Bloomington willing to be patient in development of downtown tech park

But city planners like Danise Alano-Martin still say they can’t answer the most fundamental question about the city’s tech park: Will it actually diversify downtown housing?

“We’ve been looking at ways other communities have tried to address it for years, and we continue to,” said Alano-Martin, director of the city's department of economic and sustainable development. “We haven’t really found anyone who’s been successful, or who’s come up with the template for doing this. But we keep looking. It’ll be the first time that we’re doing it.”

Bloomington has a general vision for its own real estate — 12 acres north of City Hall purchased from Indiana University in 2011 — and how it should mesh with the larger tech park. Mayor Mark Kruzan told The Herald-Times in November that accelerating the growth of the tech park past the city-owned 12 acres is a major goal of his final year in office. And mayoral candidates have included use of the Certified Tech Park in their platforms as a major catalyst of future downtown development.

Now, the city has to help its vision come to life. By 2016, Alano-Martin said, construction could begin on the infrastructure improvements the city outlined in its 2013 Certified Technology Park master plan. Looking any further into the future is difficult, however, and Alano-Martin says the city will wait as long as it has to in order to make the best use of its 12 acres.

“We don’t have to expect to make a profit on this property. We have greater goals,” Alano-Martin said. “The thing that we can’t do is we can’t develop this property twice. We don’t have a second chance. You don’t get 12 to 14 acres of undeveloped land in downtown Bloomington again. So we can afford to wait it out until the right project comes along for the long-term health of the community.”