- on. Yes. Yeah.
- Teams came together to share several of the attributes of the new venue with the branding and identity design team. We shared information from the Capital Improvement Board community input sessions and the building renderings and the materials of brick, limestone, wood, natural elements that are being used in the new center. We're a mid-sized venue. We want to represent our community in a positive way. We shared we are in a vibrant downtown area surrounded with over 100 restaurants.
- art and entertainment options. The downtown is very walkable with the strong valued community landmarks throughout the downtown, which then went into the personality. And if you want to switch the screen,
- Mike, then we've long had an event personality of warmth, professional experience, welcoming and friendly with a personal touch. We want to extend that into the new space. Although it's bigger, it will still be locally rooted, historically aware, adaptable, thoughtful and reliable are all important to our team and clients.
- We'll continue to be innovative with our customer events. We bring people together to make connections. We wanted a strong, iconic visual identity to represent that. Then under visual considerations we shared, we wanted an identity that works alongside the Visit Bloomington brand. We wanted simple, clean, timeless look. We wanted to include red, of course, for our Indian University and reflect the limestone and wood being used in the building.
- And finally, we wanted our visual identity pillars to be memorable, to build credibility unique to the building, identify us, and adaptive in many uses from social media to print and on materials. So we went through three, Sybil, you showed us three different branding concepts and went through several
- meetings back and forth of them, giving them quite a bit of critique and feedback. The one that we were very excited that we chose, the narrative is called Cutting Edge Nostalgia.
- This direction honors the Convention Center's storied past while embracing its forward-looking role in the community. Once a forward assembly plant and a downtown landmark where locals gathered to glimpse the latest cars, the building has long served as a hub of innovation and connection. Today, that legacy continues in a state-of-the-art venue designed to bring people together, whether for business, celebration, or creativity. The identity reflects this dual spirit, clean and contemporary in its execution, but grounded in an
- It's warmth, authenticity, and local pride. It's a space that lives larger than its footprint, one that pairs modern amenities with timeless character, just steps away from IU's campus and Bloomington's vibrant downtown. So that's the narrative of the brand, which is so, so important for all of this. This is a platform that all of our marketing decisions will be made from from now on when we're marketing and selling the convention center. So it all relates back to this narrative. From that,
- We developed our mark. This is the main logo mark, full color primary logo.
- You can see, going back to what Talisha described as some of the personality, the visual considerations, all that stuff, we feel it's in there. The mark there, it should explain itself what it is, and that's the butterfly, the butterfly shape of the front of the building. Here's several different variations of it.
- That we can use in for different aspects different different things. This is a comparison of it to just some other marks that are out there that we that we see a lot out there. As you can see,
- One of the concepts we looked at was the corner that the corner shot of the of the building there on college. You know, it's why it's it's, you know, it also shows the bridge, but you can see Terre Haute and both the Kentucky International Commission Center in Louisville use those corner shots in their building. So that was a little bit too close to theirs, but but we think our our mark stands out and it's very unique and crisp and clean professional and we're going to
- and build awareness for that over time. Talisha, please jump in.
- As I keep going, here's a couple of other variations for it. We can use the small BCC standing for Bloomington Convention Center. I did want to say everything that you're looking at here. This is just an example that our designer created. We don't have any expectations here other than we invite the Capital Improvement Board. We hope you love the branding as much as we do. We hope you'll use it anywhere you want. We understand you're working with an architect
- and they have professional considerations for signs and things inside the building. We hope the font that we picked is something you might want to use, but we totally understand if it's not. We did put a couple of signs together that are on the outside of the building. Obviously, that's completely up to you, but we certainly invite you to use this mark and the stuff that we're developing for anything that you want with the building over the coming months.
- We might also mention Indiana was used so that we can pull it in whenever we're out of state and marketing.
- Right, right. A lot of times we get, just as we do at VISA Bloomington, we get confused with other Bloomingtons. So we'll pull that Indiana in and out as we need it. Hopefully we'll build up awareness over time that we won't. Again, the color palette was selected to complement the building and the new building with what you're doing, as well as local awareness with the university and the cream and crimson and that type of stuff.
