After a months-long legal battle, the City of Bloomington will present a new proposal for the Fourth Street garage to the Bloomington Plan Commission on March 9.
The proposed plan will have about 540 spaces and seven floors. The original plan had about 510 parking spaces spread across six floors. The garage will only be accessible from Fourth Street, Bloomington Deputy Mayor Mick Renneisen said.
The city changed its original plan because it was legally prevented from acquiring the property where the business JuanSells.com Realty is located. Monroe Circuit Court judge Holly Harvey ruled Dec. 20 that the city couldn’t use eminent domain, the right of the government to seize private land for public use, because JuanSells.com Realty's property would be filled by other businesses, which isn't considered public use, according to court documents.
Renneisen said many of the features the city originally planned will stay, such as electric vehicle charging stations, bike parking and solar energy generation.
“It just will have to be on a more compressed and upright footprint,” he said.
The new sketch, set to publish on the city’s website before the March 9 Plan Commission meeting, will include more precise detail of the garage’s structure, Renneisen said, showing the public art adorning the garage and the materials the building will be made of.
The city previously tried buying the property from the owner for $587,500, according to court documents.
However, removing the space for public and private businesses would violate Bloomington code, which states all garages have to have some area for commercial use on the ground floor, Renneisen said.
JuanSells.com Realty ownerJuan Carlos Carrasquel said he’s glad the city has moved on to a different plan excluding his property, and he said he hopes the garage is built soon. He said he didn't want to sell the property because it is the perfect place for his business.
“They should’ve done that from day one and not waste everybody’s time and taxpayers’ dollars,” Carrasquel said.
Renneisen said the city may still appeal the judge’s decision. However, he said the city wanted to bypass the delay an appeal would bring by giving the plan commission an amended proposal removing the JuanSells.com property. If the city acquires the property in the future through eminent domain or sale, then it would be able to later add more space.
“We are designing this garage to be expandable,” he said.
The garage’s construction has been contentious from the beginning. The garage was demolished because of a 2018 inspection that found the garage to be structurally unsafe. Renneisen said the garage needed to be updated, Renneisen said.
He said the city had two options after learning about the garage’s structural issues: repair it at a cost the city deemed too expensive to extend its lifespan only a couple years or replace it. Another reason the city decided to demolish it and begin anew was to update it to better reflect the population of Bloomington,Renneisen said, increasing the number of parking spaces from about 350 to 540.
“That's the vision and purpose for why the garage was intended to be expanded,” Renneisen said.
Renneisen said he wants people to look back decades from now and see a city which didn’t think just of present problems, but future ones, such as parking for the Monroe Convention Center.
“Wouldn’t you want to see a garage that accommodated the growth and development of Bloomington in this decade?” Renneisen said.
