Okay, all right, good evening, everybody, thank you for coming. I'm gonna call to order this special
meeting of the Bloomington Board of Park Commissioners. No? Okay, they say no mic. Oh, this, oh yeah,
this is the... Okay, there we go. Okay.
I'm in a call to order this Bloomington Board of Park Commissioners special meeting to talk about future
facilities and investments. And Molly if you could start us with the roll call please. Here. All right.
So we do have three or four members this evening and thank you for coming out. We just have one item
on the agenda and that is to
take a look at some of the properties that people know and love in Bloomington and some of the trails
and ball fields and all of those kinds of things and how we can invest in them in the future. So our
parks director, Tim Street, is going to start off with some information about all that. Thank you for
being here. My name is Tim Street. I'm the director of Bloomington Parks and Recreation. We have a number
of our staff with us here tonight too who will help
to answer questions or provide clarification as we discuss this draft report with the board. If you
haven't had a chance, I assume you're here probably because you saw the press release and maybe you've
had a chance to view the draft plan that we put out about a week ago. It is available here via the QR
code. I'll have it up again later. Or if you're in the midst of the meeting and you want to pull it
up and you search, you know, Bloomington Parks investment report press release, it'll come up from last week.
So I want to talk a little bit about this report that we've been working on. This is an outgrowth of
our 2026 to 2030 master planning effort. So as the board knows, and many of you know, we've been working
on our master planning and have largely concluded our master planning earlier this year with a five-year
window to plan for the 2026 to 2030 investments, priorities, all based on our community survey, community
engagement, needs assessment,
all of the work that went into the master plan. When we released the master plan, I remember one commenter
sort of astutely noted that the master plan felt like it stopped a little bit short with some facilities
investment questions. And they said, it kind of feels like it's a plan that says we should have a plan.
And I was like, oh, that person's actually right, because that's what this supplement is.
We wanted to wrap up the master plan process so we could use all of the actions we identified in the
master plan process, all of the engagement, all of the good information to build out a plan for our
system. I have made no secret that our Parks and Rec system is amazing. We are really well supported.
We provide a lot of quality of life to Bloomington, and we have also expanded a lot.
in the last especially 10 to 20 years when you consider where we are right now. When you consider we've
added Hopewell Commons, Bicentennial projects, and even in the 2010s, there was quite a bit of addition.
We are very much in a state right now that we need to focus on investing in what we have. That came
up as one of our four master plan priorities. And find ways to sustain some of our key community offerings
or make critical decisions about how to invest in them.
We have two pools. One is from 1957 to 59. It was built and opened, Bryan Park Pool. Mills Pool was
1963. The Frank Southern Ice Arena was 1967. Winslow Sports Park was 1979. These are all facilities
that are 40, 50, 60 years old and all have various needs. And part of the reason why we designed some
of our community engagement in the master plan was to get
sense of what the needs are and what the community feels about these facilities whether they're in support
or not in support of them. So to be honest we had a wrench thrown into our process about two weeks ago
with preparing this report. We had been working on this report and this report is basically a reflection
of how staff feel we can best represent the community needs respond to the community needs based on
the assessment and condition of our facilities
and the funds we have available. So building this report, we are building it, working with the office
of the controller with the assumption that we could issue around a $7 million bond. Parks municipal
geo bond, which the parks board has the authority to do along with city council. Last issued one in
2022, which is nearly paid off, would be paid off in 2028. So by issuing this bond in 2027, the payments
would start in 2028
in the same year that the payments from the previous bond would be paid off. So we wouldn't really be
adding much to the tax rate. It would basically be a wash. However, right as we were literally putting
the finishing touches on this report, we received some really great news from the Indiana Community
Parks Initiative that they were releasing a grant opportunity statewide for municipal park agencies
for about $400 million. This is for invited communities across Indiana. It's a lot of municipalities.
And Bloomington is one of the invited communities. So we all of a sudden have an opportunity to also
go for a 200K Community Parks Initiative planning grants, which would be required to be eligible for
a $10 million CPI project grants. And those grants are being funded very generously by the Lilly Endowment
throughout the state of Indiana. So this is sort of a game changing opportunity.
in terms of what and how much we can fund as we look at these needs. When it came up, we debated whether
we should still keep this meeting tonight, and we decided, yes, this is really good, let's talk about
these needs, let's get these in front of the community, even if we know we're obviously gonna go for
the grant opportunity, it's a huge opportunity for us, but the work we do tonight can help us inform
where we go next, what kind of priorities we build out,
And then we as a staff will be looking at which of these funding opportunities are a good fit for the
grants opportunity and which ones might necessarily need to remain part of a municipal geo bond issuance
if they're not in line with something that the grant is designed for. The good news is that the grant
overall is very much designed and inspired by revitalization of parks and rec systems and learning about
the grant, which we're still doing, but we've heard a lot of words revitalize
nature, access, parks, history, culture, arts, community, all of these things. So a lot of what our
parks and rec system has to offer. Maybe not every aspect, but a lot. So that is where we're at with
our funding picture. So rather than working directly off a list tonight that we were going to recommend
to fund in a GEO bond, this is going to be a recommendation of our overall top priorities. It is not
a comprehensive list of every capital need,
But it is rather a representation of some of the more major and substantial things that we really need
to work towards. I said it's a non-exhaustive list. I wanted to make sure that timing on this before
I get into the recommendations, we have to have a planning grant application in for the CPI grants by
the end of October. So tonight's meeting will be really helpful as we look at that.
And then we have to have the $10 million project grant after we do the planning phase in mid next year
with an award late, probably about a year from now. So late to 2027, we would know about an award of
all or some of the $10 million. So very exciting. Like I mentioned, it's a wrench in the plan. We kind
of had this plan going. We're going to figure out how to do seven. But this opportunity is amazing.
It's well worth.
you know, if we need to retread a little bit of area, if we do another meeting like this in the future
because we need to do it for the planning grant, great. We value the community engagement and we'll
just try to build the best package possible to apply for the grant. And potentially, I'll continue to
work with the controller's office and the park board to see about our debt capacity and willingness
to bond in addition to or in tandem with any grant award. But we would necessarily want to wait for
that grant award to know
about any potential bond issuance. It just wouldn't make sense to put that beforehand. That is everything
I wanted to say as an introduction. This report is really an attempt to put all kinds of background
information from the master plan, use statistics, cost recovery statistics, all of the things that our
staff are looking at as we think about how to prioritize and make decisions into a report that is readily
available for the board and for the public.
So I hope you have a chance to look at it. I'll mention it now and I'll say it again at the end. We
will have an online comment period after this. We are not asking for this plan to be adopted this evening.
This is an introduction of the plan and a chance for public comment. We will have public comment for
those of you that are here tonight. Thank you at the end. But importantly, the conversation will go
on after tonight. And this is just really, you know, I won't say it's the beginning of this conversation
because that was really with the master plan, but it's the next step of where we're going.
Let me present the recommendations and then we can have a discussion with the board and then we will
move into public comment after that. And I want to say that the number on the recommendations is not
indicative of a ranking of the recommendations. There are 15 recommendations here. They are meant to
be viewed comprehensively not as a ranked order. I'm going to just briefly go over them and then we
will have discussion. So number one we would like to recommend that we
basically resolve when we adopt this plan to increase our annual capital investment to six percent by
2030. We call this category four in our city budgeting. This is budgeting for capital expenses. This
is the type of funding that helps us replace vehicles and do smaller capital projects that we need to
do to keep up with our properties. Roofs, utility vehicles, on the road vehicles,
replacing our aging fleet. We've had a couple vehicles basically age out on us this year. And part of
that is we, along with most of the industry, municipal governments, have underfunded annual capital
investment for quite some time. And that has averaged around 2%. We are basically recommending that
we increase that by a percentage point each year to get that up to 6% by 2030, the end of our master
planning period. And the reason being that will help us to keep up
with ongoing needs and equipment needs that our staff need to make these repairs and upgrades. The second
recommendation is that we look at the Parks and Recreation ownership of 349 South Walnut Street. So
this building is the current project school. The Parks and Recreation department has owned this building
since the 70s as a result of the Bloomington Adult Community Center formerly being located there. We
just want to, we received a couple of assessments that said,
This property is valued at about 2.7 million. This is not a surprise to the project school. I've talked
to their leadership about this. I didn't want them to be surprised by this. But we really need to look
at whether or not the Parks Department needs to continue to own this building and whether a sale of
it or if not that at least a shift in the rent scheme would help us with our annual capital investment
meeting some of these needs as well.
