A Twin City advocacy group is sharing its visions for how the south end of Downtown Bloomington could blossom — beyond the temporary parking lots planned for the area.
“We just see this whole exercise as having a bold vision for downtown,” said Noah Tang, founder and president of Strong Towns Blono, referring to the process of developing designs for what could be. The group is a local offshoot of national Strong Towns, an advocacy group focused on development patterns in cities.
Strong Towns Blono will unveil its trio of designs for Downtown Bloomington at 5:30 p.m. Thursday. That's just before the start of its monthly meeting at the Bloomington Public Library. The designs vary in complexity, and in the level of investment needed, said Tang.
One calls for a green space, such a dog park, while another imagines a hotel that could complement the nearby Grossinger Motors Arena.
Strong Towns aims for private and public developers to use the group’s findings to think outside the box for what’s possible in the Front and Center street area, said Tang.
This fall the wrecking ball has demolished (or soon will) several buildings just south of the historic downtown square, as part of the city’s plan to improve those blocks. The former Elks building is down, and the aging and neglected Front N Center building is slated to come down by year’s end.
In the footprints of those buildings, and a few others, the city will create temporary parking lots — with nearly 150 spaces to offset the parking that’ll be lost during a major project transforming the Market Street Parking Deck site into a mixed-use structure.
But Tyler Pessler, a member of the Strong Towns Blono executive committee, said they want the community to remember those parking lots are intended to be temporary.
It’s not a case where Strong Towns leadership believes the city is being malevolent or lazy in choosing parking over other proposals, said Pessler.
“We just believe that there is sometimes a poverty of imagination when it comes to what cities can look like. And we truly believe that in the charrette and in giving of the multiple options, we can open both public and private investors' eyes to what downtown can look like," he said.
Strong Towns organizes charrette to brainstorm
These ideas resulted from Strong Towns' summer charrette — an intensive, brief collaboration session this past July — that brought together community stakeholders interested in creating options for city leaders to consider.
The nonprofit really wants to the community to rally around using the space for more than parking lots, said Pessler.
“Part of our Strong Town ethos is using the land in a smart and economically efficient way to be able to generate revenue,” said Pessler. “If it's a parking lot, it's just kind of going to sit there as bare land, and it won't bring anything of what we view as value back to the community."
Pessler leads the group’s Urban Centers Revitalization Committee, which coordinated the charrette.
Front N Center design ideas
Strong Towns has produced three proposals for development on the Front N Center area. They didn’t want to present a single design proposal, for fear it would become an all-or-nothing scenario, said Tang and Pessler. The three groups focused on different levels of investment:
- Low intensity: Think a permanent farmers market structure, public restrooms, seating for programming and activities outdoors, and possibly pop-up retail spaces.
- Medium intensity: This might be the construction of single- or two-story buildings on the block, with room to add more.
- High intensity: This is the more traditional style of development — a hotel and conference center, maybe some apartments.
Strong Towns put forth several designs to give the city options. “That way that can sort of choose a la carte, exactly what they’d want to invest in,” said Pessler, adding “a lot of these do require a lot of public investment on the city’s front.”
Offering options increases the odds one of the ideas could be developed, he said.
“We would hate to go to the city and present one idea, and they shoot it down, and then it goes nowhere, and Front N Center remains a parking lot. That would be the worst-case scenario for us,” said Pessler.