- They have named it a Bloomington red and a limestone gray, which I thought was interesting that we have our own color. Yeah. Typography, here are those fonts that we were talking about. Termina, I'm not even sure how you say it, Termina medium, Termina black, and the Montessorat regular. Again, if those would work for the Capital Improvement Board in any way, we hope you would want to use them. This was that example, the sign that I was talking about, business card,
- couple of other treatments of the logo. Here's some more copy that came out of the branding that we really love. The Bloomington Convention Center is a place where connection comes naturally, a venue that balances professionalism with personality and modern function with local warmth, adaptable spaces, seamless amenities, and a setting that bridges old and new.
- This isn't just where events happen. It's where people come together, often returning year after year, building lasting traditions in space that feels both familiar and trusted. You can see that copy. Connection and adaptability, authenticity, it's common ground. So this is our manifesto. That's our we believe statement about the convention center. It's what we'll be out there marketing and selling. We'll be using a lot of these copy points on the website, in our marketing, in different things that we produce to sell it over the coming months and years.
- Anything else you wanted to say about it, Talisha? Just that we'll start the website process and I think they're looking at mid-January of having that ready to go. Then at some point we'll need to decide when we turn it from Monroe Convention Center to Bloomington Convention Center whenever that site goes live. We're continuing to talk to people and you know another few months
- We'll be ready to do some bookings. So we're getting great response from the state associations that they're excited about this step. We're happy. We have a couple of minutes if you do, John, to answer any questions about it. And I'm also happy to follow up with anybody who might want to talk to me further about it. Board members care to react, to respond, make comments? Yeah, Mr. Teese. Welcome, by the way.
- Yeah, me and 6,000 of our most desirable clients that are now coming to my employer. It's really quite wonderful. Yeah, each one. I think this is awesome. This is awesome. It's fun seeing it. It's awesome. I think the little icon of the building is kind of wild that we maybe have landed on a bit of an icon. Hopefully.
- Incredible. There were 10 other designs. So this is, I think it's very compelling and it looks great. That's all. Mr. Bear, there's only two things I don't like. The one that we see here on the bottom where the limestone wall is rendered as a field of black, we all know what that is. But other people, what is that big black square all about? That bothers me a little bit when it's straight black one color. I think it's better.
- in the gray scale above and better reversed out when it's either the Bloomington red or the white. That one bugs me a little bit. And then I think the logo bug, I feel like the BCC is way thin for that application. I just feel like you're gonna have to have more thicker font for that right there.
- that's really tough to read in anything other than a super high res application. And I agree. We struggled with that center section and lightened it up. We also put the lines in it. Also, we put like the little yeah and. And I don't know if anything will be put on the front of that so we can adjust if we need to down the road, but thank you Jay. That's that's great input. You know that black and white logo.
- it probably will, I can't imagine, we just won't use it very often. We'll see how we will, what we would use it for, but it's great input, thank you. Joyce, did you have your hand up? Okay, Mr. McCann. I just also wanna say that I absolutely love it as well. I especially like the kind of up and to the right. I mean, that's- Looking up, right? Yeah, and it's, you know, our attendance is going up and to the right. I think that's a great-
- Well, that's okay, yeah. Or others? Any other comments from board members? Well, Mike and Talisha, thank you. Oh, Mr. Baer. Mike or Talisha, what's the domain name gonna be for the Bloomington flavor of the website? Bloomingtonconvention.com. Bloomingtonconvention.com, okay, thanks. Yeah, which is the current one we have, and so that's why. Yeah, I remember.
- at some point in time. I should just say for the record, not that it's apropos of anything, but I've worked with SimpleView a lot in my career, and they are a first-class organization. They're terrific at what they do. Not only this kind of work, but the web work as well, and ongoing CRM and digital marketing. They're really, really first-class. Their owner's a long-time friend of mine, so a good choice. Thank you, Jen.
- Well, thank you, Mike. Thank you, Talisha. We'll hear more about this, I think, in a bit. But we are creating an external communications group. And one of the things we talked about this past week was signage and logos on signage. And so this is very topical, and it's very helpful to us. So thank you again, both. Mike, you can tell people are excited. They like what they see. And thank you for your effort. Thanks a lot. Thank you. And have a good board meeting.
- Okay, thank you. All right, let's move back up on the agenda to item three, which is Treasurer's Report. Mr. McCann. Yeah, I just have a couple of quick things. Let's see, can we bring up the slides, please?