Aquatics, this is a really big one, and I'm sure we'll have some discussion on this tonight.
Our recommendation at this time is that we prioritize investment in a Bryant Park pool renovation. We
have already, as the board knows, been working with a landscape architect company with expertise in
this area called Ratio Architects. They are giving us insight into how much we would need to spend to
solve things like code compliance, updating the bath house, to have
gender neutral, family changing rooms, better facilities, dealing with the spray pad, ensuring water
slides can continue for years to come. Those are all the priorities we've been talking about. And at
the same time, we are not recommending the same level of investment at Mills Pool right now. In fact,
right now, Satoshi Kido and our sports staff have been investigating
exactly what went wrong with the leak last year and what we need to do to make sure we can make comprehensive
repairs to open it on time and make it comprehensively open for years to come. But at the same time
we know that that facility is aging and without investment like we would do at Bryant Park Pool we will
reach a conclusion at some point of what we are able to operate there and that is just a reality of having
you know, multiple outdoor pools. The IU outdoor pool is facing very similar issues with its age.
You know, we're comparing notes with the university to try to figure out if there's any opportunity
for collaboration there. But at this time, the recommendation is to invest in the renovation at Bryant
Park Pool, which is used three to four times as much as Mills Pool and perform the sustaining repairs
at Mills Pool, which we think it could maybe be up to 100K.
Fourth recommendation is investing in turf infields at the junior side, baseball fields, and LED upgrades
throughout Winslow Sports Park, as well as looking at some stormwater improvements in partnership with
City of Bloomington Utilities at the parking lot at Winslow Sports. That parking lot is three acres
of runoff, so environmentally, it does not do very well. In addition to that recommendation,
We are suggesting that we maintain the recreational diamonds as grass only at Butler and Bryan Parks
due to overall low usage that our sports staff are seeing as well as the ability for those to function
as multi-sports spaces if they are maintained as grass. And then the third recommendation is to officially
decommission and remove the lower cascades ball fields and hold for future reuse. We just do not have
the baseball and softball numbers and interest that we used to.
by strategically investing in Winslow Sports to make sure we have a nice home facility to partner with
Twin Lakes Sports Park to host tournaments, things like that. We're not trying to compete with a grand
sports park up in west side of India or anything like that, but we should be able to attract some regional
and local play to a facility that has experienced a lot of rain outs, in part due to our changing weather
patterns and in part due to just how old it is and how poor the drainage has become over the years.
Number five, playgrounds. The priority here is to replace Alcott Playground, which is now one of our
oldest and most well used because Alcott is a community park that sees a lot of people with a new inclusive
themed playground. Since we removed the old Push Place playground at Winslow Sports, excuse me, at Winslow
Woods, we have not had a playground dedicated to any type of inclusion. There's a community partner
we could work with to design that. There's more details in the report.
And also fund some other critical playground repairs, switch our turf in other locations. And then as
funding becomes available, if we're looking at the grant and we have the opportunity to go for more,
we would look at these other playgrounds, which are our other oldest playgrounds. Building Trades, Highland
Park, and Schmalls Park are our other oldest playgrounds. I should mention I didn't include the amounts
on these brief slides, but there are amount recommendations and some ranges included in the report.
Trail and asphalt repair, as our master plan showed in the previous, at least two master plans showed,
trails are the number one thing our community is interested in. Luckily, we are also meeting that demand
fairly well, as our needs assessment showed. They remain a strong community interest. We need to continue
to invest in just ongoing upkeep and repair of those to maintain accessibility, to solve issues that
come up when we get tree root heave and asphalt cracks and things like that.
There are some some locations listed in the report where we we know we have some issues that would be
priority issues but we would also do a condition assessment based on the available budget to make sure
we're prioritizing the areas where they need it most across our very extensive trail system. Number seven.
The critical need is to replace the elevator there. It is getting quite old and it's having increasing
issues as we get it inspected. It's constantly needing little things and I know our elevator repair
company is telling us it's time to think about replacing it. If we lose that, we lose a lot of accessibility
in that building. So this is a critical repair. We would also look at replacing the drop ceiling in
the gym, which has
water stain issues and a drop ceiling in a gym is not the best thing for balls being sent up to the
ceiling. So we could replace that with a more modern insulation, spray insulation system. And then with
the news of the Lilly grant, we also expanded that to say if we can fit it in our ask, we can work on
renovating the gym and replacing the flooring.
ice arena. This is obviously another one of our really major areas of need and talking points as we
work to maintain the ice arena. Chris Hamrick, our manager there, Satoshi Kido, our sports director,
have done a really wonderful job responding to the ammonia leak that we had last year. It was my worst
fear for the ice arena, but the good news is it all happened according to our protocols.
went as well as it should have. That said, we really don't want to have to deal with that in the future.
We have had a couple of stakeholder meetings already this summer with people who have a vested interest
in the ice arena, including IU, our blades groups, our figure skating groups, other hockey groups, other
skate groups. And we want to continue that to determine a direction by 2028. What we've largely heard
from the community and the stakeholders is,
And even the board, actually, when we brought up the initial report was, should we really look at developing
something new? Because the ice arena is not on city-owned land. It is on MCCSE-owned land. And there
was sort of this idea of, are we throwing good money after bad by investing in this really old facility?
It's a big ask. It's a tall order. A new facility is going to be $15 million-plus, probably, and we
would need to locate a new property.
If that is not feasible, I think we need to give this time to really investigate and see where we can
get with that. But by 2028, I think we need to make a decision because we can't just let this ammonia
system continue to be there and continue to age and potentially have another issue down the line. So
the rough estimates that we have, sorry, I keep going loud for some reason,
The full ammonia replacement for the ice arena and getting rid of the direct system and replacing the
ammonia with a modern refrigerant would be about 4 million. Partial ammonia replacements, which would
mean we get rid of the direct system so the ammonia would not go out under the ice and it would stay
in the boiler room. It would also reduce the amount of ammonia we would use by about 75%, which is a
great intervention. That would be about 2 million plus. Either one of those would take us out of the,
How do I want to put this? The rarefied air of when people come visit our ice arena and they say, oh,
you still have ammonia and you're still a direct system. You're one of the last in the country. We've
literally heard that. So by either getting rid of the direct system or getting rid of the ammonia together,
we can remove that unique moniker from our ice arena. Sports courts, what's recommended initially
There's some very low-hanging fruit of investing in RCA Park pickleball conversion. There are two tennis
courts there that were not converted to pickleball. There was already a lot of pickleball played at
RCA Park. So the idea is to convert and continue to channel that positive use to RCA Park. There's parking,
there's restroom, there's activity there. We want to invest in building trades court improvements.
