Hello and welcome to Cats Week. I'm Annalise Poorman.
The Bloomington City Council met on November 5th. The meeting was centered on the proposed stadium district
redevelopment for the area around Miller Showers Park. The proposal drew both enthusiasm and skepticism
from council members and local residents. Director of Economic and Sustainable Development for the city,
Jane Cooper-Smith, began by explaining why this area was chosen for redevelopment and how that vision
could potentially take shape.
This district, which is not just the Memorial Stadium, and it's not just football. It is this whole
complex that attracts thousands and thousands of visitors to Bloomington. And it has its own vibe. And
it is festive. It has an identity that flexes and changes with time. So if you're driving in, if you're
commuting into Bloomington, it's got one identity at 8 AM on Monday. If you're here on a basketball
night, there was a basketball game tonight. You can see the cones going up.
The district starts to change for people who live in the area some of them Love this proximity and some
of them are chagrined by the activity the inconvenience of the traffic patterns changing You can even
hear music permeating the district when there are you know activities happening outside in the
the athletics complex area from Dunn Street near Griffey you can hear even the North marching band practicing
in those football games so there there are elements that carry throughout the district and I'm afraid that
I haven't focused on selling it and I haven't painted a real picture for why it's the stadium district,
but it's very purposeful that it be the stadium district. Senior Director of Government and Community
Relations for the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce, Chris M.G., said he supported the concept
of the stadium district, adding that he believes it could attract development and visitors to the city's
northwest side.
The stadium district concept began 16 months ago, advanced by a Northside hotelier who recognized the
potential for this area. It is not to displace, diminish neighborhood identity. Absolutely none of that.
This is a commercial venture, not a neighborhood one. Neighborhood identity is going to stay the same.
And so we'll talk about this further in the next public comment, but I want to make sure we realize
where we're coming from and the improvements made to the boundaries from where they were earlier. Thank
you for your time. I look forward to speaking again. During public comment, local resident Paul Rousseau
said he is skeptical of the proposal. Speaking on Zoom, he worried about how the name and vision might
misrepresent the area. I live a quarter mile north of the Heartworks Brewery. And regarding the boundaries,
I appreciate that my neighborhood
just to the west of college, a residential neighborhood is not inside of this. I think that's appropriate.
And what I'm mystified by is why the vast areas of college student housing between just to the east
of Showers Park, there are probably, oh my gosh, I don't know how many, three, four or 5,000 units of
housing in there.
And I don't know why that's in a district whose purpose is primarily commercial. That doesn't make much
sense for me. As an overall comment, I don't know if this is the time to say it. I know very little
about this, just learned about it, actually. And I'm wondering if one of the main purposes is to serve as a
welcoming to people because this is such a common gateway into Bloomington. Well then why not call it
that? The gateway district instead of the stadium district because the name stadium doesn't really seem
to have anything to do with the purposes. During council discussion council member Kate Rosenbarger
cautioned against moving too fast with the proposal before getting enough input from the public.
Some thoughts that I have around it if we do put on it and so that I would like. Yes, you to go to a
maple Heights neighborhood Association meeting I would like there to be a process for recommending and
choosing a name for the district that happened for Eagleton Avenue, it's one 3 this is an entire district, I think
It's a lot more meaningful to everyone like residents of our city if they're involved in something like
that I think there's a lot more buy-in. I know some businesses like the main stadium district, but I
have not heard a resident say that they like it or that want to live in or near and that is problematic for me.
Councilmember Matt Flaherty said, in his view, this discussion shows how complicated redevelopment efforts
can be. He said that the city cannot look at this as a purely commercial move and not focus on the residents
in the neighborhood. There's a book called Suburban Nation that I read 10 years ago that was probably
the first urban planning book I read of now many urban planning books.
And it introduces a concept about pods of development and that the fundamental problem with development
from the 1950s to, you know, even today in some cases, but let's say 2000, is that we thought of everything
as separate. Commercial here, residential, multifamily here, single family over here, you know, business
parks here. And it has a lot of negative effects. With the fragments of community, it creates
highways in the middle of town, for instance, to get people around because we no longer have a connected
network. And while that's not exactly what we're talking about here, I think it really resonates with
what I found to be kind of wrong-headed, I guess, about thinking that this is just about commercial
and that we can ignore the residential or just pull them out when the neighborhoods like Garden Hill
and Maple Heights say that they really find this quite offensive and not at all attractive to them.
