Adam RollinsThis story was originally published in the Government Contracting Pipeline newsletter from Strategic Partnerships, Inc. To have the latest government contracting news stories from across the country delivered straight to your inbox, click here to subscribe.
On Dec. 16, 2024, the Bloomington City Council in Minnesota adopted its 10-year Capital Improvement Plan (CIP). The plan details more than $826 million that will be invested in city facilities, park development, water projects, the South Loop and transportation between 2025 and 2034.
The City Council updates the plan annually, evolving the document to accommodate community needs and the city’s changing strategic vision. The CIP includes a series of goals to help guide development, investment and deployment:
- The city will maintain a systematic approach to planning and initiating projects,providing the flexibility to plan public improvement locations, timing and financing.
- A realistic and predictable program of capital spending will be developed to manage and maintain projected funding availability.
- The plan will help the city, port and Housing and Redevelopment Authority (HRA) use a framework to strategically evaluate the city’s needs.
- The CIP must coordinate capital needs with the adopted Comprehensive Plan.
- Public and private investors must maintain awareness of the scope of capital improvements.
- The plan must enhance participation opportunities in federal and/or state financial and technical support programs.
The Community Health and Wellness Center will receive the largest sum for projects in 2025, totaling $111.8 million. The lion’s share of that total – $101.8 million – will go toward building a replacement facility located on the same site as the existing community center. The Creekside Community Center was built around six decades ago and no longer provides enough space to accommodate all resident needs and conditions. The city will demolish the community center and Public Health Building for construction.
The replacement facility will feature ample recreational amenities, including gymnasiums, a walking and jogging track, an indoor playground, a pool, exercise spaces and multipurpose rooms. The city will also ensure the building will provide a public health clinic and programming space for health and wellness programs. The remaining $10 million will support the construction of a parking ramp for the center.
Bloomington will invest another $27 million to build a new equipment maintenance garage. Planned to have a useful life of 35 years, the garage will cover approximately 40,000 square feet. The facility will include a central warehouse, a parts room, lockers and restrooms. The expanded building will have enough capacity to handle the city’s fleet vehicles and workload while removing constraints on technology and safety improvements.
The city will allocate $19 million to renovate athletic fields across the park system. The project will cover three parks – Valley View Park, Gene Kelly Park and Dred Scott Playfields. Plans include regrading the diamond fields, installing new turf on the athletic fields, installing field lighting, replacing dugouts and other associated improvements.
Photo courtesy Gabriel Vanslette, CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