Building trades phase one improvements last year that focused on accessibility. As part of that, we
were looking at a master plan for the park that included use of the building trades sport courts and
how we could rehabilitate that. During our master planning, we talked about a multi-use games area,
which is really a way to design a sports court that can be used for all different kinds of games and
facilities. There's actually an image in the report of an example
I don't believe there are a lot of these in the U.S. right now. I think it's a little bit more of a
European English concept that we've seen, but they're really cool. They provide opportunities for basketball,
for soccer, or futsal. You would still have open space, so you could play roller hockey with the nets
on the end. You could play bike polo, as we know happens there, and do a lot of things there. The other
thing that we were not gonna initially recommend for the bond, but keep as another next down the line
option that may be different
grant opportunity now would be to invest in converting Switchyard Bachi, which was a great idea,
very cool, but we just don't see it getting used. That could become more pickleball and continue to
invest in what we have by putting these type of amenities where we have activity, where we have restrooms,
where we have parking already available. I'm droning on. I got a few more to go. Bear with me and then
we'll get to the discussion part.
The Buskirk Chumley Theater, so Parks and Recreation is also the city's landlord for the Buskirk Chumley
Theater. The initial need on us as we partner with the city's EST department, they work on and fund
some more of the operational theater aspects, more or more building systems. We need to replace the
new fire, replace the fire safety curtain at the theater with a new one for fire code reasons and for
safety reasons, that's about 55K.
We also want to consider building envelope and marquee rehabilitation. We recognize in talking with
theater management that the Buskirk Chumlee Marquee is a really iconic part of Bloomington's landscape.
It needs some rehabilitation. It needs some repair. We're actually going to be bringing a contract to
do a structural inspection of it to the board here soon so we can understand more about the needs that
the marquee may have. This, I will mention the marquee, I think would be a great fit for the grant.
portion of what we're talking about funding, the arts and culture and things that the grant wants to
look at. This one is fairly straightforward at Rose Hill Cemetery. We have two soldiers' monuments that
have not had attention in a very long time. One is to soldiers of Civil War. One is to soldiers of World
War I. We would like to do some rehabilitation on those, similar to what the county did to the memorial
on the southeast side of the square.
I think they did that just last year, maybe the year before. Number 12, Twin Lakes Rec Center. This
one's kind of interesting. It's more or less an update and a recommendation of how we will proceed soon.
But for Twin Lakes Rec Center, we are closing in on paying off the revenue bond that bought that in
2009. It was a 20-year payoff. That will be retired in 2029, which is all of a sudden not that far away.
We will have one payment of it in 2029.
and then it will be retired. So in 2029, that will save the department about $240,000. And then in subsequent
years, that will free up about $480,000 a year in our non-reverting budget. That can really, really
help us go and support some of these other needs, including the Cascades need that I'm going to talk
about in just a second. Cascades Golf.
I will mention Cascades Golf continues to run with zero subsidy of tax dollars from the department.
It generates more than it receives. While it does run partially through the general fund, for at least,
I didn't go back farther than five years, but for the last five years, the golf course has finished
in the black every one of those years. But everything is expensive and there are capital needs there
as well. So as we transition and sunset this Twin Lakes revenue bond, we really need to look at
probably a little bit of overlap of bringing a revenue bond online for the golf course to focus primarily
on 18 holes of irrigation that were put in in 1981. That is a wonderful life span for an irrigation
system. It is one year older than me and it needs to be replaced.
Other needs there that we would look at would include, as part of that bond, potentially cart path repair.
Important to keep those cart paths up to protect our investment and potential maintenance cart
bar improvements or replacements. Two more. Sponsorship and naming. This is a recommendation we wanted
to bring to the board as we look at this option. We really want to pursue a contract with an outside
expert to investigate major sponsorship and naming opportunities. This is something we've seen other
parks departments do.
We believe there's an opportunity here for us. It's not like for like, but we saw Columbus recently
built. Columbus is very into youth sports, focused on youth sports. They built their new big indoor
field house arena, and it's named Circle K. That's a huge company, a huge sponsorship opportunity. I'm
not saying that exact opportunity is here, but there are opportunities that we should pursue while still
recognizing that our staff do a great job with a lot of local companies
relationships with local businesses and longtime sponsors who help us sponsor a whole lot of things,
events, concert series, performing arts series, things like that. So we also want to protect
those relationships. And lastly, and again, not exhaustively, but lastly, Griffey Lake Trails, one of
I would say the most popular projects we've done in the last few years was the Bicentennial Bond investment
in the Griffey Loop Trail system. We really want to go back. We were not able to complete the North
Shore improvements based on available budget. There's a potential to use some remaining of the 2022
GO Bond that was issued through the Park Department, which included Griffey as a site location for expenses.
We're going to look at that opportunity. And then the other opportunity we really want to pursue at
Griffey Lake
that we've heard a lot about is designing and installing an accessible trail that is accessible to people
of all abilities, chairs, all kinds of uses and that could run east from the Griffey Lake Boathouse
towards the Wetland Trail. There's a great opportunity to put that in there and that could be a potential
grant option as well. So that said, I'm going to get a drink and I would welcome questions or comments
from the board and I'll just
mentioned we have different staff members here with us tonight. I'll point you out. You can raise your
hand so everyone knows who you are because they might want to have a conversation with you after the
meeting, too. Rebecca Swift, our operations director, is here. Julie Ramey, our community relations
manager, is here. Mark Sterner, our Twin Lakes manager. Jason Sims, our golf course manager.
Satoshi Kido, our sports division director. Chris Hamrick has a chunk of this because he manages both
aquatics and the ice arena.
And Kevin Terrell is our Banneker manager. Oh, Alec's back there too. Alec is also in our pools and
aquatics. And if you want to talk to our lawyer, you can talk to Taylor. He's back here too. Legal advice.
So that said, yes, I'm going to get a drink. And board, we would welcome questions or comments. And
I can have different staff respond to those as well. Thank you, Jim. I don't want to take a lot of time
to talk because
You know, people, you came out here on a beautiful evening and we should all be outside. So any shortish
comments from the board before we open up to public responses, public comments? Israel, do you have
anything you want to share? Sorry. Yeah. So thank you, first of all, for the presentation and this is
moment for a good discussion because we have seen in this summary of recommendations that we need to
take action, pay attention to some issues that for some time, certain years, have affected some of the
facilities in our parks and also in recreation venues and this should be something to
to analyze for an outcome that we can act and do the processes so we can have and improve some of the
resources that we have. So thank you for the opportunity and thank you for this conversation. I'd really
appreciate the community participation that's here tonight.
really looking forward just to hearing from all of you. I think as a board member, some of the things
at the top of my mind are things regarding equity across all of the different programs in parks and
rec, and then just making sure we're optimizing our resources. So just want to all of them hear from
the community and anything else Kathleen? Yeah, and I think this is a pretty big list and we can't make
everybody happy with their favorite
parks facility, but we can do our best, as Ellen said, to use the resources wisely and make sure that
five, 10 years down the line, people aren't going to a pool or an ice arena saying, oh, what sad shape
this is in. We don't want that. We want to take care of these assets. With that, we were allowing three
minutes per person for comment, and we have a
Do we have a microphone going around, or do we want to ask people to come up? So you can come up here.
I would ask if you're willing to start with your name. Sign in here if you would. Molly, our office
manager, I'm sorry, I should have introduced you as part of staff as well, has a timer that's up there
so you can see your time you have available. And I'll just close by saying if there's no other comments
or questions for the board. Again, this is an endpoint of a process, but it's a jumping off point for
conversation from here.
And we will continue to have that conversation. And if you haven't had the board or the public haven't
had a chance, we really made an effort to include a lot of the numbers behind things in this report.
