Call the meeting to order. David jumps on. We'll be able to include him in that. We can certainly go
back a little bit, catch him up to speed. I know he got the packet ahead of time. Today is a special
meeting that was called to review an opportunity to look at the visitor center, downtown visitor center.
floor plan. Mike has provided some detail in the packet here. If you've got that online. Otherwise,
I think I have an extra copy. And just as a clarification. So
In our role here, we're really looking at funding. This is something we're able to fund out
of the innkeeper's tax. It would be an appropriate use of the innkeeper's tax for the development of
a business center downtown. But Mike's provided some of what might be entailed in that. I'll let Mike
and his team talk a little bit about that. And then as we come to the end,
Of course, it always boils down to it. It boils down to money. And so we can talk about the amount that
feels appropriate to provide or not for this use. And then we'll talk about where our financial standing
is. So Mike, you and your team, you want to take it away and show us a little bit about what you're
planning? So did everybody get these floor plans? They didn't come with the packet.
Um, but uh Yeah, I sent it with the packet. Um, now i've got the uh, there's two there's two There's
two options in there. Um Oh, interesting. I'm sorry. Those are just um, so so spring point um is the
design company that we chose to do the project if we do the project for it. Bolden Construction is a
local construction company that works with SpringPoint to do this. They might get asked to see a couple
of layout 4.8 options. And we spent a little money with SpringPoint to get that done. And those are
two options there that go back to the June meeting.
stuff I presented at the June meeting with all the different ideas and things for exhibits and what
would be in the visitor center. That's it right there. Those different displays would be culinary, Indiana
University, arts, outdoor recreation, that type of stuff. We have our reception desk in there. We have
one office, two restrooms,
a mural on the wall, possibly a small stage, a couple of other different exhibit types, a retail area,
you can see those. Now we are not in, those are just what ifs. The way this would work is once the funding
is approved, visit Bloomington staff, board of directors,
anybody from this body that wanted to get involved in a planning process with Springpoint and us to
determine exactly what it would all be, we need to do that. You know, there are things up for debate.
Visit Bloomington, we feel that, you know, there is a public restroom in the 4th Street garage. We feel
we shouldn't have public restrooms in the visitor center because then it's gonna become, that's what
it's gonna become, is a public restroom. But there's certainly stuff we can talk about.
There's two of them because we are going to be a facility that's going to, if you have more than 15
people, if you're hosting more than 15 people at a time, by code you have to have two bathrooms. That's
why there's two bathrooms there. And again, it's just a couple of different sample layouts right there
along Walnut Street and that area in the garage. $600,000 is the,
top-end amount of what the design and build process would be. It would be about a five-month long process
once the plans were approved to do the build out. So I don't know the exact timing. If we can't go back
in front of the County Council to get the appropriation approved until March or April, then we'd be
looking at late, hopefully that's fixed in late 2026 when it would be completed.
But my board has approved the lease, the Fortsuit Garage lease for us contingent upon the innkeeper's
tax appropriation being approved by the CDC and the county council. I know I talked before all the different
benefits of us moving into this location, the proximity of being down here near this convention center.
Obviously, number one priority is promoting and marketing the convention center.
Um, but, um, certainly our old space that we're in now, um, not, you know, traffic wise, not a lot of
traffic coming in there. Um, we don't like the opportunity to be downtown, engaging with Republicans
downtown and doing all the things we can do there. Send, talk about the Monroe County tours and experience,
send them out all over the county and that type of stuff. Now this,
visitor center would only be the visitor center with the one office for the, for Teal, who runs the
visitor center for us, or whoever would be working at that day. Our offices would remain on North Walnut
Street. We would close the visitor center. We wouldn't have a visitor center out there except with a
vestibule, which we'd keep open with visitor guides and things like that. Until only one day,
the space next to this in the garage becomes available and we can potentially look at that as a place
to move our professional options down the line. So the use on this would be general downtown visitor
information. I know in the past you've talked about doing tours.
hosting receptions or things in conjunction with the Convincence Center, we could be a great venue,
we could be an offsite reception area for things like that. Being open during homecoming weekend and
different times when visitation is high and on weekends more, just doing more to engage with students
and just visitors more than we can right now in a public location, but absolutely.
