewell. “There are an awful lot of options and things that are on the cutting room floor that we don’t have around here.”
Funding for the $750,000 study passed city council on a five to four vote.
Many in the community, like David Kovus, do not support the project.
“My main concern is that downtown is becoming a money pit,” said Kovus. “We spent millions and millions of dollars on Grossinger Motors Arena, which is not making money. Even this building(the BCPA) doesn’t make money on the events. You’re just spending money and there is no return on investment on it. All you are doing is putting a pretty face on downtown.”
The streetscape project is part of a much larger plan to create what is called a “smart city.”
Smart Cities technology is supposed to make city operations smoother for the public and more efficient for the municipality. Smart Cities is part of a global initiative led by the World Economic Forum.
In 2022, Bloomington Deputy City Manager Billy Tyus said smart tech will be a key part of the downtown streetscape plan under development.
“If you generated a lot of traffic I’d say you might be doing something,” said Kobus. “But you’re not going to generate much traffic to make up the millions of dollars in tax dollars being spent. And the roads are being neglected. I have had to do alignments on my car last year at this time and this year at this time because the roads are so bad.”
Others, like former Bloomington Mayoral candidate, Mike Straza, support the project.
“I think it is encouraging,” said Straza. “We have had several plans over the years and I think here is another one.”
“I hope it is a plan that we actually go forward with,” said Straza. ” I think it is important. We need to pick something. I think this is great for the community to come out and look at and pick the one that best fits our community and we need to move forward with it.”
The first part of the downtown streetscape plan to go to full design and construction is likely to be the area around the old courthouse which is being branded as Museum Square.
The county had planned to make improvements around the courthouse museum and was in the process of doing its own planning and design when the city began reviving and breathing life back into doing more downtown streetscape work.
As a result the two have been dovetailed together and the work on Museum Square is likely to drive the downtown streetscape work forward.
Those interested in details of the streetscape plans are encouraged to visit Downtown for Everyone and provide feedback.