And at the back end of the report, you can access via the link, you know, you can see rental hours by
facility. You can see the cost recovery that we've experienced at these facilities by percentage. And
then at the back end, you can also get to some of our master plan
community engagement that was revealed, and including some of the numbers from our statistically valid
community survey about what the community said they're using the most, what they're interested in the
most, and then what they would support in terms of potential renovation options. And that's just scratching
the surface. If you go to our actual master plan, there's way, way more. So I'm just trying to provide
the highlights there. But it is all publicly
accessible and available, and I would be happy to help point anyone towards it. I think so. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. So, yeah, whoever would like to kick us off, if you could come up to the podium and just tell
us your name and any comments you have about any of the priorities here for renovations and modernizations.
Good evening. My name is Bob Costello. I'm a business owner and resident of Bloomington, Indiana. I've
owned a business here for over 30 years. I'd like to say thank you to the Parks Department for putting
forward an investment in the pickleball courts at RCA Park.
I would like to challenge the board as well as the Parks Department. $45,000 is a generous amount, but
doesn't really put much of a dent in what's actually needed at that facility. We were promised $45,000
last year for repairs on the asphalt. The facility still needs wind screens.
which could be paid by sponsorships. You could also generate revenue for the Parks Department and the
city by holding tournaments. Greenwood, Columbus, Vincennes, Evansville,
Noblesville, Westfield have made all of these investments. They've seen a return on their investments.
The most recent tournament I attended in Greenwood had 465 people at the event for three days. Those
people traveled to the event, they spent money in the community, and it also serves the community members
of Greenwood that were participating in that tournament as well. So I challenge you to look at the pickleball
community,
active it is, how many people in this community participate. It's an ageless event. There are people
that are as young as 12 to 80 years old. And it's all walks of life. And it's a very welcoming community.
People are willing to teach each other how to play the game, how to get better at the game. And I think
it's nothing but valuable for Bloomington.
And I appreciate your time, but I would ask for you to reconsider the amount of money that you're budgeting
towards this and come up with a long-term plan for a pickleball in Bloomington. Thank you. Hi,
my name is Abe. I just came to talk about the baseball fields being turfed.
One of the things that I don't have to sell is how great Bloomington is, especially with how good our
football team now is. And so we seem to be at that cusp of families coming into town from out of town
and deciding whether or not they want to stay here after college. And a lot of that comes down to youth
sports. So the baseball fields at Winslow are not turfed, so we're susceptible to weather.
I don't expect us to be a grand park and have tournaments, but as a guy that owns a restaurant downtown,
the summers are also super slow. It would be great to have all of those people come into town, see how
great it is down here, stay in our hotels, visit our businesses. It just seems like an opportunity to
have more people decide to move into Bloomington because of the level of our youth sports, not decide
to go to Avon or Fishers or somewhere up north that has all of these
very basic things that are available like turf fields that last forever. And just on a personal note,
it's super unfortunate year after year to not be able to simply play or practice because of the weather,
because we don't have those available. The high schools have them now, and so that's a great opportunity
for us, but the middle schools
we have three middle schools and none of those have an actual baseball team either. So again,
the opportunities are kind of endless and it's just one of those things that I think would be a benefit
for more money, not just in the slow periods of the summer when a lot of the businesses downtown just
basically try to make the black to save up for the next year, but also with the success of our football
team and how great Bloomington is and people wanting to move back in here.
and do a lot more building, it's an advantage that their kids have a place to play that they know is
not going to constantly be canceled or rescheduled, and then they go outside of the city. And that's
it. So thank you. Thank you. Hi. I'm Dan Smith. Also, I want to speak for the baseball field upgrade,
just to kind of expound upon what Abe said.
found a couple notes that I thought were worth sharing. Greensburg, Indiana had 24 tournaments at the
12 and under levels in 2025, which is about an hour and a half drive from here. Bloomington has a much
better infrastructure than Greensburg, Indiana does. I dug up some documents, a document that the 2020
Bloomington Housing Authority cited that hosting one softball tournament
national softball tournament in July of 2020 had an estimated $500,000 economic impact on the town.
I think that it's fair to say that with turf baseball fields at Winslow, I don't know that we would
have $500,000 economic impact for a weekend of baseball, but it could be, you know, maybe a percentage
of that. I did kind of an estimate of a 20 team tournament, 11 players on a team, let's say three family
members per
I know this for a fact, I spend an average of $200 to $250 a weekend at a baseball tournament. That
mats out to about $175,000 per weekend. In addition to the rain outs that we would no longer have, we
could expand our seasons, ball baseball could become longer, we could have tournaments longer into the
fall. I think that would lead to fewer departures of kids.
that are currently only playing travel baseball. They would stay in our home leagues. We could develop
more athletes in our community. And that's all I have. Thank you. I'm Dan Smith. I'm sensing this might
be hockey related. Throw my name in here.
I have spelled my name, so this isn't going to go well. So I just want to start off. I'm William Baker.
I'm absolutely terrible at speaking in front of large groups, so bear with me. I am a 35-year-old Army
veteran. I was disabled during service, and I was able to find that running and doing a lot of physical
activity for me was challenging. However, I finally just kind of bit the bullet and decided I was going
to try out hockey.
I went for the worst position in that case as a goalie. However, you know, being able to be on the ice
and play and move has helped me maintain my flexibility even with some of the issues that I sustained.
But a big thing for me is the fact that hockey doesn't, you know, end in March. So I've been pursuing
hockey in other areas, primarily having to go to Indy during some
sessions, Perry Park, even over in Hamilton County. And I feel like Bloomington has, you know, we've
got the Blades, we've got the IU teams, we've got the ability to have more people involved in our hockey
programs and the figure skating programs, any ice-related programs. And, you know, being the way that
it is, you know, having to shut down in March really takes away from, you know, in the heat of the summer
being able to go, you know, skate on some ice.
Just pools are great and I wouldn't want to take away from any of that, but being able to actually be
in a cold environment during the heat, that's something I don't think you could beat. But yeah,
like I said, I'm terrible at this, so I just wanted to put my support out for looking into the upgrade,
at least the partial upgrade to get us away from the ammonia. I've got friends that are firefighters
saying that's one of their biggest worries is the ammonia.
maintenance tech myself, doing partial replacements of anything is usually a good starting point for
further problems. So I just wanted to throw out at least a full replacement, if not looking at buying
a new property and building up a new ice rink, opening up the ability to maybe have two sheets of ice
or any form of expansion we could have, start pulling more people from
From the Indy area from they're traveling to the Indy area. They're traveling to the Hamilton County
ice we're kind of Isolated out here and I feel like maybe we can draw some more people in if we had
a bigger or more robust ice facility, so I'll leave that where Thank you guys, thank you very much
Hi, I'm William Bain. I'm the president and director of the Bloomington Pickleball Club. And I wanted
to echo what Bob said earlier. Seems that Bob had to take off. I think a lot of what he said was right
on as far as the things that we need to think about as we're doing the development of the pickleball.
I wanted to add two other things to that as well. One, basically really just questions that I think
we should be thinking of.
One being who do you have that you're able to talk to about Pickleball and the Pickleball community?
Because building courts is one thing. We know, though, that we can't build enough for everybody to have
their own court. And so being able to share the courts that we have and being able to do that in a way
so that everybody gets a chance to use the courts is important. And one of the things that's missing
in Bloomington has been the
the ability of people to rotate off and on the courts, which exists in almost all of those communities
which Bob mentioned before. So just, I think as we're moving forward with this, if you can keep in mind
some of the issues that exist with pickleball, especially because it's a pick-up sport.
If there are ways that we can help with that in just offering advice or offering some information about
how others do it, that would be great. And so then the other thing is that also if there are ways that
we can offer pickleball in other parts of the city that do not involve taking away tennis.
I think we do understand that it would be nice to have a facility at RCA which is just for pickleball.
That's where most people go. There's a wonderful facility at Winslow Park just for tennis. We don't
want to take anything away from that, but there are ways that we can offer pickleball which don't involve
taking away tennis as well. Park Ridge East I think is the best example that I know of in the city right now.
