In this week’s installment of Ask The Mayor, Bloomington Mayor Kerry Thomson addresses this issue and more at City Hall. Listen to the full conversation with Indiana Newsdesk anchor Joe Hren by clicking on the play button above or read some of the questions and answers below. A portion of this segment airs 6:45 and 8:45 a.m. Wednesday on WFIU. Here are some highlights.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and conciseness.
Hren: The last time we talked, you were going to meet with the Ellettsville town manager, Mark Farmer, on this proposed Richland merger. My question would be about it affecting Bloomington. Did you learn anything more since we last talked?
Thomson: I had a good meeting with Mike Farmer and their representation. And I think that in the end, we all want this to be a win, and so that's what I certainly am working towards; what's for the best of the community as a whole. Nothing significantly new to report, but those conversations are ongoing.
Hren: The redevelopment commission met Monday and passed some resolutions for Hopewell Neighborhood and see you were there. What moved forward?
Thomson: We were talking to a consultant who was proposing to do some pre-development work on Hopewell West, which borders West Second Street. They tabled that until next month.
Hopewell South in First and Wiley Street areas, and that is going through a rezone, which is called a planned unit development. And the reason that we're doing a planned unit development there is because it is directly impacting housing affordability and our ability to really zone this in a way that we can create the highest level of attainable housing.
The RDC owns the land, it's going to plan commission, then it's going to go to city council. There is still lots of decisions to be made, but we do have the preliminary plan ready.
Hren: Another piece of land that the RDC owns would be where the CIB would like to put a hotel for the convention center. Some say the land should be given as an incentive, others say it should go toward other projects. The RDC passed a resolution that goes both ways. The CIB will move forward Wednesday on this, how do you feel about it?
Thomson: I think that RDC member Deborah Myerson, wrote a really fair middle ground proposal to amend the resolution, and that's what they ended up adopting. I want the community to really understand that this is a piece of land that was purchased with the intent of using it for the convention center, and that was in the last administration.
This is a key piece of our downtown redevelopment, and it really links a contiguous strip of businesses together. What we want when we're attracting people to the community, to come to conventions and to visit, is for them to have a seamless experience right up College and Walnut.
We're not talking about affordable housing, or the convention center - our city needs both, right? This particular piece of property is an economic development piece of property, and we need to use it to really be an anchor for commerce.
With that said, we do need to incentivize, I think, to get any kind of hotel to take that piece of property, or any piece of property, if we want it to work at the room rates and everything else that we need for the convention center. And the best incentive we have, and this is partially because of SEA One going into effect, that our TIF is being affected, and other things that we typically would use as economic development incentives, we're really limited as to what we can provide in terms of an incentive.
And an incentive is different than a gift, a gift you offer without expectation. An incentive is something that you offer expecting to get even more on your return. It's an investment, and so I think we need to have.
Just because the city owns this property, it doesn't mean that the incentives should only come from the city. We should ensure that we have the highest level of private investment, and we should also be talking to the county about what part they might be able to play in incentivizing a hotel.
Hren: An encampment was cleared by the city in Browns Woods due to safety concerns. How did that go? Where did those people go? Because this has been a big news story this past week, not only with the city, but with the county.
Thomson: It's actually owned by the Community Foundation, and we have been working with the encampment there to help them remain safe for a while and really things got to be very unsafe, and so we started talking to them, actually in the summer, about needing to clear out.
We worked in lockstep with the homeless service providers and helping getting people relocated, etc. And we did the official 30-day notice and continued to work with people. By the time we got there on clearing day, there was nobody left. Everybody had been relocated.
Hren: Why do we keep moving people around, what's the long-term solution?
Thomson: We released our report on homelessness and housing and that's a very extensive report on our comprehensive approach to not only solve for the immediate needs, but also long-term for the challenges around affordable housing and homelessness, and projects like Hopewell are going to be a key part of that.
We're not moving anybody from an encampment directly into Hopewell, but the process of solving the housing puzzle is really to ensure that you have a spectrum of housing that is available based on needs and abilities and right now, we do not have enough that's attainable.
We also don't have enough for people to downsize. We have others that are moving in that also need the $400,000 and up dollar houses, and so we're working on the whole housing spectrum.
