Story by Kevin Woodard
Normal Council passed a resolution giving approval to the Town to proceed towards signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Eagle View Partners for the Trail East and Trail West Project at its meeting on Monday night. The MOU passage allows the Town and the Developer to move to the next step, negotiation of a Redevelopment Agreement.
Town Manager Pam Reece stated that she “hopes to present something by the end of summer” to the council. That would allow Eagle View to obtain financing and do design work over the fall and winter with an eye toward beginning construction in the spring of 2023.
But the $60 million question seems to be can the Bloomington-Normal market support the mixed use commercial, residential and retail development? No one seems to have a clear answer.
Eagle View Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Mark Kittrell said they “feel confident we will be successful.” That’s an answer but there isn’t a lot of data behind it.
Neil Finlen, leader of the Civil Engineering/Land Development team for Farnsworth, the engineering company on the Eagle View Partners team, said Farnsworth believes in it so much that they are “all-in on the second floor of Trail West.” Farnsworth plans on relocating their offices to that location renting all the commercial space on that floor.
Council member Kathleen Lorenz said she trusts the regional banks and will look to them to help the town with risk management.
“At first thought that sounds like a reasonable statement. But on second thought maybe it isn’t. The banking industry didn’t exactly save us from the housing bubble. So I remain unsure about how far we should trust them,” said Lorenz.
Council member Stan Nord used a pointed question addressed to Eagle View to emphasize that this project wouldn’t be feasible without government incentives. Council member Karyn Smith asked a couple of questions answered by Pam Reece that revealed we don’t know if TIF financing will be used on this project or if direct checks will be made out to Eagle View.
In a roundabout way that brings us full circle back to the Development Agreement. Thank goodness the goal of the Development Agreement process is to answer many of these questions for us.