If there's ways that we can help or people that we can help the city talk to in this, we would love
to be part of that. And just to be able to bring some of these things up and keep it in mind. Thank you.
Good evening. I'm Dave Martin, co-founder of the Bloomington Pickleball Club. In August 2025, I came
before the board and asked you to add courts at RCA and include pickleball in the five-year plan. Tonight,
it's in the plan. I'm going to say thank you. This matters to me personally. I discovered pickleball
in 2014 while walking my dog past the RCA courts
and today RCA is the city's main place to play and the courts are full. So one thing I'd ask you to
keep in mind, your own survey shows pickleball interest is only 71% met, lower than most amenities.
The city's count of 13 courts includes three temporary ones at Hopewell. Six more at RCA is a great start.
and the switchyard conversion would help close that gap. So thank you for listening and for investing
in the courts where so many of us found this sport. That's it, thanks. And definitely, as Tim said,
the bocce ball was a creative idea, but has anyone actually
Has anyone out here played bocce? Oh, there's a bocce person. Okay. Oh, all right. Yeah, yeah. Hi, I'm
Autumn Marshall. I'm an advocacy fellow at the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce. And I'm here
today to voice our support for the investment priorities plan. So as the park system grows,
our responsibility for maintaining those assets grows with it. And we're just super excited to see this
support for investing in what we have. We especially see returns on the Winslow Sports Park, including
the proposed turf and fields and lighting, voicing many other voices of support here. We just see great
returns in Winslow. And this is an opportunity to improve an existing community asset. There are also
great economic development and local growth opportunities here.
Sports, ooh, sorry, I'm also not a great speaker. Sports facilities can bring in visitors into Bloomington
during weekends and months when our hotels, restaurants, and retailers have additional capacity. Building
more of that business helps Bloomington operate as a 12-month economy rather than just relying so heavily
on peak IU weekends and events, which we still love. All right, we can point to local,
inequities here with the Cutters Soccer Club, which hosts roughly half of its travel tournaments in
Bloomington. By comparison of the 14 travel baseball tournaments our local team played last season,
only one was in Bloomington. And that is not a scientific economic impact study, but it illustrates
the gap between families that are traveling elsewhere and spending those tournament dollars in other
communities. This also gives us the opportunity to think more regionally.
Monroe County has made a major investment in cars and soccer and field hockey facilities. Winslow allows
the city to strengthen the baseball side of our regional sports infrastructure rather than duplicate
what already exists. All right. Be disciplined about the entire park's portfolio. Maintaining existing
assets should be part of the cost of adding new ones.
At the same time parks should keep an open mind about whether every property or facility needs to remain
in the city's portfolio. If an asset no longer provides enough public value to justify its ongoing cost
sale partnership or another use should be on the table. So bottom line from the chamber we support a
plan to take care of what we own invest in assets like Winslow that can provide both community and economic value
and be willing to make choices about assets we can no longer justify maintaining. And thank you so much
to the Parks Department. Hi, my name is Allison Morris, and I am yet another member of the Bloomington
Pickleball Club. I wanted to thank the board and the Parks and Recs
folks here for the proposal to expand additional pickleball courts at RCA. However, like Bob suggested
earlier, I would suggest that that is not gonna be nearly enough by 2030 and possibly before. The courts
we have now are full pretty much every single day. They're used, I would say, six to seven, if not eight
hours every single day, and they're often 10, 15 people waiting, and I know the parks
Folks have somebody coming by every afternoon snapping photos, and they can see how many people are
waiting. It's been the fastest growing sport in the US for the last five years, and it shows no sign
of stopping. There are going to be more and more and more people wanting to play and expecting to be
able to play. And as it stands now, it's not possible for a lot of people. And they get frustrated because
they have to stand around and wait. The wonderful thing about pickleball
is that it's a fast game. You can finish a game usually in 10, 12 minutes, sometimes less, if your opponents
don't play very well. But it's a fast moving game and it has that appeal over tennis, which can take
several hours if you're gonna play three sets. And I love tennis, I'm a former tennis player, I have
nothing against tennis. But the allure of pickleball is
how quickly it moves, how you get to play with so many different people from so many walks of life,
so many different ages, and it has such a low barrier of entry, it costs all of, what, now 15 bucks
maybe to buy a pickleball paddle and a decent pair of shoes and you're off. You don't have to learn
a complicated overhead serve to play to start a pickleball. In fact, that's illegal, right? So it's
an easy game to become competitive with right away and it's,
Frankly, just a lot of fun and a very social game, in part because you're closer to each other than
you are when you play tennis. So it encourages a lot of socialization. So I would just like to challenge
again the board to think beyond the six additional courts at RCA, which will be very, very welcome in
helping ameliorate the waiting times. But I would suggest it's not going to be nearly enough by 2030.
Thank you so much for your time. Hello, my name is Tad Spurka, Bloomington resident, and I just want
to voice my support for the Frank Southern Ice Arena and ice in general, if it is a new facility.
Being an engineer, I agree wholeheartedly that you start doing a partial replacement, you're going to
find more issues, and it's going to end up costing more. So I believe a minimum of full replacement
is due. With my kids enjoying the ice, my son playing hockey, we've got everywhere out there from four
years old up to adults playing. And again, I'm just talking the hockey side. We've got figure skating.
We've got a lot of other public skates are always very popular out there.
And actually this year our youth program has suffered, again, through no fault of any person, but with
the uncertainty of what was going on with the Frank, we had a lot of people decide to leave the program.
And if that continues to happen or if there is no ice, you're looking at people that want to do that
are going an hour plus away. Talking to some people from the Indianapolis area, Perry Park's in a similar
situation where if that goes down, they don't believe that they'll be able to
get the funds to support that, especially with the new facility up in Westfield, that they feel all
the money is going to be filtered to that. So now you're going even further. Ice time over at Columbus
is almost impossible to get because they have their youth programs. They have now a semi-pro team. And
so keeping things local and giving us an opportunity to have that in the community, I think, is a huge
benefit to Blue Bloomington. Again, talking to people, when we say, oh yeah, we've got ice hockey here,
You've got hockey in Bloomington. Yeah, I used actually won a national championship at the club level,
which not many people know. So we have the people willing to play. We have the ice. If you want to go,
the ice is booked constantly. We're finding times when you can get a game in, finding times when if
you want to have a birthday party, it becomes very difficult because the ice is popular. And so that
gives another outlet for people to do winter activities that
aren't available everywhere else. And I think that is very important to give some variety and just choices
to people for their activities. Thank you. And that perspective of those other communities.
Good afternoon, good evening. My name is Tyler McCoy, 47 years old, been a resident of Bloomington all
my life. Thank you board and Mr. Street for putting this on and allowing us the opportunity to come
talk about things that we're passionate about, right? And I've heard a lot of great people talk about
a lot of great things and I'm here to advocate for the Winslow baseball turf. One common theme that
I seem to draw upon both
presentation and amongst people here is how do we do more with less, right? Resources and personnel
aren't finite. We know that. And so the ability to turf the field at Winslow could effectively help
mitigate personnel and resourcing issues. I know a lot of times it's tough to get people to show up
at 11 o'clock at night, 10 o'clock to drag fields. For the next day, line them, get the grass cut,
and make sure that the diamond dry is put down if it's raining, things like that. Diamond dry is not
cheap if you've had to buy diamond dry before. The ability to turf the fields could effectively eliminate
a lot of those issues by allowing a personnel staffing to be consummate to the need, which would draw
less of a personnel resourcing issue
And it could be directed towards another resource like helping the pickleball courts or the ice skating
rink or whatever other need that the Parks and Rec might have. There's, you know, constant need to maintain
dirt skin fields. And it's not an easy thing to do. It's a laborious, arduous task, especially after
it's rained. So the need to line the fields to get the bases installed
to make sure everything's prepped and ready to go. By turfing those fields, it can effectively mitigate
any of that prep time. And as long as you got the grass mowing the outfield, you're good to go, right?
