City to Purchase Former Monastery Property on Clubhouse Drive

Bloomington, Ind.-The City of Bloomington Parks and Recreation Department is purchasing 2.89 acres of property adjacent to Lower Cascades Park from Dagom Gaden Tensung Ling Monastery for $400,000. The purchase includes the former monastery as well as the surrounding land.

According to Parks and Recreation Department Administrator Paula McDevitt, the current owners expressed interest in selling the property after they moved into a new monastery.

Plans for the newly acquired property include demolishing the existing apartment buildings and converting the land to greenspace. The Parks and Recreation Department is evaluating the monastery building itself for possible future use, or for demolition.

The purchase of the former monastery continues a trend of purchasing land surrounding Lower Cascades Park, Bloomington's first city park. In 2006, the city bought .59 acres from the Cascades Motorcycle Salvage, and in 2008 added six acres when it purchased the former trailer park and stone mill on Old State Road 37 North. With the monastery property purchase, the City will own the land contiguously from the Lower Cascades ballfields through the Sycamore and Waterfall Shelters, along Cascades Creek south to the Rogers Group quarry.

"The Dagom Gaden Tensung Ling Monastery has been a wonderful neighbor over the years, and we are so appreciative to them for this opportunity to truly connect Lower Cascades Park north to south," McDevitt said. "It's especially fitting that we are able to add this piece of land to Bloomington's first park during the city's Bicentennial year."

Lower Cascades Park includes two ballfields, the 1.4-mile paved Cascades Park Trail, two picnic shelters, a natural surface trail to the Cascades waterfall, and the city's largest and most accessible playground.

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