And you talked about marketing and the convention center. And so as you're doing that, I'm assuming
this would be the launch point, bringing tours of the convention center that would start in the end
and that in those locations and things like that. That seems to make sense to us. I know that not set
in stone, but I think we will have some office, one office space for Sean Ballard in the expanded convention center.
to work some sales out of in conjunction with Jean and everybody, or I could use it or whoever.
But yeah, we definitely think it's gonna be, the way we're doing it, it's gonna be a really beautiful,
attractive, engaging space. And it is gonna be a great starting point for any type of group that we
want to take on a tour of the traveling tourism stuff. So I could see us doing
downtown walking tours or sports facility tours. We've got a sporting group that's coming in, a place
to meet for that and things like that. Questions, thoughts? There'll be an interactive area in there
where people can dial up their own itineraries and things like that with some technology within that.
OK. Lydia, just to
general financial update for us and where we stand with funding. Mike's asking 600,000 on the upper
end is what I heard. These are not official numbers, but our current balance in the general fund is
almost exactly what it was
the January carryover. So we're right at the same amount. That includes the $500,000 that has been expended
roughly this year for the car farm. So even if we haven't spent any of our balance at this point, so
that is still sitting at around 4.3%.
4 million, which is what it was to carry over for the year and with the collection that came in September.
And then the 1.2 million more that we're anticipating coming in in October, November, and December,
just based on history and business volume that's on the books, we would anticipate rolling over at least
that amount as a carryover balance.
into 2026. So, just as a reminder, our budget did go through the county and that was preliminarily approved
and I think finally approved. And so what we had presented at the time was a budget of 3.266 million.
And that included increases for staffing, both the visit Bloomington and provincial center management
company. So that 3.266, if you'll think about that, that's what we have kind of encumbered for next
year. We're anticipating based on 2024 numbers and where we're doing in the month, if we didn't have
that month skip,
4.1 million coming in in 2026. If the business is flat with a posh opening, that might go up a little
bit. If business is the same, a business volume stays the same. So that's about a $875,000 delta that
we'll still be adding to the balance in addition to just
the 4.4 million. So we're not at a point to where an expenditure of this size, just a straight expenditure
allocation would not dip into the balance as we feel we need a balance once we start getting into 2027,
2028, as we're running a larger operation in the commencement center,
spending more money on expenditures before the volume really picks up to the level where it's sustainable.
So that being the case, financially, I feel like we're in good shape in order to be able to recommend
this $600,000, but I do think we need to put a dollar limit on what we would approve or ask the county
to allow us to add to the budget. It's a budget appropriation, additional budget appropriation
for 2026. And that's what we did last year when we did the car spawn project. So hope that helps as
far as just giving you the financial overview of where the innkeepers packs Williams and what decisions
could. So this question may be out of segment, but these are just samples, right?
Right. They're still finalized, make some changes, whatnot. What plus the thought process, you got the
one office for Teal and Rivers running. But staffing wise, how do you guys staff that portion now, since
it's all in the same building, since it's separated? We have two people there most of the time. The
person running, the person operating the plant basket, and probably Teal or some other person, yeah.
We're gonna staff it with two people to start it off with just to make sure we can service it. You know,
eventually once we get the hang of it, it might only be one people. I plan on cross-training the entire
staff at Visible Retail to be able to open and close that visitor center and work it. And my mind is
on security. And we know we're gonna get some people coming in there. We know the location.
You know, it's a double-edged sword. We're gonna make that area a little bit better and safer and nicer,
just like the conventions center in. At the same time, we know some people are gonna wander in there.
We're gonna have to be trained to deal with that. But I would think, you know, two people, I don't,
we are located right next to the city parking services. So it is a pretty secure area as far as the
city taking care of that. I'm not looking at,
time to hire a security person at this point. You know, we might do that on occasion when we know we
need it or something, but, you know, we're not, we, right now we have Teal, Teal handles services for
groups as well as she runs the visitor center out there. We will, as Mike said, we've got in our budget
for this coming year 26 to hire a
second condition salesperson, we'll call it a junior salesperson who worked under Sean. That person
can also be cross-trained to handle some of those services as well, to get the hang of groups and dealing
with them. So we may look to eventually transition that from Teal to those services for this new person.