It makes it much, much easier for the people, the community, coaches, parents that are involved in those
games to do that more effectively and make sure things are ready to go. And we're not necessarily waiting
on somebody to
rake out third base or lay down, dive and dry. There's a lot of things that are positive from that.
So thank you for your time. That's all I got. Thank you for your comment. I'm John Arbuckle. I'm here
tonight on behalf of Bloomington Bike Polo in support of the multi-use game area, I think is what
you said in the plan, at Building Trades Park. I know most people in here probably have never heard
of Bike Polo before. You're probably thinking about how many people even play that. And that's one of
the great things about this proposed use case for a multi-sport game area or a multi-sport court, whatever
you want to call it, is that you're able to provide a single facility for a lot of niche groups.
It's a great way to do more with less. You invest in one single facility and you're able to serve a
wide variety of user groups. I also, while I'm here, want to just say I support the continued investment
in a public ice rink here in Bloomington, increasingly in the Midwest and across the country.
There are fewer and fewer public ice rinks, and it makes it more and more expensive to be able to play
hockey. I don't play hockey myself, but it's something I support. Yeah, whatever ends up being decided,
I think it's money well spent. Thank you. Hi, good evening. My name is Dave Miller.
Came to Bloomington about 50 years ago, raised my kids here, have lived here most of those years, kind
of off and on past few years. I'm also on the Bloomington Pickleball Club Board. And as you can tell
by our other speakers, we're a pretty passionate group, believe in pickleball. And you've heard a lot
of the great sides about pickleball and the needs that we have. And I just want to touch on a couple others,
One of the things about pickleball that makes it so appealing to all ages is the social side. It's not
just a sport where you go and you play, but you interact with all the people that you're there with.
And it can be a very healing thing. Just personally, my wife passed a couple years ago and pickleball
has allowed me
to get out, stay active, and have a great social network of folks to deal with. And that's a side of
pickleball that you talked about anybody, and they'll say, yeah, I love playing. I love competing. Bob
talked about tournaments. We've all played in tournaments. That's great. But the recreational side is
something that we really like. Allison touched on the fact that we often have a hard time getting on
courts. And one of the reasons for that,
and most of the pickleball players here have traveled all over the country and played. Every other park
system has signage that talks about getting on and off the courts. And we really would like to work
with the park system in putting signage up. And what it does is, if the courts aren't full, people can
do whatever they want.
You know, you want to stay in your four group, that's fine if the courts aren't full. But in every other
place that you go, if the courts are full, there's a system. So many people are waiting, winners stay
in split, two people come on. If it's super busy, four on, four off. And we have just done that in other
places. Everywhere we've gone, we've seen that. So I'd like to work with the park system in making sure
that we have that kind of signage up
I've done it in other park systems to work on that and it's just some of the stuff that we'd like to
see. We appreciate the investment. We also appreciate the forward looking and making sure that down
the road there are also more facilities that we can deal with. Thank you.
Thank you. Appreciate it. Stay. Yeah, it rolls.
Good evening. I'm Aldona Reed. I've been a resident of Bloomington for about 20 years now. I live right
down the street from RCA Park. I want to thank the park board and all of the members that have served
on the board and also in the capacity of Bloomington Parks for all these years and all the places we've
lived. Bloomington Parks are some of the best in the country. So the reason I'm here tonight is
I feel that public parks should be diversified for all the people that use those parks. And I'm an avid
tennis player when I'm not injured or had surgery and a pickleball player. And we're members of Twin
Lakes and love the facilities there. Have been to many baseball games, have ice skated in the rinks,
not a hockey player. So we really appreciate everything that you do do.
What we would like to see is, because of the diversification of public parks, is leave the tennis courts.
Let people play pickleball. Why not add pickleball courts to some of the other tennis facilities? Bryant
Park has a fenced-in area where you could easily put in, I think, six pickleball courts.
And then as some of the other pickleball people have spoken, rather than putting the money into just
temporarily putting something in that's going to run out probably sooner than 2030, let's look at putting
that money into a facility that's a standalone pickleball area. Many of the places that we have visited
and even in our own area, Bedford, Greenwood,
Pickleball courts are fenced in. The balls don't go any place. It's very well maintained. There are
signage saying that this is the way of play if there are so many people waiting or if it's a certain
time. There are certain places where you're allowed to put your chairs. So if we could entertain that
and make pickleball
because it is the fastest growing sport, not just in the country, but in the world. And it's not going
anywhere. And it's a lot of fun to go down there because I do live there. I see it, hear it every day.
Go down there and there's itty bitties out there with their grandparents learning the sport. It is a
sport for everybody. So if you could think about that, would appreciate it. Really appreciate all you
do. Thank you so much.
I'm here on behalf of BJLBA and to speak about the Winslow baseball fields. I'd like to preface my comment
or soon to be comments here by just stating that Cody Martin and Zach Earl have done a tremendous job
of helping to maintain the fields this year. I think they've done as good of a job as I've seen since
I've been here as a youth coach since 2018. So again, no reflection on them. They've done a great job
at the hand they've been dealt.
That being said, the fields themselves, I think, again, I've been a youth coach here since 2018. And
the fields themselves have, I think, progressively gotten tougher to maintain in terms of water management,
game cancellations, and even attracting tournaments. I know a lot of the softball tournaments that are
often here, if there's a forecast to rain, they just move them somewhere like Indy. And that's because
just kind of looking at
how Winslow manages the water, there's a good chance if it rains, they're not gonna be able to play.
And I think we wanna make sure we're able to attract as many players as possible, whether it's softball
or youth baseball. I think when you think about turf and you think about maintaining a field, it's a
lot like the tires in your car or the roof in your house. It's not the sexiest thing to talk about,
but they're arguably some of the most important things that we deal with when it comes to being able
to drive that car or keep your house
from having other problems. So I think youth sports offers such a tremendous opportunity to the youth
in this community. And I've always been an advocate for saying uncoachable players become unemployable
adults, right? So you learn so many things with the opportunities that you get playing youth sports,
baseball being one of them. Again, I'm glad my son's had an opportunity to play sports here and I wanna
make sure that
everybody has that opportunity and continues to have it here in Bloomington. One of the byproducts of
fields not being playable at all times is you may play one year, you get a few rain outs, people get
frustrated, they move to Ellitsville or other surrounding areas that are not is prone to some of those
same issues and we lose those players and sometimes you lose the siblings that go along with it. So
it's important to me that you know all of the
folks that live here in Bloomington have that opportunity to play youth sports, learn the valuable lessons
that are part of that. And part of that is just investing in the field to make sure, just like those
wheels on your car, that you're able to have that car drivable in the proverbial sense. And everybody's
able to have access to that field, whether it's tournament play, big red baseball that's here, or our
rec league sports that are here and making sure that all of those players, coaches, and parents get
to be part of the sports community that are here in Bloomington. So thank you for your time.
Hi, my name is Matt Dabberton. I also am in the bike polo club. I just wanted to say thank you to the
parks department for continuing
to look at improvements to building and trades park as well as to the Mills Pool continuing to look
at what improvements that facility needs to keep it running. I know both of those facilities are kind
of underutilized in the case of Mills Pool and an underserved community. And so I just wanted to say
thank you for
continuing to keep those places in your list of priorities for capital investment for the future. We're
happy to call building and trades home. We hope to keep playing polo there for a long time to come.
We're very excited about the potential for a multi-use court there. And again, just wanted to say thank
you for continuing to look at these smaller facilities. Thank you for your comment.
Is there anyone else who would like to comment this evening? Oh, I don't know. We'll have to ask Molly.
