“There is no plan,” Bloomington Councilmember Grant Walch said. “The council is being asked to approve the Market St. site as the Connect Transit Center. And it’s property the city owns. But there’s no plan for that.”
“And what happens, and we have seen this time and time again, is the city staff and the Connect Transit staff are going to put time into this now and now come up with a plan and now Connect Transit is going to apply for grants,” Walch continued. “And no matter what they come up with the council is going to be urged to vote yes because Connect Transit has grants for this.
Connect was granted $8 million to go towards the center in 2020.
City Administration recommended the council pass a resolution to name 202 W. Market St., currently the site of the Market Street Parking Garage, to be the site of a new transfer center. The problem Walch sees is Administration did so with little or no data to base the recommendation on.
Connect Transit is said to have studied this but no documentation of the said study has been made available to or presented to the public. Connect was talking about doing an Environmental Impact Study in 2021 but apparently that study never got underway.
City Manager Tim Gleason admitted Connect Transit has not put anything together yet.
Connect originally considered the old Pantagraph building site but determined it was not cost effective.
The estimated cost of the project in 2021 was $18 million. That is the figure still being tossed about today despite the fact that we continue to be in a period of inflation.
Another site considered was the location of the CII East Building. But developers came and made a proposal to redevelop that building and now that project is under construction.
Gleason said the last of the three sites considered was the Market St. Garage site. Apparently the fact that property is government owned is key to the affordability of the Transfer Center project.
Bloomington is faced with spending millions even if they simply tear down the garage. If they left the lot for surface parking, or built a garage to replace at least some of the parking available in the existing garage the price would likely increase by millions. Gleason estimates putting up a new garage similar to the existing garage would cost $25 million dollars.
Consequently the city sees the possibility of working with Connect Transit to redevelop the property as a positive, especially since Connect brings funding to the table. Conversely the transit agency sees an opportunity to get a good price on property. It’s a situation made for the two entities to partner on.
Other buildings discussed by the public; the Front and Center building, Old Commerce Bank building and the Fred Groves building were never seriously considered. Each of those buildings are privately owned and purchasing them and demolishing them would make the project cost prohibitive.
The goal would be to keep a post office downtown according to Gleason. He mentioned that the post office might have to move to a temporary location downtown during construction then back into a new office that would be part of the transfer station/parking garage.
At one time the library was considering moving to a new transfer center and parking garage at the Market St. site. But the size of that project made it cost prohibitive. Ultimately the library decided to expand at its current site. That project is also currently under construction.
It had been hoped that the center could be located in close proximity to the library and the Law and Justice Center. But with the Pantagraph and CII East sites falling by the wayside it looks like economics is determining that close proximity to those destinations isn’t going to be in the cards.
Another concern people have was mentioned by Walch. “We don’t even know who is going to own the property yet,” he said.” And that’s the type of thing that could have been worked out before hand.”
The council approved the Market St. site with council members Donna Boelen and Walch objecting.