Downtown Bloomington: redevelopment efforts continue into third decade.

• Author: Kaelble, Steve
• Position: Focus

Continuous improvement, the mantra practiced by so many of the state's best companies, can also apply to urban development.

That's the message from Bloomington, where one of the state's healthiest downtowns just keeps getting better. Civic and business leaders are now in their third decade of building, rebuilding and rehabbing the heart of the Monroe County seat.

The most recent project is a multistory development from locally based Regester Place LLC that will replace the downtown Regester parking garage on College Avenue. Plans include a Holiday Inn, commercial and residential space and a new parking garage. Work is to begin this month with demolition of the existing garage, and the project is to be finished in less than a year.

The Regester Place development is just the latest in a string of downtown projects stretching back more than 20 years, says Talisha Coppock, executive director of the Downtown Bloomington Commission. "Since 1979, there have been 118 buildings renovated, which is very dramatic."

Coppock sees 1979 as the dawn of downtown redevelopment because that's when local developer CFC Inc. launched its first major downtown project, the renovation of the old Graham Hotel, built 50 years earlier. In the redevelopment, office and commercial space took the place of hotel rooms, according to Jim Murphy, president of CFC, owned by Bill and Gayle Cook, local medical-device magnates and historic preservationists.

"Our philosophy is to make Bloomington a place that is alive and vibrant, and it starts with the downtown," Murphy says. "We've been involved because of the leadership of Bill and Gayle Cook," well known across the state for such historic preservation projects as the old West Baden Springs Hotel.

After getting the ball rolling with the Graham project, CFC embarked on numerous other downtown redevelopments, among other things turning an old train depot into office space and a warehouse into an antique mall. CFC's biggest downtown project, says Murphy, was Fountain Square, which in 1988 transformed the entire south side of the courthouse square into a retail center linking nine buildings dating back as far as the 1890s. Also in the downtown area is the Showers complex, once a furniture factory, now a multi-use redevelopment that includes CFC-managed commercial space, the Bloomington City Hall and Indiana...