- So, I don't want to be laborless a lot, but everybody should have received the most recent food and beverage tax receipts spreadsheet. And I just want to kind of point out that this year so far is looking robust. So, you know, the best comparison is year-to-date compared with the same time span last year. And so we are up.
- about $120,000 compared to the same time last year. So things are definitely looking good. The bond payments were sized based on 2023 and 2024 average receipts. So 2025 is looking even better, which just means that we have, I think, more, I guess, assurance that
- receipts are going to be appropriate for the bond. So any questions or comments about the tax receipts? Okay, we can move on to the next one, please. The other thing I want to point out is that I remind everybody is that tonight is our budget presentation for the CIB to the City Council, the City Council budget work session.
- And I'm gonna just show you the slides that we plan to use tonight for the city council. I know that John Whitehart and myself and Jeff Underwood and Deb Kunz are all going to be there. Buzz Crone, the city's financial consultant, will be available on Zoom if needed. And anybody, of course, is welcome to come. It's a public meeting. And if any other members of the CIB
- want to come, that would be great. The meeting begins at 5.30. But there is one economic and sustainable development, I believe, is before us. So it has been estimated that we should be speaking around 6.30. But I think I plan to be there at 5.30, just in case the previous item goes quickly.
- So we were asked to just include a couple of slides that just put our budget into context. And so, of course, we all know what the CIB has accomplished this year. We've overseen the sale of a $52 million revenue bond. We've seen the groundbreaking on the new convention center. We've seen the demolition of the Napa building. And we've also seen the award of all construction GMP packages for new construction.
- You can move to the next. And then, of course, our big new milestones. At this point, we're targeting completion of the new building, January 1, 2027, and the existing building would then be completed renovations on July 1, 2027.
- So what I've done with this slide is I'm trying to—and, no, you're not expected to read all these numbers, but this is essentially an updated version of the cash flow statement that Buzzcrone presented to the City Council when—during the deliberations on the bond. And the idea is just to kind of show
- where the CIB budget kind of fits into the big picture of all the money being spent on the project. So we know that construction that's at the very top of this spreadsheet is being paid for from bond funds. So that's not part of the CIB budget. Architectural fees are also being paid from an existing open PR and open
- appropriation that the city already has. So those architectural fees are not part of our budget that we're presenting either. And then the lease rental payments themselves are not part of this budget. We anticipate, I think, that the city council will probably hear that as part of economic development beforehand, but I'm not sure. I'm just going based on what I've seen on the packet. So really, where our budget fits in is in these direct costs.
- the costs of the owner's representative, and then the CIB costs itself, which are very similar to what we've seen in past years. We have legal fees, our controller fees.
- And then insurance is the new line item. You remember that we, this last year, approved the builder's risk insurance to be, we approved the builder's risk insurance policy, and that is now shown, rather than under contingency, it's actually shown as a separate line item on our budget. And so then the final slide will, I'm sorry, there's two more, the city split.
- the last one into two. This is our official budget request of $8,958,017. And you'll see that most of those items are things we've seen before, the legal controllers, the owner's rep, the insurance that I just talked about, and website.
- but then there's this $8.4 million that is other, and that's what includes all of these soft costs and other costs associated with the project. So if we go to that, and that's probably where, this last slide is probably where most questions will come, and we'll have Deb Kunz available to answer any questions. But does anybody here, any of the board members have any questions or things you wanna ask about before the city council sees them?
- we've already approved this budget, so. All right, thank you. So see some of you tonight. Okay, thank you. Item number four, again, coming back, President's report, I simply wanna report to you that since we last met, we needed to,
- agree to a proposal with ALT and Witsett Consulting Services for on-call soil assessment as we move forward with the project. And so I entered into that proposal since we last met so that we could make sure we were able to do soil analysis as necessary and as required. Any questions about that?
- All right, moving on. Item number six, construction progress report, and Andrew Sherry from Weddle Brothers is going to make that report. Perfect, thank you, John. Yes, Andrew Sherry, project manager here for Weddle Brothers for the project. Got a few things to talk about here just as a project update now that we're rolling.
- Few things, so construction progress updates, upcoming milestones, lead reports and what lead is and where we are with the project. And then another thing that we've talked about this week in our owners meeting, which was site history. So had a little bit of time last week to go down a rabbit hole and thought there was a few things to share.