I think when I think of quality of place or strengthening Bloomington's identity, sense of place and
pride, the things that are called out in the presentation from staff about what this is about, it just
doesn't seem like this is it. The council voted seven to one to indefinitely postpone the stadium district renaming.
At the Bloomington Redevelopment Commission meeting on November 3rd, Commissioner Anna Killian Hanson
presented information regarding the funding of community development block grant programs, social service
and physical improvement projects, and where that funding will go. She said that the RDC has already
received a grant of $53,000 from the Community Foundation toward the Hopewell Project and that those
funds would likely go towards outreach sessions with
developers, training sessions, and more. It's to be used towards our initiatives at Hopewell South.
So the way that we wrote it could be used for any of our outreach sessions with developers or lenders.
We're doing some training sessions that can be used for that. It can be used for our work with Flintlock.
So it's pretty flexible and we have not
determined exactly what we're doing with it. Next, the commission discussed a resolution 25-127 regarding
infrastructure work in the Southwest Quadrant of Bloomington. The RDC has already set aside $5 million
for the plan. Most of that funding would go towards road work such as possible controlled signals or
roundabouts and new intersections or passageways to reduce traffic.
Assistant attorney for the city, Dana Kerr, detailed some of the areas that would be targeted by the
plan. One location for a roadway would be connecting Vanguard. There's a small piece of Vanguard already
here that was part of the PIC development. And then, so bringing it all the way up to Weemer, because
most of Weemer, particularly in this area, is floodplain. There is also a one-lane bridge.
there that is dangerous. So development in this area, which is one of the few areas left in Bloomington
to develop, will need more infrastructure for safety and with traffic flow and police and fire. So Vanguard
is one of those. And Weimar Road then would become part of the trail system.
could be used for that. So at TAP and WIEMER, there would need to be probably a roundabout, either a
controlled signal or a roundabout, and probably a roundabout. There would need to be an intersection
connection here as well.
Over on the right, you see this is Adams Street. And it ends just behind Summit Elementary School. And
then it's, you can go up a little bit. And then you have Adams that comes down here. It ends. And this
is part of the Summit development. And what this would do would create another north-south passageway between
this part of town and the lower connection. And then Sudbury is this road, it's already to here, but
it would come over, there'd probably be a roundabout structure there, and there would be some other
roads inside the development that, you know, wouldn't be anything that the courtesy would do.
Travis Vensel, one of the developers for the Summit District, advised the Commission to set aside some
TIF money for the design and build phases of the project. After much looking, all of Sudbury that's
remaining, which is the Sullivan Summit development, is within the TIF. It's within a couple of areas
of expansion of the tap-rope TIFs, but all of the
remaining 135 acres is in some part of the consolidated tip as of now from long discussions over the
last two years with hand and legal. So if something's changed from that, we haven't been notified, but
it's all within the existing consolidated tip. And I think that map even shows that, but that's our
understanding after working with the city for a long time on that.
We're here to ask for support of this because we came forward and we realized after doing a traffic
study of 22 different intersections and road improvements that there was a lot of decisions that demeaning
me made at the city on where the priorities were. There were intersections in that traffic study that
failed today. There were intersections that needed work. Some work now, there were intersections that
would need work in 15 years. There's a couple of other projects
stewing down there and trying to put these all together and anticipate which was coming first and which
intersection was going to happen and who was responsible for which off-site improvement gave us great
angst because we couldn't commit to what improvements we were going to do because if somebody else came
along first they would have to do that improvement and we would get shifted to another
priority down the list. Next, the commission discussed the plans for developing Hopewell South as a
plan to unit development, which would make building on the property more flexible. Kellyanne Hansen
explained. The current R4 zoning would only allow for 28 homes across both those blocks. So,
with the major, what was that number? Up to 118, somewhere between 84 to 118 homes.
