WFHB Bloomington Community Radio
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The City is making progress on renovating the old Dimension Mill on West 11th Street. The old mill is within the Certified Tech Park. In last night’s meeting of the Bloomington Redevelopment Commission, the city’s Economic and Sustainability Director, Alex Crowely, said he’d like to move from design approval to financial approval in the next two months.
“The Dimension Mill project is progressing. We have seen a second set of interior design thoughts for the layout, of how the layout of the facility might align with the programming that was put in place for it. It is at least a tentative plan right now that we want to present that interior concept to this group possibly as early as May 1st.”
Crowley said the city’s goal it to have the site ..quote…activated….by August. He said he is continuing to work to bring private investment into the Tech Park.
“We are starting to turn our attention to some of the more private investment moves that we can make, which involves potential developers for the lots as they are currently roughly laid out, as well the administration building. So those are the new areas of focus that we’re starting to contemplate as we’re looking at developments specifically.”
Crowley says the administration is investigating the projected costs of designing and building out the infrastructure for the Tech Park as a whole. The city contracted with Indianapolis urban design firm Anderson Bohlander on infrastructure design last year. The firm provided design plans for public review in January. Crowley reports the city has received financial projections from Anderson Bohlander, and is comparing those costs with estimates provided earlier.
“We’ve gotten a 60 percent view of that. We’ve gotten some costs associated with that view. We are, right now, digging into the costs to understand them figure out how they align with estimates. And so we’ve asked Anderson Bohlander to pause briefly on their work so we can do that analysis, and then we’ll go from there.”
When asked by Commission member Sue Sgambelluri about a timeline for new investors, Crowely said he couldn’t yet provide one.