- Construction progress, so bulk demolition is nearing completion. So asphalt, concrete, obviously the Napa building. Over here on the right side, you'll see before and after that we took with the drone. So the building down, parking lot taken up. We've left the perimeter curbs up to help with erosion control, storm water, those types of things. The building pad is nearing completion. Upon final completion, we're gonna get into excavations for foundations. Oh, excuse me.
- foundations, those types of things that we're hoping to start in late September, early October. Underground utilities starting within a week or two, and then the private utility relocations that we've been talking about for a few months to be complete by the end of next week. So those are big items so far. Upcoming milestones, so aggregate peers we plan on starting in the next couple of weeks.
- foundation materials to start being delivered in September for an early October start, and then structural steel to start being delivered to the site in late October. As we say, we're getting out of the ground. These two photos on the right-hand side are the structural renderings. And then also this bottom picture is the foundation. So the bottom of the building, everybody's seeing the renderings of what it's gonna look like with the roads and things like that. But this is where we are right now trying to get out of the ground. So I thought these were a couple neat photos from our renderings and models.
- LEED updates is a big one. LEED is leadership in energy and environmental design. So obviously with demolition taking place, it's a lot of recycling going on, but also the efficiency of the building in the design and how those systems come together. So to date, we've had over 900 tons diverted from landfills, which is over 45 trucks, over 2,200 tons of concrete, which is 110 trucks to allow for over 3,100 tons of material or over 150 trucks diverted from landfills to this point.
- So that's further ahead than we planned on being. This is a huge milestone for where we're at. Site history, again, this is the rabbit hole we went down last week. This was a cool piece of the project. So as we've been in the ground, we're trying to figure out what could we potentially run into what was here before. So the photo on your left shows
- photos from a map of the late 1800s of the third and college intersection. So the building that we are in right now, previously was this church on the right-hand side. In the late 1800s, that was the tallest building in Bloomington. So built in 1879, at that time, there was dwellings or houses across the street where we're building. So it makes sense to some of the things that we've seen thus far. And then it was 31, 34 years later, it was tore down.
- for the Ford assembly plant. So again, just a couple neat topics. And that's what I've got for our construction progress update thus far. Okay, thank you. Any questions for Mr. Sherry? I've got one. When you talk about recycled asphalt and concrete, what does that mean? So they take it to a local supplier here for trucking and they'll crush it up and use it as backfill or something under new parking lots, things like that.
- Cleaning fill. So it's not going to a landfill and being dumped somewhere? No, no. No, they're recycling, reusing. A lot of times it'll hit a crusher. They'll pull the rebar and stuff out of it and then reuse it for stone. Yep. Any other questions or comments? Thank you, Andrew. Thank you. Appreciate it.
- Item number seven, external communications update, JS held, and you can certainly invite Mr. Baer or others to participate as well. Yeah, next time I'm going to ask Mary to come up and do a little of this presentation, but just as that context, you authorized us to put together a group of people to really focus on the external communications and
- And so we have started doing that and more to come, but maybe just a framework of some of the things that we've been talking about and Jay or others may wanna join in, so. Here we go. Thank you. Yeah, so we've been working with a communications group and that involves John, Jay and Jeff. And with that, we also add Andrew and Talisha as primary members of this working group.
- And we've met a couple of times. We've had discussions about what kind of information we should be disseminating, but also what kind of information is the community wanting, and how should that be received? People don't turn to websites as much as they might have in the past, and they use a lot of social media. We are vetting out options as we go in that direction, but there's three main things that we're currently working on. One is the building signage that Weddle will be putting out in site,
- We've been working with Schmidt on that. We've got a hold on that while we develop or work with Visit Bloomington and see how that logo is developing so that we can get that incorporated onto the sign. So you'll see that. Otherwise, it will be the main image that you typically see. The other item is working through milestones. We want to make sure that we're not over-communicating so that we just don't become static.
- And so we are targeting major milestones upon which we'll do some major communications. And much of that is what Andrew has pointed out as we reach September and October. And then we have what we started off as, you know, might be 12 or 20.
- questions that the community typically asks. I think we're up to something in the 40s right now. We'll easily hit 50. But that's something that John particularly is working on answering. And then we will get that disseminated at different points, but definitely we'll have that on the website. So we will continue to meet throughout the fall as we get all this initiated and moved along.
