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Confusion leads to no action on convention center expansion

By Donnie Burgess

Posted May 22, 2025

Concrete sign displaying the words "City Hall" outside of Bloomington's city hall and government center. (Donnie Burgess, WFIU/WTIU News)

Confusion at Wednesday night’s Bloomington City Council meeting led to no action on the convention center expansion project.

The council was originally asked to approve moving $10 million from the city’s food and beverage tax cash fund to the Capital Improvement Board, which oversees development of the convention center expansion. The money was going to be used for early construction.

But Jessica McClellan, Controller for the City of Bloomington, said the money is not actually needed, for now.

“There was a combination of, really, not knowing how the bond fund proceeds were exactly going to work and when the project was going to start,” McClellan said. “We thought we were going to need some cash on hand to start paying invoices sooner than we did. We do not need that cash on hand.”

*City controller Jessica McClellan addresses the full council at a meeting on May 21st, 2025. (Courtesy, Zoom)*

McClellan asked the council to vote against the money transfer, which it did unanimously.

The city’s food and beverage tax cash fund currently sits at $19,943,164. That money is only to be used for the convention center expansion project.

She also clarified to WFIU/WTIU News that the city owes project architect Schmidt Associates just over $2 million, not the $9.8 million mistakenly listed in the council’s agenda. McClellan said that was an information error and nothing has changed with the expansion project’s finances.

The original contract, also called a purchase order, with Schmidt Associates was nearly $4.5 million. McClellan said the city has already paid about half of that amount using food and beverage tax cash funds.

Groundbreaking is set for Tuesday, June 3, at 3:30 p.m.