Yeah. I am here to represent the figure skating community.
at Frank Southern. I've been involved for 22 years working with the skating school, 18 of those years.
I've been a key coordinator of lessons on the ice and of instructors running that program. I've also
worked 22 years with the Bloomington Figure Skating Club as a coach, a coordinator, and also as a mother.
The part-time facility
it's just incredibly challenging for all groups, all user groups. We often find ourselves in competition
with other activities that are year-round. It's been more than once that I've had someone come at the
beginning of the season and say, oh, we're not gonna return this year, we're actually gonna stick with
X other activity that our kids are able to do year-round.
We're constantly having to reevaluate, which should be the case, I think, for any program, but also
often reinventing our programs to suit the needs of a community that is faced with a part-time facility.
And just that limited season is really challenging. It's not just the season, it's also the fact that
we only have one sheet of ice.
We have a lot of user groups and we're constantly kind of vying for how much time we can get on the
ice from week to week. I'll say that participants, not just figure skaters, but also dedicated hockey
players, are pretty much exhausted and frustrated of having to travel so far to maintain the full season.
Going to Columbus, Greenwood, and Fishers for my own
daughter's competitive years, we were driving up to and possibly over 10 hours a week. Year round, with
the season in session here, it might be a little bit less, but we still maintained that through the
week to supplement the ice we had here. By doing that, she was able to actually qualify for a national
competition at which she placed fifth. So that was big, but it took a lot of effort.
I think if you talk to anyone who's regularly involved at Frank Southern, you'll find out there's a
lot of potential. People feel that there's potential for development that can't happen with the short
season, whether it's offering competitions or developing a club or I made a bunch of notes here and
I'm kind of lost in them. Just increasing community participation.
You know, when you see skaters get off the ice and they have smiles and joy and they've learned to be
independent and successful at challenging activities, it's really, it's a really great community. So,
thank you.
It just shows that all those people perfectly timed their comments. Yeah, yeah. So, okay, great. Any
other public comments this evening? Just so you know, we can't replicate Wrigley Field, okay? We can't
replicate Wrigley Field that says on your t-shirt there. We can't build that here, sorry.
I didn't get there this year, but I wish I could have. My name is Dave Hus. When I came to town back
in 1985, I harassed the then president of the baseball league, Bud Damon, because I wanted to coach
a team. They were kind of leery about a 19-year-old kid, but I harassed them every couple weeks that
they finally said yes. So I just finished my 42nd year coaching a rec league team. I've been on the
board for 38 years.
Seen a lot of games, seen a lot of wet fields, a lot of dry fields. But this past season, we rented
the fields every Monday through Friday from April 1st to August 31st for the rec league program. We
got as much use as we could out of it. It was better this year for rain outs as opposed to last year,
which was, of course, everything was a monsoon and they just couldn't keep anything dry. We did lose
some teams.
Our numbers went down, I believe it was five teams from last year to this year. I mean, if you,
you know, one of our competing leagues is Smithville and you know, they don't pay rent except a dollar
a year for those fields. So they work those fields, they throw a ton of diamond dry and they're on a
hill. So they don't rain out very often or sometimes they just play in really wet fields. I don't want
to work the field. So I'm happy to have the city do all that work.
But sometimes they just can't keep it dry. Of course, I've been around so long, they stuck my name on
one of those fields. And everybody always said it was mine anyway, because I just started scheduling
myself on that field. And I always told everybody I don't like to walk that far. It was the closest
to my car. But anyway, that's something else. Of course, I saw, say, I believe Jim's not here tonight.
He coached the team back when his boys were young for a couple years at Winslow. With so much travel
tournaments going on, which is why we only do rec league during the week, because we've got probably
40% of the kids that play travel on the weekends. There's a lot of tournaments over in the Columbus
area, which that's my weekend job as I umpire those tournaments.
There's been a couple of baseball tournaments here each year, which is nice to drive seven minutes to
umpire as opposed to 50 minutes. So, excuse me, turf in the fields would make it easier, make it closer
for me to stay. Um, I know we don't, we are a revenue generating income for the city and I know we don't
pay a hundred percent of what you guys put into it, but you do make money off us.
And I know you make more off the fields. If they do get turf, because if softball tournaments will come
here, they usually, they canceled six times this year, but they didn't have tournaments. Baseball got
all three of theirs in, which they were lucky with. And my time is up, so I'll say thank you for having
me. Thank you for your comment.
My name is Ron Dreyos from Bloomington Junior League Baseball. Very simple. Children deserve a better
place to play than they currently have. Drainage is the problem. You've got the money. Do the best you
can to fix it.
Excellent, thank you. I'm a local landscape architect so I'm actually here for another reason to just
kind of see what kind of work might be coming up for Springpoint Architects. But while I'm here I'm
noticing all of my old BJLBA people and so I need to give a shout out for Winslow. I'm a retired baseball mom and
My kids are in college now, but we absolutely loved the facility. Yeah, you tend to want to think about
going to Smithville or anywhere else, but it's nestled in the community at Winslow. There's trails to
it. The kids can bike to baseball games. So we stayed there, and it was amazing, and we loved it. And
I think it will draw more people to the program if they can get fields.
that'll work for these kids. There were a lot of rain outs over the years. I mean, we were there probably
2013 to, you know, for 10 years. So it's been a long standing issue for the club. And now I'm getting
really nervous and emotional talking about it. But I just thought maybe you would want a mom's perspective
up here. And we loved it and the family and the family loved it. So that's my my plug.
And Molly, do we have any comments online? Is it? No. Okay. Yeah. Thanks. Is there anybody else who
would like to comment this evening? Okay. Well, I really appreciate all the perspectives and I mean,
I think one thing that I appreciate about
Tim and the Parks Department is that, I mean, obviously recreational opportunities change sometimes
over generations, right? I mean, where was bike polo 30 years ago? Or pickleball. Or people prefer splash
pads and or turf comes along. And I mean, I think that we're lucky that our Parks Department is definitely
open to like, what are the changing needs of things that people want and not just saying, well, this
is what we've had forever and this is the way we do it.
I mean, this is a lot of great information for us to be able to consider over the next few months. And
hopefully there's a $200,000 Lilly Foundation grant out there as well to do some planning. So Ellen,
Israel, do you want to add anything else as we look like we're wrapping up? I guess maybe a question
then for Tim.
is can you talk about what the significance of this plan means and what sort of some of the next steps
would be? So, you know, I think the plan is significant in it started off as one thing, right? Hey,
seven million dollars is what's available in a bond.
That's what we could do in early 2027, which you hear the diverse interests that we have in our community,
all the different things, all the benefits that different sports and locations bring to people. And
we could spend 10 times that amount very quickly taking care of these things. So it started
as a prioritization of, hey, what could we do with that $7 million? Luckily, now we have a really great
new opportunity. Kathleen just mentioned this $200K planning grant. So instead, this becomes a little
bit more of a jumping off point.
And I mentioned before I was debating with the news of the grant, you know, should we still keep this
tonight? And I'm really glad we did because I really appreciate hearing all the different perspectives
that we heard tonight and I wrote down some great ideas as a jumping off point for this plan.
So from here, what I would say we're going to do is we need to work on our Lilly CPI, Indiana CPI, I
should call it by what it is, Indiana Community Parks Initiative.
planning grants, which is due at the end of October. So we can give the board an update at the October
meeting on October 15th of what we are looking at as part of that planning grant. That planning grant
is not a fixed list of necessarily what will be in the project implementation grant or what we might
hold out and keep as part of other funding sources through our annual capital, through
paying off the Twin Lakes revenue bond and freeing up other annual capital that way or from the municipal
bond. There's a lot of questions still to be figured out. Additional grant opportunity is exciting.