- And one thing I just want to say is that Andrew is a great communicator. And one thing I always differentiate about contractors is how well they communicate. And Andrew's been doing a great job keeping us all informed. And so that will reflect back to the community as well. Andrew wanted me to mention that he's a role model for the rest of the Weddell team for communication. Oh, was that off the record? Oh. Yeah. Other thoughts, Jay?
- John? John? Just a couple things. One, when Mary says project signage, just by way of clarification, it's not the kind of permanent signage that Mike and Talisha looked at in rendering form a moment ago. It's temporary signage, either on the fence or on a piece of wood. People are like, what's going on in this hole? What's this hole going to be? So it's that kind of signage during construction, just FYI. Mr. Weckert's made great progress on our frequently asked questions document.
- and we'll get that on the website in short order. Then the idea is to, over time, push that out to the public through social media updates, et cetera, from the CIB, as opposed to solely requiring people to, A, realize we have a website, B, know the address of the website, C, go to the website, it puts the onus on the populace, as opposed to the way around. So we'll do that, and then, of course, as Mary mentioned,
- planned releases of, hey, we got a big thing happening, Steels going up, or what have you, and incremental pieces throughout the whole project. And those will go out in more traditional media release format, flyers for our stakeholders, et cetera.
- Thank you. Maybe it's also important to note that we will use existing avenues to get the message out, right? This isn't just coming from CIB, but our ability to communicate through the city comms and the county comms and all of the other stakeholders that we've been using to date who have been great about getting the message out to their constituents as well. So leveraging the lines of communication that already exist in Bloomington. Any questions?
- Comments? Okay, thank you. The item number eight, Bead Advisory Committee update, Galen Cassidy is the chair of that group and he has an update for us on their efforts towards the inclusion of art in our project. And I see Holly Warren is here as well from the city. Galen, I think you may have other members of your committee and I'll let you introduce.
- introduce those members when you want to get to that. That is sharing that. See it on. Yeah, click share.
- apologies for the delay here. Yes, and you you let me let me quickly send you the updated one. Yeah, yeah. Okay. I have an apology owed to a john then because I was missing your headshot here and we'll make a joke out of it though.
- If you need my help, let me know. I figured out how to use my microphone, so. I'll just go entire screen. That's not ours. There we go. She has an older version. Okay. There you go. Yeah, it'll be fine. Again, we'll get to that part.
- um yeah thank you for uh taking the time um again we are the the beat advisory committee and uh we can we can switch to that next slide and and i'll i'll point out ajon here as you'll quickly notice he is uh he's looking good in this photo here but um just as a as a reminder i know it's been a while since uh you know we've been talked about as a part of this group but but john and in the cib has has charged us uh with the art portion of this project so
- Quickly wanted to just list the people that are on our advisory committee And as you can see, it's a it's a good mix of different people from various industries from hospitality to performance arts and art galleries There's these are all people that have worked heavily in or lived in or played in the the downtown environment in the the Bloomington Entertainment Arts District so We can move on to the next
- And I would like to invite Holly Warren up here with me to go over a few things. And to start, we're going to talk about the 1% for the arts.
- Hi, everyone. My name is Holly Warren. I'm the assistant director for the arts for the city of Bloomington. I work with Jane in the economic and sustainable development department. And in my role for the city, I've helped oversee many public art projects like this one. So I just want to start in grounding us with our definition of the 1% for the arts ordinance that makes projects like the one we'll be doing for the convention and center expansion possible. So the 1% for the arts ordinance says that anytime the city undertakes a large-scale capital project,
- of the overall construction budget is allocated for a public art project. And the Bloomington Arts Commission for which I serve as the staff liaison defines public art as a collective community expression that takes place through any form of media that is created for the public. So this can be a mural, it can be a piece of 3D sculpture, it can be a festival, it can be a performance.
- it can manifest as many, many things. The things we wanna make sure of is that it is accessible to everyone. You can see it.
