UPDATE: In a motion listed in the next City Council meeting, staff recommends moving forward with the Royse and Brinkmeyer proposal. However, the memo indicates the council could choose to authorize talks with the Franklin Park Foundation instead.

On Monday October 19th, I attended the City of Bloomington’s Committee of the Whole in order to learn more about the two proposed real estate developments on city-owned land at 800 N Main Street in Bloomington. Long abandoned, the site acts as a constant reminder of urban decay to travellers on US Route 51. Until recently, it was under separate ownership (the city owned a portion and Illinois Wesleyan the other). Now, with land swaps and an expanded TIF district, it offers a distinct opportunity to showcase a gateway between our downtown and the core neighborhoods. Even more salient, this can act as a bridge between the relatively secluded campus of Wesleyan and the rest of the community.

The purpose of this post is to discuss the merits and critiques of both developer proposals from a Strong Towns framework: resiliency and small bets as the foundation of our development pattern.

Franklin Park Foundation Proposal

The first proposal was from long time resident and landlord Tim Maurer and his Franklin Park Foundation. Maurer has owned rental properties in the neighborhood since the 1980s and he started the foundation in 2017 in a concerted effort to revitalize the historic district. Effectively, this will be the first and only project commenced by the foundation, as they will be using revenues from the development to fund neighborhood improvements via a complicated tax process.

Project Overview

The Franklin Park Foundation will contract with Swinerton, a nationally known firm for the actual construction, with Farnsworth on engineering and General Design, Inc as the architect.

The proposed site would include 260 units, with a mix of 40 studios, 110 one bedrooms, 90 two bedrooms, and 20 three bedroom apartments. About 40 of those units would be attainable for 80-120% of the area median income.

Included in the site is over 40,000 square feet of first floor commercial/retail to be delivered as a shell for future occupants to use.

Interestingly, this proposed development would be the first in the entire region to use mass timber construction, a cutting edge green building strategy.

The buildings would form a formal courtyard block, opening up to Main Street, and tying the connection between Downtown Bloomington and Illinois Wesleyan University.

Overall, the project estimated a total cost of $62.5 million with current not TIF monies in the capital stack. Perhaps the most controversial part of the proposal was the inclusion of a shared parking deck that would sit on the current Bloomington Creativity Center site that would act as combined site parking for residents of the development and for folks attending the BCPA. (tenants who occupy that space currently would be invited into the new commercial space in the Foundation’s development). Maurer gave the city three options for the deck: publicly financed, privately financed, or no deck at all due to the parcels being under the purview of the Illinois People Over Parking Act.

Our Thoughts

We at Strong Towns Blono believe in small bets, and this is a Hail Mary pass with seconds remaining in overtime. A $62.5 million dollar project for someone’s first foray into new development is quite the eyewatering number, and if the Foundation does not diligently watch contractor expenses, that number might be a low-end estimate. The parking deck might be a non-starter with the City as well (it is for us).

However, I believe this project’s built form has some merits: we leaned into the courtyard building typology for this very parcel for our charrette in July. The new building material is exciting to hear about as well. Perhaps the most positive part of this project is that all profits would be reinvested into neighborhood improvements from the Foundation. Lastly, the Foundation signed a memorandum of understanding with the local laborers to ensure that local union labor would be utilized for the project.

Royse + Brinkmeyer Proposal

The only other proposal that was submitted was from the developer Royse and Brinkmeyer based out of Champaign, Illinois. They have a long track record of completing large projects all over Central Illinois.

Project Overview

The developer was a little more cagey than the Franklin Park Foundation on exact unit mixes, but from what we gathered from the slides and other reporting, it hovers around 140-160 units ranging from loft-style apartments, one and two bedroom units, and maybe even some townhome units.

A proposed “Titan Plaza” would anchor the southwest corner of the site cattycorner from the Catholic Church, something that is present in all 4 variations of the site plans. This project would have anywhere between 6,000 and 8,000 square feet (effectively 1-2 tenants) of commercial space that would “complement rather than compete with Downtown development.”

Overall, the project would cost $39.5 million and the developer requested the site from the City for essentially free, with pre-development covered by the municipality (knocking down the old structures and getting some infrastructure connections ready).

Our Thoughts

This is still a very large project, but the size and location of the parcel might warrant it. The developer has a proven track record too. However, what this project has in groundedness, it lacks in inspiration. The developments still appear “business as usual” and I’d hate to say even though the CEO did not believe it, the buildings as rendered are the unfortunate “spreadsheet architecture” that has become too prevalent in today’s built environment.

We like this project because it looks to be the safer of the two options, has different building types that can be built in phases, and out of materials familiar to the local labor force. The developer also stated they’d be open to a project labor agreement to ensure fair wages are to be paid to the workers.

Our Charrette Proposal

In July, Strong Towns Blono conducted an intensive design charrette for the Downtown Bloomington Transitional District, which included this parcel. We’ll share what we came up with in the interest of transparency and to continue discussion on what the future of our built environment should look like.

The charrette team that was in charge of this parcel included myself, Dr. Alicia Pederson the Courtyard Urbanist, and urban planning student Tony Crispin.

We drew a stronger connection between Illinois Wesleyan University to Downtown via directing the urban armature that can be inviting for students and residents to walk down. At the same time along East St, the density gradient increases until you reach Downtown.

This courtyard block will be a part of the line connecting IWU to Holy Trinity and the Cultural Arts District as the gateway to Downtown for pedestrians. The most important aspect of this courtyard development is the paseo block that ends with a frame of the Catholic church.

This entire project relies on the idea of incremental development and lowering the barrier to participation, for example, the courtyard block on 800 N Main will begin as a framework with lots to be sold with predevelopment agreements at different levels of intensity: 15 ft, 30 ft, 60 ft. Each individual building would be financed and built separately, costs ranging in the low millions for each. Dr. Pederson did a study on this typology and found a single large courtyard building would cost about $5 million to complete. Overall, our development would provide a mix of attainable units at multiple pricepoints, sizes, and ownership styles.

This is essentially how our beloved Downtown and downtowns like it all across America were constructed. The fact that not one but many developers would be involved spreads the risk, and this process creates that urban granularity and charm that is often lacking in new developments.

The diversified ownership and smaller buildings also lends itself to answering a problem not often discussed in these development schemes: urban succession. What happens to a massive building that a large developer builds once its lifecycle is over? Think back to Front and Center.

We will publish more about the modular courtyard-style blocks when we publish our final charrette report later this year. In the meantime, I would suggest reading this article by the Courtyard Urbanist to learn more.

The Way Forward

Regardless how City Council decides that fate of this block, the City of Bloomington should develop a standardized RFP process that is transparent and hand developers a publicly available rubric on how their proposals will be scored by staff to ensure maximum fairness. This rubric should contain scoring criteria such as: public benefit/community impact, financial feasibility, Development team and track record, Site design and urban integration, implementation and delivery, long-term stewardship and resilience, and proposal completeness and compliance.

We surely hope that these conversations about the future of our urban environment can propel momentum forward and actually get stuff built. However, we want to ensure what gets built will be adding resiliency and value to the community, not just extracting it.