Lot numbering from the Hopewell masterplan
Bloomington’s planned new Hopewell neighborhood is supposed to replace the former IU Health hospital at 2nd and Rogers streets and extend to the surrounding area.
Based on Monday’s update to Bloomington’s redevelopment commission (RDC) from city controller Jessica McClellan, the project has already expended about $17.8 million of the roughly $28 million in TIF (tax increment finance) revenue that the RDC has committed to the project.
At Monday’s meeting, the RDC approved several Hopewell-related agenda items that add about $318,000 to the total expenditures for the project—for demolition, preliminary infrastructure design work, relocation of power lines, and for street lighting.
The items included a change order from Renascent, which was awarded the contract for demolition of buildings in South Hopewell, which is south of 1st Street. The additional cost came from Renascent’s contract with a third-party to handle the disposal of some unforeseen transite pipe. Transite is a type of cement-asbestos piping, which requires special disposal procedures.
Also on Monday’s agenda were two items related to a $187,500 revision to the contract with CrossRoad Engineers, for preliminary design work on the Hopewell West portion of the project. One item was for the engineering contract itself. The other was a revision to the agreement with READI (Regional Economic Acceleration and Development Initiative) for a $1.8 million grant that is helping to fund part of the Hopewell project.
City of Bloomington project engineer Kendall Knoke told RDC members that the change to the agreement with READI, which had already been approved by the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, was tied to the revision in the preliminary design contract for CrossRoad Engineers.
The revision to the CrossRoad contract will bring its total to $794,140. The preliminary design work is supposed to support utility coordination, transportation and public facilities, property platting, and the design of new streets inside the neighborhood.
The scope of work for design of the north-south running new segment of Jackson Street is being changed to go from 1st Street just up to the new east-west running University Street, Knoke said, instead of the full length of Jackson. But that was balanced against adding preliminary design work for Rogers Street.
A big part of the change, Knoke said, is the increase of the amount of work included in the “preliminary” design, to make it 60 percent complete, instead of just 30 percent complete. The 60-percent level of preliminary design is needed, in order to get everything through required city approvals, Knoke said.
Rounding out the RDC’s Monday agenda were two items related to Duke Energy’s role in the Hopewell project. The RDC approved a $43,780 invoice from Duke for relocation of additional power lines and equipment along West 1st Street and Morton Street to avoid installed stormwater drainage.
On Monday, the RDC also approved a $82,473 agreement with Duke for the installation of 31 50W LED traditional light fixtures mounted on new aluminum poles with a black finish. The department of public works will pay the operational costs of the lights, which are estimated to be $2,277 per year.
Senior project manager Roy Aten in Bloomington’s engineering department described the lights as “pedestrian scale”—not like the more familiar lights that are mounted on a big pole mast. The original plan was for lights costing $400,000, but a revised design brought that down to the $82,000 figure, Aten said. He described the reduction like this: “It’s just not as decorative as what was originally planned.”
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