- and you can experience it. And projects like this always include multiple people. It's generally a team of artists, of architects, of folks who are on the ground at the site every day, of experts in the field and of members of the public. It takes a lot of people to come together to really make one of these projects really reflect a community and also stand up in the world when it comes to gravity. You can see some great examples of public art that we've recently created up here on the
- on the screen. To the left, you see OT 987. That's the new piece of public art in the trades district. Go see it during the day or at night. It lights up. It's pretty awesome. And then on the lower right, you can see urban fabric. I'm sure you've all seen this potentially while you were coming here today. This is on the 4th Street Garage. It takes up three of the four walls of the garage. This is actually one of the largest pieces of public art in Bloomington, or Indiana. So we're really excited about that. And I just also want to say why
- public art, why are we allocating these funds to this project? So in the Department of Economic and Sustainable Development, where we're thinking about economic fatality for the community, but also placemaking, we have seen over and over again when we put money into public art, the surrounding community financially benefits from this. And we also see pieces of public art just as something that will always reflect the identity of a community. So the community will see these pieces of public art, it will become part of
- of their civic identity and it will help connect community members together. So that's why we continue to do this work and why we're taking a hefty chunk of this overall budget. You can turn to the next slide to talk a little bit more about our actual budget. So overall for this project, we have $520,000 allocated. This is the biggest public art project budget we have ever had for the 1% for the arts project. We're really excited about that. And we're recommending that we break that sum of money into two pots.
- to talk about the lower one first. So we'd like to allocate $100,000 of that to grow the Convention Center's permanent collection of 2D art made by local artists. We are going to work with Betsy Steeritt, who is the former curator of the Grunwald Gallery on IU's campus. She was one of the folks who worked with Talisha to develop the original collection of permanent art in the Convention Center, and she's going to help us expand it to the new part of the Convention Center. So that's what we're going to use
- that $100,000 for. That will leave us with $420,000 to do a substantial piece of
- public art and that $420,000 is going to consist of a lot of things. That's going to pay the artist their honorarium for doing the work. It's also going to pay for the fabrication of the piece and the installation of the piece and a chunk of that money will also be used just as kind of a contingency fund. So if material costs go up as we've kind of seen them do in the past five years, we've got a little chunk of money that we can pull from to make up for those extra expenses.
- So that's our budget. And then if you want to move to the next slide, I'm going to talk a little bit about where we're thinking this piece of art will go. So we've worked pretty closely with Schmidt Associates to identify several places where this art could go. So as you can see, it could potentially go on the pedestrian bridge, either as an illuminated piece or a piece that kind of would be adhered to the glass of the bridge. We've also talked about potentially doing a work of art that would carry on to the undercarriage of that bridge and even continue
- into the existing courtyard of the convention center. We've also talked a lot about potentially putting a piece on that second floor outdoor area. There's a great wall there for an installation to happen that would also be visible to folks passing by on the street. Another area that we've considered is doing something that would be suspended from the ceilings on either the northeast or the northwest entrance. Again, the way the windows are
- set up there, a cool suspended piece would be very visible to the public. So these are the areas that we're targeting as we start to put out our call for artists. And given the budget we have, we think that there's a possibility that the ultimate proposal will activate multiple of these sites. It won't necessarily be in one place. We'll see public artwork manifested in multiple of these sites. And if you want to go to the next slide, now I just want to talk a little bit about what this process is going to look
- So because this is a piece of public art, we want it to reflect the public. So we're proposing during the second two weeks of September that we do some public feedback sessions. This will be workshops where we'll ask people, what do you want to see? What values of Bloomington do you want to see reflected in this work of art? From there, we're going to release a call for artists. This is not gonna be a call for proposals. We are going to be saying to artists from across the world, hey guys, show us your chops, prove to us that you know what you're doing
- and that you would be able to do something super cool for Bloomington. We were looking for experience in doing these projects in the past, as well as ability to work with multiple stakeholders and architects just to make sure that we can fulfill the vision of what our community wants, but also make sure that it stands up using the infrastructure that has already been put into place for the facility. Once we get all of the applications in for our call for artists, we will work with a recommendation committee to narrow down
- those applicants down to a pool of five to 10 finalists, who will then be invited to actually submit real proposals of what they envision the public art being for the facility. Once we receive those proposals, we will conduct interviews with all of the finalists. We will also do another phase of public feedback where we share those proposals with the public to say, hey guys, what do you like? What do you hate? What could be better? What could we like synthesizing? And then we will work with the recommendation committee, take
- that information and choose the best proposal that we will then recommend to the CIB for approval. We anticipate that all of that will take us through about mid-April 26 and we anticipate that the construction and installation process will begin in 2026. And the next slide.