It gives us opportunities to grow maybe some of these things that we're gonna be very bare bones into
something a little more robust and maybe gives us the opportunity to incorporate some of the things
we heard tonight as well. So it's a jumping off point. We need to
investigate and understand the exact grant process a little bit more still. As I mentioned, this is
very recent news. We're still digesting it, figuring it out a little bit, and figuring out the best
path forward to take these items, these priority items. We've said here's the priorities. It's not an
exhaustive list. It's not necessarily everything that will be in the grant. But this is a 1.0 version
that now we can work on as a plan for all of the available potential funding sources.
and maybe have a question, too, is I really appreciate everyone who participated here tonight. And the
most that we heard was from a lot of organized groups. So hockey, baseball, pickleball, right? But our
trail users or our pool users aren't necessarily in a pool-using club to say, oh, we're going to come
out here. So I guess I just would want to make sure that those voices are heard, too. And so can you
talk about where else we've
gather data from them already. And then I think you maybe mentioned there is maybe something that's
still open for comment. Is that right? All different sources of information when we're considering decision
making. I think we have a really big responsibility to make good decisions for the community because
there's so many passionate people that have so many interests that are important to them, right?
So that is why we use a comprehensive approach. That is why we master plan. And that is why we did a
statistically valid community survey to get a representative sample. There's a lot of data we can pull
out from that about what the community is using. For example, I mentioned before trails are still by
number what we hear the most from community that they value. So certainly including investment in taking
care of our trails.
The beeline trail is such a vital connector. We know there's a couple areas on that that need some work
and some help right now, as well as our other trails. So it's balancing that approach. And as we go
into this planning phase, we know, and honestly it may feel a little repetitive or redundant to some
of the things we did in the master plan, and that's okay. But that'll give us more opportunities to
balance the feedback and to hear and make sure we're making representative choices. Because even with
a max of $17 million. I'm not saying we're going to be able to get $17 million or invest that much,
but even with that, that will go very quickly. Yeah, thank you, everyone, for participating in this
conversation. And as my colleague Ellen mentioned, we could see the passion for sports and different
sports that also show the variety of
passion for recreation and for creating a new generation with different sports. So regarding the franchise
arena, so we have, it seems, maybe two years to reach a final decision if a new place is not found or
agreed on.
So in this moment, do we have any kind of potential places and actually not for the ice arena because
there was also a suggestion about creating more places for pickleball in other courts or fields. So
have the department start some kind of potential search for possible places
either for the arena, the ice arena, and also the sports that we have here in this conversation?
It really is. And we want to see it preserved and continue to be a community offering for a long time
to come. But we know the cost of building a new one as it stands right now and finding a location would
be literally all of the money we're talking about.
and would preclude us from doing any of the other things we're talking about here today. And, you know,
I think the reason we're talking about sports so much is because that's where we've ended up, for better
or worse, from the last 20, 40, 60 years, whatever, is, you know, a lot of the places that need investment
right now are those sports facilities. So we're a little sports heavy in this conversation, but there's
still general public use, general green space needs as well. Sorry, Israel, where was I going with that?
As we think about, have we looked for land yet? No. We've started a stakeholder group. We've brought
some of those stakeholders for the ice arena together and had meetings twice so far this summer. This
meeting tonight was sort of an important next step to identify where we're going. The grant is in the
mix now as well, which opens some possibilities.
However, I will say first impression, I didn't see a lot of opportunity for Ice Arena in the language
that was being described in the grant. That doesn't mean we're still asking questions, we're still fact
finding, figuring that out, but even if the grant can help us take care of it, again, I don't want to
assume we get the grant, assuming we get the grant, that can help us take care of all these other needs
and community interests that we want to fund, well then that opens up other avenues, right? So it's a puzzle.
and we don't have all the pieces flipped over yet, and that's what we're trying to work on, is just
finding out exactly how we can meet all of these community needs to the best of our ability. Yeah. I
have in my notes someone, actually several people were mentioning about what other places have been
doing regarding
some kind of similar issues that we have here in Bloomington. So I wonder if there has been any kind
of conversation or interaction with other departments where they have been able to solve in certain
way this situation is about the lack of facilities or places to develop all the scores. I heard,
for example, Greenwood
that is a big one, Columbus and Evansville and some other neighboring places. There was a conversation
about rotating fields or having kind of some fields that can be used in different moments in different
times. So have we had that kind of interaction, conversation with other departments in Indiana?
By other departments, I'm thinking maybe you're meeting other departments within the city, for example,
or other parks departments outside of us, like collaborating with an outside agency. Yeah, interesting
question. So absolutely, I think there's an opportunity here as we look at these multiple different
needs. Is there a way to combine any of them in a creative way we haven't yet thought of? I think that's
kind of what you're driving at and say, you know, some of these needs could be combined.
The most logical partner for us around would be Monroe County Parks and Recreation, and we'll certainly
have conversations with them. You know, understanding there's sort of a history here where, you know,
they operate Karst out there. They focused on the soccer improvements. Some of those were funded with
convention and visitor bureau dollars. We're absolutely looking to see if those convention and visitor
bureau dollars are a possibility for any of these other projects as well in similar fashion to how Karst was
is funded and improved, right? So I think partnerships and collaboration are really important. I would
say not, I haven't thought too much about other parks department collaborations outside of the county,
but yeah, we can think about that a little bit more. Collaborations, it's also having a reference. Yeah,
benchmarking, I think benchmarking is. And the facilities they have, is that what you mean?
where they have, you know, the outcomes for the requests from the community and they have been able
to find a solution. So it's having like examples or references about maybe things that we can
also incorporate. I understand that aspect of it now and that's certainly part of like if we're doing
planning work that could be part of planning work.
Can you talk a little bit more about sponsorship, naming rights, philanthropy, corporate involvement?
There's just a brief comment about that in number 14. What do you think our approach will be? I guess
that'd be a good thing to benchmark. I know you're probably benchmarking that against other communities.
But yeah, could we rely on that in Bloomington to play a role in all of this? And yeah, what's kind
of the next steps there? You know, critically, that was one of the 15 recommendations that we said.
I mentioned we've looked at other facilities that have received mid to large corporate naming, right?
And that comes with a certain amount of investment that can help us. And I'll answer this, and Julie,
if you have anything additional
that I miss out. So Julie Ramey, our community relations manager, currently manages a lot of our existing
sponsorships and naming rights. For example, we're doing roundabouts. We have sponsorships for a lot
of our community events, things like that. And Keto, our sports director, the two of them have been
talking and looking at, there are some companies out there that have this level of expertise that we
do not have. We're good at managing local business
relationships but not trying to attract, I'm not even going to say a name because I don't want to jinx
it or put something out there that's wrong, a bigger company. And there are companies out there that
work on commission only. So they only get paid if they are able to land something for us. So what Julie
and Kido have been talking about, they've been getting information about these companies already and
about their fee structure, commission, whatever.
From our perspective, any sponsorship or naming we get, even if we pay a commission on it, is money
we didn't have otherwise. And so likely next steps with that would be bringing some options to the board
or a recommended contract to the board of a company we would like to work with to help explore naming
rights for us and sort of a list of potential opportunities that we're looking at that we would give
to them. Did I sum that up okay?
I think that this town has a long history of, you know, some local businesses that have invested a lot
in our community and just put the word out there, we should continue to support that in this community
and see more of it. So, thanks. Anything else that you'd like to add this evening, Tim?
everyone for being here. We really appreciate it. More to come on this topic as we explore this exciting
opportunity and upon opportunity. So stay tuned. Stay with your contacts. I know there's a lot of staff
here. A lot of you have relationships or contacts with our staff. Keep those up and we're open to further
conversations outside of official capacities as well. Of course. Thank you all so much for coming out
this evening.