instead of just 28. So as you know, PUDs, you can write your own rules. It seemed like a much better
avenue to go down than just trying to get variants after variants. Also, their original contract included
the design work. They have been great to work with. They've made quite a bit of progress, but it did
not include
getting over the hump of our own internal barriers, which this is one of them, some zoning changes that
are needed. Kerr walked through the potential benefits of the PUD for the city. And the nice thing about
the PUD for the city is that, you know, with the location that this is in, it's not, you know, on main
roads and things like that. She has done this. Allie has done this in a lot of other locations.
with great success. But if Bloomington decides, eh, we really don't want to change the UDO entirely
to allow these things to happen, this can be like a pilot test for this and see how well it does. How
well does it give us that affordable housing, which my understanding is the RDC's number one goal, number
two number one goal,
for Hopewell South is to spend as little as necessary to get the project off the ground and done, plus
to maximize the affordability of the houses. And when you talk about things like the right of way to
the roads, that can be very limiting. And the goal is that in
200 years, all of our roads would be of this larger size and things, but the fact of the matter is,
if you go south on Fairview, it's not part wide. So maybe it could, instead of being 60 foot, it could
be something less than 60 foot. I don't know why. I don't know what to propose. I'm not the architect
engineer, but I do know that when you
don't give up as much right of way, that gives you more land to develop. And that gives you the opportunity
for more houses. But all the considerations are going. There's discussions about fire trucks and trash
collection. And different things like that are ongoing. Because we just want to make sure these kind
of things are considered. And they are being considered.
Valley has actually provided some extremely detailed answers to some of the questions that's been asked
so far. So again, going through the PUD process is not something that the city normally does an activity.
Yes, they review them, but we don't create them. And we need the assistance of somebody that knows the project,
knows the UDO, and her company has already reviewed the entire UDO and knows what would work with it
and what wouldn't. And so in my opinion, she's the best one situated, her company is, to help us get
the PUD and make sure that we get what is going to do the very most.
and increase right away, increase infrastructure costs and such, decrease right away, get you more affordable
housing. So there's all those benefits of having the PUD. If we tried to go to variances again, there'd
just be too many necessary. So we're just being encouraged to go around the PUD and again,
The motion passed unanimously. The Monroe County Commissioners met on Thursday, November 6th. At the
start of the meeting, Commissioner Jodi Madeira spoke on Operation Green Light for Veterans. Operation
Green Light for Veterans. Whereas the residents of Monroe County have great respect, admiration, and
the utmost gratitude for all the men and women who have selflessly served our country and this community
in the armed forces,
and the contributions and sacrifices of those who served in the armed forces have been vital in maintaining
the freedoms and way of life enjoyed by our citizens, and Monroe County seeks to honor individuals who
have made countless sacrifices for freedom by placing themselves in harm's way for the good of all,
and veterans continue to serve our community in the American Legion, veterans of foreign wars, religious
groups, civil service, and by functioning as county veterans service officers in 29 states,
to help fellow former service members access more than $52 billion in federal health, disability, and
compensation benefits each year. And approximately 200,000 service members transition to civilian communities
annually. And an estimated 20% increase of service members will transition to civilian life soon. And
studies indicate that 44% to 72% of service members experience high levels of stress during transition
from military to civilian life
active military service members transitioning from military service are at a high risk for suicide during
their first year after military service, and the National Association of Counties encourages all counties,
parishes, and boroughs to recognize Operation Green Life for Veterans, and Monroe County appreciates
the sacrifices of our United States military personnel and believes specific recognition should be granted
We, the Monroe County Board of Commissioners, do hereby proclaim November 4-11, 2025 as Operation Green
Light for Veterans, a time to salute and honor the service and sacrifices of those transitioning from
active service, and encourage Monroe County citizens to recognize the importance of honoring all those
who made immeasurable sacrifices to preserve freedom by displaying green lights in a window of their
place of business or residence from November 4-11, 2025.
Proclaimed the sixth day of November, 2025, the Monroe County Board of Commissioners. Next, Veterans
Service Officer Stephen Miller made some Veterans Day announcements.
My office is going to be supporting a number of Veterans Day events starting today. Directly after this,
I'm heading up to Meadowwood from 11 to 2 for a Veterans Day luncheon and book signing. Then on Veterans
Day itself, we're going to be supporting an early morning coffee with veterans at Starbucks and Indiana
Avenue with a number of IU folks. Then we're going to be at the IU flag raising that starts at 730 a.m.