- Thank you. And I just want to talk a little, I've mentioned the recommendation committee a couple of times. So this recommendation committee will be composed of members of the CIB. Thank you to Joyce and Adam for agreeing to participate. Gail and I will be part of that committee along with a couple of members of our CIB Beat subcommittee. We're also going to work with a couple of members of the Bloomington Arts Commission, as well as Maya Michelson, the director of the Indiana Arts Commission. She's offered to help us with this process. We'll also invite a couple of members of the public to serve on this recommendation
- committee, and of course we'll be working with Weddle and Schmidt Associates throughout the whole process to make sure we're not picking a proposal that is not feasible and can't happen within the structure. I want to emphasize that this is an open call for artists. This call will be released locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. Again, this is the type of budget that is going to garner the eyes of some really cool, interesting artists from around the world. It's really exciting. And again, I just want to emphasize we will be
- looking for public feedback to consider a piece of public art is not public if the public is not just hold and shares their opinion. And finally, we are looking to start that installation of summer in 26. We are super excited about this and are very grateful for the opportunity to work with you on this and we're happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Questions? Questions for our group. Mr. McKim?
- Yeah, thanks. Great presentation. Actually, I have a couple of questions. First, and I'm just kind of curious, will you only be paying for the ultimate product that we decide to accept or do you pay the finalists a proposal fee or something like that?
- Great question, yes. Anytime we ask someone to submit a proposal, so those five to 10 finalists will be paid a stipend. It's usually between $1,500 and $2,000. We'll also have a separate fund of money. Say somebody who's not from the community wants to make a proposal and we select them to submit one. We would also have funds for them to be able to come to the city, see the site, potentially talk to the architects if they want to just take Bloomington so they understand who they're working with.
- Great, thank you. Then also, particularly as you start talking about the large piece, particularly if it's suspended from the ceiling or hanging off a bridge, I mean, is there, do we have some kind of an engineering inspection of it to make sure that it's safe? Yeah, so, and that's kind of what, as we're doing the original selection of the artist who we asked to
- do ultimate proposals, you'll be able to see pretty quickly that they know, oh gosh, okay, I need to make sure that like if there's a storm, this doesn't blow over. And usually what we're seeing budgets for proposals is for lines like structural engineers to help them make those decisions. Okay, great. Thank you. I thought I saw another question.
- I'm just wondering how far is your reach in your solicitation? Is it national? Is it international? We're doing international. Yeah, that doesn't necessarily mean we want an international artist. We want the best artist. But again, I just think that the scope of this project and the budget is worth doing an international call for. Great. Thank you. Mr. Baer. Considering the scope and scale of one or more of these pieces, how do we contemplate maintenance budgets for these kind of
- projects? Great question. So generally that is part of the proposal that everyone would include. They would give us a summary of the maintenance and they would include those costs as part of their budget. Part of the contract that we would enter in with a successful artist would be them supplying us with a maintenance plan at the end of it that we would then reference to make sure it's kept up. I think there might be a question of like who owns, who like is
- responsible for initiating any maintenance like when that happens but I'm happy to discuss that and do whatever is necessary. And in terms of the hundred thousand dollars allocated to the permanent collection in the new facility do we envision that that fully satiates that need or do we anticipate additional funds being necessary to
- outfit the new facility with public art. Having spoken with Betsy Stewart, who's gone through this process before, she thought $100,000 was a good chunk to take us through the process and also help with some maintenance fees over time. I do think that the rollout of those pieces of art will happen over time. We won't just
- unleashed an entire collection at once. She's recommended that we choose at the beginning a couple of signature pieces to go in some very visible parts of the building and then continue to select new pieces along the way as folks get comfortable being in the building and learning how people in it are using it so they can make sure they're choosing the best pieces of art for folks to see and putting them in the best places. I was glad to hear you talk about the visibility of these pieces
- by the public. I feel like with the budget of this magnitude, it would be a dereliction of duty to hide these pieces away so that only users of the convention center, some of whom will be from out of town, have a chance to view this art. So I like that perspective quite a bit. Thank you. Yes, Mr. McKinnon. Actually, just to follow up on that.
