Around 50 people gathered Wednesday afternoon for the grand opening of Hopewell Commons off South Morton Street and West Second Street. The celebration featured food trucks, live music, games, a beer garden and community leader speakers.
Attendees played pickleball, swayed on the bench swings and listened to Matixando, a local Costa Rican musical project, play music as they explored the new park.
The park features 126 trees, table tennis tables, temporary pickleball courts, a small performance stage, a lawn, public art and more.
Hopewell Commons will also be home to the city’s Tuesday farmers’ market starting in June.
Eden Mark, a senior at IU, said she thought the park was a good addition to this area of Bloomington.
“Bloomington can always use more places to walk, so I think that it’s great there’s another area of access for people to walk around,” she said.
Notable speakers included Mayor Kerry Thomson, City of Bloomington Parks and Recreation Director Tim Street and President of the Bloomington Chamber of Commerce President Eric Spoonmore.
Street said the city designed the park to facilitate community connections while also focusing on sustainability and locally sourcing materials. He said the park features permeable pavers, LED lighting, and thermally modified wood.
Thomson said public spaces such as Hopewell Commons create new opportunities for the city and community to interact and grow.
“Our parks are where community becomes visible,” she said. “Where conversations start and where strangers become neighbors, where memories are made again and again and again in a redevelopment as ambitious and transformative as Hopewell.”
Thomson also said that the pickleball courts –– one of the park’s most popular features –– are temporary, but able to be moved to other locations.
“The genius of our parks team is that those pickleball courts can be picked up and moved,” she said. “And so, we are looking forward to more spontaneous pickleball throughout Bloomington in the years to come.”
Kendall Knoke, project engineer for the City of Bloomington, told the IDS the opening of Hopewell Commons is just one phase of a decades-long project.
The city’s newest park anchors the redevelopment project for the Hopewell neighborhood, located on the site of the former IU Health Bloomington Hospital, which moved to a new location in 2021.
Knoke also said the property is unique because it is a large, undeveloped plot near the city center. He said the city wanted to have more control of the development.
“The decision at the time when the hospital closed is, ‘We don't want this facility to sit abandoned for many years,’” Knoke said. “And we also don't want it to get bought and just turned into whatever.”
He also said the city asked questions about how to develop the site to help solve some of Bloomington’s issues, such as affordable housing.
The project began when the city acquired the land in 2021 with the intent to build a mixed-use-zoned urban neighborhood with affordable housing, retail and office space. The city will also construct a new grid-style street plan.
The redevelopment project has continued for multiple years, with development on the sites around the park beginning as early as this year.
The company contracted to build Hopewell Commons is Milestone. Thomas Gott, Milestone assistant general superintendent, told the IDS that Milestone is a Bloomington-based company, which made this project more impactful for them
“90% of the people that work on this project are born and raised right here in town,” he said. “This is their community, so that made it a little bit more special for the guys that were working.”
