Nearly two months after the roof at Reconcile Church in Bloomington collapsed, the City of Bloomington has few answers about why it happened.
City Manager Jeff Jurgens said heavy rains in mid-July likely caused the collapse, but there’s really no way of knowing now that the building has been demolished. The building was empty at the time and there were no injuries, but the incident triggered a review of city processes around privately-owned buildings used for public gatherings.
“This building was not something that was in our court system; it was not something that was on the radar of city staff,” Jurgens said. “Because it has fully collapsed, we’re likely to never know the complete reason why.”
WGLT’s request for official documents and communications between the church and the city yielded just one item: a notification following the collapse notifying church leaders the building was condemned and would be demolished.
Jurgens said the city does not currently take an active role in inspecting or maintaining privately-owned buildings unless a complaint is filed.
“We have limited staff and limited resources, and we have a very large city,” Jurgens said. “It’s difficult to find issues like this out there. What I can say is our department [Community Impact and Enhancement] is working on trying to be more proactive than reactive.”
There have been recent examples of such a proactive stance with churches. In 2023, Hope Church was forced out of their Bloomington “banktuary” in a Regions Bank branch on Empire St. after fire inspectors deemed the building unsuitable for public gatherings.
“We do fire inspections, but a fire inspection is not going to catch a roof issue,” said Jurgens. “And again, our system has been complaint-based. When we get complaints, we will bring them in to court, we will cite them, we will make them fix the issues.”
Bloomington does not have a program for building inspectors to review structural issues—and Jurgens is not aware of many cities who do.
“But, again, we are trying to get to a better state where we are being proactive,” he said. “It’s going to take resources to do that. But clearly this shows there’s a need for more enforcement like that.”
Sales tax suspension
Jurgens said the city is in ongoing conversation with McLean County and the Town of Normal about a stalemate regarding collection of a public safety and mental health fund paid for through sales taxes. Bloomington and Normal want to push pause on handing that money to the county while the fund is audited. The county has said they won’t agree to the pause until the audit is done. A committee has been formed, but the timeline for the audit is so far unclear.
Jurgens said it's an issue that is too important to let go of. That includes communicating with providers who depend on the fund to provide services.
“We’ve got a lot of people counting on us,” he said. “We want to make sure they know this is not about trying to take money away from those programs. This is simply just trying to figure out some procedural issues and making sure we get on the same page.”
Enterprise zone expansion
Another ongoing conversation is with the owner of Eastland Mall, which Jurgens said has been positive throughout the last year. He said they're in frequent talks with the struggling shopping center's owner about development opportunities.
“That’s an area of the city we really want to see redeveloped,” he said. “We want to see great use at that location. I know the community does as well.”
A recent adjustment to the city's Enterprise Zone includes parts of the mall. Properties within the enterprise zone receive incentives for developing vacant and underused properties.
“Anything we can do to try and get that area redeveloped—we’re going to try to do that,” said Jurgens.
