By: Diane Benjamin
At least the walk will be shorter for Pantagraph reporters if Bloomington City Hall moves some of their offices to the Government Center. Of course we had to find out from the paper: https://www.pantagraph.com//govt-and-politics/bloomington-city-hall-council-meetings-to-move-to-county-government-center
You have to read down to find out Connect Transit may chose the old City Hall building for their new transfer station. Conveniently they would have to demolish it. Gee, Tari has wanted it gone since around the time he took office. I wonder if anybody noticed building “modern” looks really stupid and unusable decades later?
Tari has always been jealous of Normal’s lavish offices, is this the “out” he will use to demolish it the current one?
The article contains this quote from City Manager Tim Gleason::
The story continues:
It make perfect sense to move offices to the Government Center and then move offices already there to City Hall. Right?
Evidently nobody asked the obvious question: With all the empty buildings downtown – why is Connect Transit looking at City Hall? Who told them it’s available?
If Connect Transit does chose City Hall, where will Public Works, Engineering, and Parks staff go?
Another option could be providing parking (on the current city hall property) for the library after library building expansion on their current site.
Apparently if it’s not expensive they aren’t interested!
Wonder what they’ll be doing with Corp. South once SF completely abandons that.
HEY STOP! We NEED a sudy to determine WHAT buildings the people who ride the bus NORMALLY use. THat’s about as “racist” thinking as a person can get. Maybe Jenn can help “explain” they way out of this statement.
That’s like saying only White privileged people use the golf course at Country Club.
If one were to take the time to look into the actual design history of the current city hall it was a remarkable example of mid century modern public spaces – floor to ceiling glass – openness – inclusion , transparency all human factors of design well ahead of its time. Check out the original photos and blueprints and check out the news articles of the era . A very good building – slightly bastarardized over the years with ham fisted partitioning of interior spaces and inept technical upgrades etc. are the only blemishes ( aside from some current and past occupants) to this mid century gem. …
In the end , it comes down to a mayor and council that wants to further self isolate in a less transparent facility – driven by the desire of a mayor that wishes his offices are as cool as his uptown mayoral counter part. …
Alt. Future use could be the Mayors Residence if Bloomington ever wakes up and ditches the council/Mgr form of government but I won’t hold my breath . .. sure wish I could get it gifted to me or sold to me at the ‘friend price’ like they do over in Normal- what a sweet mid century James Bond pad I could do with that …
Throughout history, Communist and Socialist dictators have been very good at tearing down structures of previous history and replacing those structures with monuments and buildings that glorify their own rule. Structures of great architecture that served the public are replaced with dank and unimaginative buildings usually with a statue or monument of the ruler in front.
Bloomington and Normal should combine their admin offices. It would be much easier if we had one place for government. Who knows, if they did they may realize you don’t need 2 mayors, 2 town managers and duplicate directors. Taxpayers would save on the redundancy and waste. The essential workers of garbage, fire, police, etc. would be unchanged. Combined B/N is a population of 120,000 people. This is still a small town. I never understood why you have 2 governments when you are so close. I don’t think most people even know where the boundary lines are.
Amazing! After all this, the answer to solving the economic freefall of Bloomington is to build a brand new state-of-the-art transfer station for a public transit system with virtually no demand that’s hemorrhaging money. Brilliant!