But I think,
I hope that the demand and the amount of people we have coming into the new visitor center, once we're
open and stabilized after a few months, we can maybe chart. We right now, we have four to five, three
to five part-time people that work out at the visitor center and are trying to ask to pay them an hourly
wage. I would have been so glad to maybe make that into a full-time person. That's our specialty is
running that visitor center and being the expert on it.
I think that can come with time in 47. So I think there's gonna be a lot of things we figure out, our
operations over that first year of the best way to do it. But you know, I'm worried, I'm, my mind is
on insurance and liability insurance and different ways to do things that we do them now, but we've
got, we've got, we'll have some time in 26,
get that all figured out. Water and the facility is already ready with many of the utilities that are
ready to go to come out of getting them hooked up in the housing that needs to be built. I guess, Michael,
I like both design and building. I think it makes sense. I think the example from the Maryland Fishery
Bureau leader helps me put it into kind of a perspective. I think that's a
to play out for what they're trying to do. I was just looking at the office space, and they can,
you know, it's gonna be, they don't think we want Sean maybe have a spot where he could stage up when
he's gonna have a site to come in, but not be in Teal's space, you know, just so as we look at that,
that would be model top, making sure that there's a functional labor. If you need to get in there,
you can get in there and be functional without stepping all over what's he was trying to do from that
portion of it or Sean or anybody for that matter. How do we work the office space to make sure there's
a couple of different terminals or something that they didn't have their own in the spot? Yeah. And
I think those things are conversations we'll have. The way I envision this is, I think, once we have
the approval to move forward is call in Spring.
We'll certainly use the planning sessions to figure this all out and get everyone's input on just things
like that before we make a final design of what it's going to be. So from this point, we're looking
for a motion to approve a certain amount or discussion on what that amount is first? Yeah, I think Mike
has given a range on page two, I think.
Total design build out, it looks like between $500,000 and $600,000. Well, based on the financial picture
that you posted, I think that maybe $600,000 without further discussion makes sense to me if we're anticipating
If things stay flat, then we're going to have another 875 over what's budgeted coming in. I think 600
is fair, personally. It would be a non-repeating cost. So for me, that's important, is that that money
is freed up the next year to help support a larger
I notice maybe this would be a separate expenditure, but I don't see any mention of like marketing of
the new visitor center. I mean, you probably want to like update the billboard halfway and like advertise
to a lot of people and make them
check out our business center in downtown. Yeah, that would be built into our marketing, our global
marketing expenses for how we're gonna do that. And as Mike said, it sees us probably utilizing more
funding for that in the future. So I think that would be a part of our request when we're budgeting.
For sure, we wanna make that retail area more robust and actually make money versus now we kind of use
it just for branding purposes and things like that.
You know, you know, I hope to some of the tours with what's the day in there and figure out where we
can do tours and things chart, you know, chart selling tickets for tours and trying to at least pay
the tour guide. So, yeah. My one caveat is this. So we're not going to make budget on coffee mugs. So to
Kirby's point, using the space to help market the community and land the big convention, in my mind,
is the payoff of space in this location next to the convention centers. We are paying heavily premium
for the space, and we're willing to, at least I'm willing to invest money in the space, but understanding
the real payoff is landing the conventions that will
generate the economic benefit for the community and using this space to do it. So as long as we keep
that in mind, that we're looking at not just handing out a brochure or selling keychains, those, I'm
happy to take the money for mugs and keychains and things like that, but the real benefit here is being
able to land the convention planner that generates 300 room nights a night
in the community and saying, yes, Bloomington is the spot. And so if we're able to use this space to
help with that, then I'm on board. Yeah, we agree with you. When I said more robust, I meant more successful.
We already have a very small retail area. So we already have a small retail area. Yeah, I agree with
you. There's so much in this community to promote.
and highlight and to sell people on that you need to be in Bloomington, not at Belterra or French Link
or Terre Haute. There's so much about this community that we should and could be highlighting.
I think for me, being able to do that and do that well is important to help them land it here rather
than the next community. Yeah, our physical roofer area is smaller too.
