City holding public workshops to help guide planning for 12 acres downtown

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Oct. 5, 2012

For more information, please contact:
Danise Alano-Martin, Director, City of Bloomington Department of Economic & Sustainable Development, 349.3418
Adam Wason, Communications Director, City of Bloomington, 349.2489


City holding public workshops to help guide planning for 12 acres downtown

Bloomington, Ind. - The City of Bloomington invites community members and stakeholders to participate in public workshops on Oct. 9. These workshops will help guide the City's efforts to create a redevelopment plan for downtown property it recently acquired within its state-certified Technology Park.

Last year the City hired a multidisciplinary team of architects, engineers, planners and market experts to guide the planning process. To date, focused stakeholder meetings and interviews, in-depth market research, a thorough understanding of site conditions and guidance by a citizen advisory committee have resulted in early design concepts drafts. The consultant team and City staff will ask workshop participants to discuss and provide comments and new ideas to help achieve a shared community vision for redevelopment of the area.

"Those who join in these collaborative and interactive workshops will generate ideas and share feedback that will be instrumental in our development of a feasible, forward-thinking and sustainable redevelopment plan for the 12 acres, as well as in refining our vision for the entirety of the Tech Park," Danise Alano-Martin, director of the City's Economic & Sustainable Development department, said.

Interested parties can choose between two workshop times: from 1 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. or 4:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. Both will have an identical format and will take place at 638 N. Rogers St., a building located within the 12 acres being discussed. This is the former location of Indiana University Printing Services, which relocated earlier this year. Reasonable accommodations will be provided to citizens with disabilities upon request. Please contact Alano-Martin at [mailto:alanod@bloomington.in.gov] for such requests or additional information.

Workshop format will include registration and a self-paced orientation for the first 30 minutes, followed by a brief presentation on the project. Participants then will be invited to focus on collaborative discussions that provide comments and feedback on specific topics such as economic development, transportation, connectivity, sustainability, housing, land use, urban redevelopment and historic preservation.

The goals of the workshops are to identify priorities for the project, create practical designs, and incorporate feedback from local residents. Using the workshop feedback the consultant team will present a refined draft of concepts to the advisory committee within 24 hours. Later in the year an open house with the public at large will take place. The final plan, including financing recommendations and an implementation plan, is expected to be complete by March 2013.

The multidisciplinary team hired by the City of Bloomington to shepherd this process is led by MKSK and includes partners The Pizzuti Companies, Burgess & Niple, Design27 and Bloomington's Kirkwood Design Studio.

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