Then we're going to
be at the Veterans Day Breakfast Social at the Center for Veteran and Military Students from 830 to
11. And starting at 1030, we're going to be at the American Legion for the Veterans Day program sponsored
by them. And finally, on the day after, on the 12th, we're going to be hosting a Veterans Day employee
appreciation event for all Monroe County government veteran and military members. We're going to have coffee
and donuts, so if you have folks, please let them know about that. We're real excited. And then additionally,
the Indiana Department of Veterans Affairs has produced a program called Operation Emergency Food for
SNAP beneficiaries. Folks whose SNAP benefits are in danger may apply for a Military Family Relief Fund
grant that will pay up to the amount of the SNAP benefits. A couple of things that are of note.
the benefit does count against the $2,500 maximum grant benefit per individual. So that is a consideration.
And we're being told that they're processing checks as quickly as 72 hours. So if anyone has need, please
reach out to my office. We're happy to help get folks connected to that benefit. Then Monroe County's
fleet and building manager, Richard Kreider, spoke about the ENB paving Maple Grove road paving project.
The scope of work is drainage improvement, sidewalk repair and replacement, and asphalt replacement.
On July 25th, we entered into an agreement with Specialty Engineering Group to provide professional
services for the project. To date, design and development construction documents have been completed.
We're currently in the bidding phase.
Notice to bidders was published on October 6th and October 23rd. A pre-bid meeting was held at Showers
North on October 24th, and proposals were due by 10 a.m. this morning. Lastly, Highway Director Lisa
Ridge gave some insight on the traffic control and flagging stormwater project with Marshall Security
LLC. We typically use temporary flagging on different projects throughout the year.
So this is just an as-need basis. It's similar to the contract we've done with Security Pro in the past.
Before the meeting ended, Commissioner Julie Thomas delivered the sad news that longtime Monroe County
civic leader and activist Charlotte Zitlow had passed away. We had received the sad news yesterday of
the passing of former County Commissioner Charlotte Zitlow.
And it's one of those things where every time I walk in this building, I think about her efforts to
ensure that this historic courthouse was preserved. And there are a number of other projects she's worked
on, but I think this is probably the most visual in our community and the most visible and the one we
see most often.
as well and I just really appreciate public service and I appreciate her public service and she will
be missed by her family and friends. The next Monroe County Commissioner's meeting will take place on
Thursday, November 13th.
The Ellitsville Board of Parks and Recreation met on November 3rd. Rachel Peden McCarty of the Ellitsville
History Center spoke to the commission to inquire about a budget to help fix issues at the History Center.
I just wanted to come tonight. It's been at least more than a year, year and a half, two, with Chief
Durnall at the Ellitsville History Center. He gave me a key. We've been working there.
From time to time, I look up things for people. We've met people that want to see things or donate things.
But now, we have a regular Tuesday at 10 a.m. volunteer hour. And so, we've had some people come, and
we're trying to get it so we can have it open on a more regular basis. But I come to you tonight to
let you know that, first of all. Second, and I talk to you, Mr. O'Donnell, we need someone to look at
the computer there.
because I've never been able to turn it on. And I would like to see what potential budget we have to
get display cases and things off tables in the future and see how we can raise money. Maybe we can have
something at the Spring Fling event. McCarty also spoke about how the public can get involved.
anybody watching on CADS, if they're interested in volunteering, you can always show up at 10 a.m. on
a Tuesday. If we're not going to be able to be there, I'll try and post a note on the door because we
do have some other commitments. But, or my name, Rachel Peden-McCarty, you can find me on Facebook and
send me a message and we'll... I'll see what I've got a fellow might bring with me tomorrow, see if
he can just give us an idea of what we need to do.
Board President Jimmy Durnall agreed to work on finding an exact budget the next day and promised to
follow up with McCarty. The Ellitsville Board of Parks and Recreation will meet again on Monday,
December 1st. And that is all for Cats Week. Thank you for joining us. For Cats and WFHB, I'm Annalise Poorman.