- You know, currently, or at least in the past, the gallery walk has had, this has been a site for the gallery walk. Do you, and I know this is not your responsibility, but I assume it's come up in discussion. Do you think that the new building will feature, will be a featured gallery walk site at some point so that members of the public will not only be able to, but even encouraged to see the new collection? I know that's probably more of a Talisha question, but.
- try to answer that question until she just tell me if I'm wrong. I would imagine that we might want to make a gallery walk, but I don't think we're looking to do some kind of rotating art exhibition like we had in the past. My understanding is that would just be asking too much of the staff to do that.
- As you know, I always appreciate coming to those events and getting to see that. Yeah. Just one more, if I may. Sure, Mr. President. I can't remember on your list of potential sites if the limestone rectangle was one of those or not. It was. So, yeah, Schmidt gave us a chunk of
- different areas of opportunity. And actually, if we go back to that slide, if you view back, after we received that, we were given some instruction about maybe some potential areas, especially with those external walls to avoid. And I mean,
- Honestly, we looked at that wall as a really good area for some textured patterns, but maybe that wouldn't take a big chunk of our budget that we could devote to other things. And I did want to just quickly clarify, because we talk about the $420,000 for one or for an installation. The proposals and the artists that we're opening this up to would be given all of these areas of opportunity. We really envision them submitting proposals that
- touch on a little bit of all of them and not just focusing on one. So it's not like we're gonna have empty spaces that are underutilized, but we're giving them the whole landscape and hopefully by having one artist, we're really achieving kind of a consistent theme rather than trying to do a local artist here and another regional artist there and things like that. So the thought then it would be one award that would be thematically tied together in these different places throughout the project.
- That's correct, yeah. As opposed to a different, you know, this guy did this port and this other person did this other part. Nice, cool. Yeah. Eddie Layton from Schmidt Associates has a comment or question. Eddie? Yeah, I was just going to answer the question about the limestone wall that Jay had. He did discuss with the B group that location and
- where we ended up was we actually do have panels in that wall that are going to be sculpted panels, but is actually in the construction budget separate from their art process. So the best of both worlds. Okay, thank you. Any other comments or questions?
- Thank you very much. And I want to thank and recognize Joyce and Adam for agreeing to give it their time to help you with your process. So thank you very much. And thank you for your presentation. Thank you. And hard work. Other members of the committee who are here, why don't you stand up so we can see you. And that's actually A. John. That picture you saw earlier, that was not A. John. Yeah. Thank you for being here.
- Item number nine, hotel update. Gene Coopersmith from the city's economic and sustainable development department.
- I noticed Vince Dora was on as well. I have an update from him as well. Okay, thanks. We have three kind of categories of activity to report on for the hotel update. One is site due diligence. So the soil borings were complete and results for those are in and we were pleasantly surprised that limestone bedrock seems to start pretty deep averaging it.
- 12 to 20 feet on the site. So that leaves maybe more possibility, no guarantee of below grade parking, but it's not off the table. So that's good news. The phase one was complete and the site will need a phase two environmental assessment. So that will take some additional time. Category two of activity, I would call the design work. And that hasn't really started yet.
- Dora hospitality and louder back group are working with Luminat design group on getting a proposal to the city that covers the initial $300,000 investment that the RDC is making in those plans. They're collaborating on that because
- already see funded the design work but they'll retain ownership of those designs since we're in this kind of interim phase. The third category of activity I would call the deal structure and we're just working in earnest on trying to understand and find a way through this very complex and expensive hotel project so I think I'll leave that there. One other question that's on the table for me and John I'm realizing we have a
- meeting to reschedule is about transportation and how we are leveraging BT to connect visitors from hotel to convention center in the interim period. So I'll follow up with you on that. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Jane. Any comments or questions for Jane? And we have Vince online. I don't know if Vince wants to say anything. He's welcome to if you'd like to. All right, let's
- Let's move on then to item 10, old business. Is there any old business to be brought before the committee? Seeing none, any new business to be brought before the committee? Comments from board members. Any comments from board members? Comments from the public. And if anybody from the public would like to make a comment, there's a podium here and you have two minutes if you'd like to make a comment. The offer is going, going and gone.
- Next meeting is September 17th, 2025 at 3 p.m. And with that, you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here, and we are adjourned.