Affordable housing advocates met over the weekend to discuss their proposal for preserving a low-income apartment property south of downtown.
Organizers with three groups including Bloomington Homes for All, which is focused on housing affordability, presented details of the proposal and answered questions from the public at a forum Saturday in downtown Bloomington.
Watch: Thomson on saving Seminary Pointe
The core idea is for the city’s Redevelopment Commission to sell a property near the site planned for the new convention center to the Capital Improvement Board tasked with acquiring property for the center.
The sale would be on condition that the CIB transfer Seminary Pointe to a nonprofit or some other community-controlled entity. Then a planned hotel near the convention center could be built on a different lot than the Seminary Pointe property.
If accepted, the proposal would protect 29 apartment tenants and four businesses, according to Bryce Greene, a local organizer and PhD candidate at IU.
“The businesses, the tenants, the community spaces there, they’ll be obliterated” unless the group's proposal or one similar is adopted, he said. “No more Friendly Beasts, no more units of affordable housing, no more of that—just a hotel.”
Organizers also shared their more optimistic assessment of the need for repairs at the site. They said only one building was unsalvageable and that the costs for necessary repairs elsewhere would not be prohibitively expensive.
Speakers also said they were heartened by Mayor Kerry Thomson’s recent comments in support of an arrangement that would preserve Seminary Pointe.
Bloomington City Council members threw their support behind the idea in a unanimous letter to the redevelopment commission earlier this month.
Read more: Seminary Pointe leases extended
On Thursday, Thomson issued a statement reiterating that she preferred placing the hotel on the College Square lot.
“I continue to believe College Square is an ideal location for the convention center hotel," she said, noting that the redevelopment commission can't consider offers that aren't submitted through its recently issued request for proposals.
The mayor said that "it is my sincere hope that the Capital Improvement Board or its hotel development partner will bring forward a proposal."