Yeah, just to piggyback on that just a little bit, I think from the hotelier side, how many times do
we get the question, there's not a game going on, what can I do? Free 24 hours, you know, what can I
do to be able to have a resource that we can send them to, to where they can highlight, oh, you've got
this option, this option, this option, that's also going to be the same stuff you're selling to the planner.
then you're providing another service to the guests that are already here as well. Maybe they buy a
t-shirt or a key chain, that's fine. I'm all about the key chain. Now we know. Yeah, yeah. So that being
the case, I would put forward a motion for $600,000 for funding.
that we could set aside in the next fiscal year to our 2026 budget and allocation out of the general
fund for $600,000 for the development and build out of the Floyd Street garage space development of
that year. So that would be my motion. I second that. Motion and a second.
Any further discussion? Not on that portion yet. Marcia, would you move us to a roll call? Mike Campbell.
Yes. Kirby Brand. Yes. So now Mike also mentioned timing. And so something to think about, and we could
probably wait till our next meeting on that. But if they need to get started,
we do still have funding available in the commissioner's expense. And this again, I think would be an
appropriate use of the commissioner's expense versus unanticipated expenditures in order to be able
to allow our operations to do what we're asking them to do. And so it may be that we need to allocate
$100,000 in this year's budget
to get started. Do we have the site secured? We have it held. We've got the lease. Mike's board has
approved the lease pending the ability for us to fund the renovation which we've just given.
And I've already, I told the redevelopment commission last week that we were looking at a January one
start to the lease, but since we may not be, since you may not be able to go in front of the council
to get that appropriation until in the first quarter or something like that, I told that to the redevelopment
commission, they said no problem, we understand that stuff. You guys, we want you to know that, so.
No risk of losing the property in the middle of the bureaucracy, I think. No, and we'll get back to
the county to see. I mean, it is mid-October. We'll see if there's a way to shorten it to be able to
do that. And I do feel that if we were to start a planning process in November, in here before the end of 25,
we wouldn't be looking at $100,000 to spend. We'd probably be looking at $10,000 to $20,000 to get that
going and have these meetings and get some more plans going so perhaps we could have something more
concrete in February or something, you know, when we did go in front of the county, you know, spending
a little bit more. So, you know, I would just, I would hate to spend $100,000 on them for some political
reason. We have no idea about them now.
them to approve the appropriation. I'm not saying that's gonna happen, but I mean, it took us two decades
to get here, so. Well, I certainly hope not. You said you've had some expenses to get, obviously, the
samples thrown. What kind of money did you spend so far? $2,100 for those sketches. I just got my invoice
this morning. And that's just coming out of your general, your general fund,
Okay, any other questions on the appropriation? And we'll get with the county to see if there's any
way to shorten that time frame or something. I know last time we had to wait until 2026
to get in front of the county again, to add the course appropriation back in. But that was because we
were in November at the end of the year to be able to get on their calendar. I don't know if there's
an opportunity there. There may not be. But we'll love. David might have, might could have helped us
a little bit with some of that. So we'll follow up with our county.
County Council reps and see if there's ways to do that to get, so that we don't have to wait until April
to start something. So we'll see what we're able to do and we'll report back at the next meeting. Any
new business? Other new business? We have an update on cars.
It's not done yet. It's supposed to be done on November 24th, but they do have one field laid. We didn't
lose the lacrosse tournament that we were going to have because of the neutral fields. They can't come
in anyway. This week is one. They were here last week, and they did an area on site. It's actually going
to be less expensive for them because the grass fields are cheaper to rent. But there is one field that's
laid, and it looks great.
They just got one away. But we also just got a new flag football tournament that's going to be on the
new fields. It's a big, big droning in popularity right now. So big stuff is happening. It's out with
another group this week on site visit. Any other new business or old business?
Okay, any public comments? Okay, seeing and hearing none, I would move for adjournment of the meeting.
Thank you for coming and for rearranging your schedule to be here on short notice.
not short notice, but shorter notice or unscheduled, right? Not our normal scheduled quarterly meetings.
So I appreciate you being able to make some additional time to come and look at this. All right, then
we stand adjourned.