Among the improvements the Downtown Bloomington Streetscape plan is expected to deliver is increased access to a part of town that has been historically inaccessible to people with differing mobility needs.
Bloomington city officials told WGLT in a series of interviews that accessibility has been a key component of the ongoing, years-long development process of the now-formalized revitalization and infrastructure plan.
City council members voted unanimously Monday night to adopt the plan, kicking off an opportunity for the municipality to seek state and federal grant funding for a project that’s currently divided into 10 phases and set to cost around $59 million.
Given its scope of more than two dozen blocks surrounding and including the city’s core, it’s a project that will likely take years to complete, meaning that, for now, some accessibility issues will persist — though city officials say the completed project will be worth the wait.
“Perennially, the complaint from the disabled community is that downtown is not accessible,” said Michael Hurt, Bloomington’s chief diversity and inclusion officer and ADA coordinator. “One of the things that the city admonished the developers to do was to make sure that this new downtown development is accessible to everyone — everyone of all ages and all abilities. That was one of the primary charges they were given.”
Accessibility issues within Bloomington’s downtown have been myriad, ranging from sidewalks is disrepair that make navigating with a wheelchair or mobility scooter difficult, to intersection crossings that lack audible cues when a traffic signal changes. Businesses, too, can be inaccessible given their century-plus-old designs that require climbing a step to enter.
“Whether you are walking, mobile, you're in a wheelchair — all of that has been taken into account in terms of accessible design for this new downtown project,” Hurt said.
Council member Cody Hendricks, who represents Ward 6 downtown, said he feels the project has sufficiently addressed some of the long-term issues that have gone unresolved, including the lack of access to some downtown businesses.
“The city is also looking at, aside from just the sidewalks from an infrastructure [perspective], how they connect with the entrance into most of the businesses downtown," said Hendricks. "Whether that’s looking at potential sloping or looking at different communities that do ramps and level out and bring the sidewalk up to the door — it’s definitely going to be a door-by-door basis. It’s going to take some time, but I know that it is a huge emphasis.”
During a March council meeting, Ward 7 council member Mollie Ward asked developers Crawford, Murphy & Tilly about the details of plans to redo sidewalk sections included in the streetscape; project manager Mike Sewell said the current design plan includes a “more robust system in terms of drainage” specifically due to feedback developers had received regarding accessibility.
“We want to make sure that it’s not only accessible when it’s constructed, but that it’s accessible for the long run,” Sewell said.
In a later interview with WGLT, Ward said she had spoken with developers and felt confident accessibility was a primary focus for the plan — not just an accessory issue.
“It felt reassuring to me that this was something that they had already put a lot of thought into. It wasn’t just like, ‘Oh, ee have this plan and now she’s complaining about infrastructure and accessibility, so let’s come up with an answer here.’ It really does feel like from the get-go, this was tops on their priority list,” she said.
But Ward said the public shouldn’t take city officials’ word for granted on the issue. Persistent advocacy, she said, is likely part of why accessibility has been included in the streetscape plan early on.
“I would encourage people, particularly those who have concerns about accessibility… keep holding us accountable,” she said. “Keep showing up at city council meetings, keep reaching out to city leaders to let us know and the community know that you are still paying attention. I want people to keep talking about it and keep asking questions.”
Because the project will be incremental in implementation, it will be some time before the streetscape plan’s promise to create a "Downtown for Everyone" can be tested for its truth.
“Because the complaints have gone on on for so long, from the disabled community and those entities that advocate for the disabled, I think they're just waiting to see if [we] really are going to put [our] money where [our] mouth is — and whether all of these wonderful things that [we] say will be included in the streetscape will really come to fruition,” Hurt said. “My answer from what I’ve seen? It’s absolutely yes.”
Publicly available streetscape planning documentationreports the city had multiple meetings with Life Center for Independent Living, a nonprofit that provides services and support for people with disabilities. Life CIL declined to comment.
