The event pictured Bloomington and its surrounding areas as still suffering from the Great Recession, but with slow and steady growth as well as an optimism surrounding the town and region’s growth in the future.
The hour-and-a-half luncheon and conference featured speakers on real estate, economic statistics, the I-69 corridor and workforce ?development.
The Bloomington Economic Development Corporation seeks to create growth in Monroe County’s business environment by working with the community and local development corporations, according to the group’s ?website.
In addition to the overall picture of Bloomington’s economy, the announcement of a collaboration between the town, IU’s School of Medicine and IU Health to construct a new hospital was dealt with in depth.
The hospital, which is to be located off State Road 46 on the current location of the IU driving range, will feature an inpatient care facility, doctor’s offices and a building to consolidate the IU School of Medicine. The integrated facility will be unique to IU.
“There’s nothing like this in the state,” said Lynn Coyne, president of the Bloomington Economic Development Corporation and vice president of IU Health. “We haven’t done the research nationally, but I doubt we find another, and if we do, there’s only one.”
The collaboration was announced early in the morning Wednesday with more details provided at the luncheon conference.
The resources provided by IU and the potential of student involvement were brought up multiple times by almost every speaker.
“We’re beginning an initiative to have students become more involved in the town’s entrepreneurial ecosystem,” Coyne said. “We want to make them aware of what’s right by campus and hopefully to have them stay after graduation.”
Richard Rampley, operations and business services director for WorkOne in the south-central area of the state, spoke about workforce development and its necessity for economic growth.
WorkOne is the local presence of the Indiana Office of Workforce Development, a state agency that seeks to increase Indiana’s workforce capital, according to the group’s website.
Rampley focused on the fundamentals in his speech.
“The number-one problem employers have is workers showing up day one,” Rampley said. “The number-three problem is workers showing up day two.”
Another major focus of the event was the real estate market in Bloomington and Monroe County,
Two presenters spoke about the real estate market, with Mark Brown of the Indiana Realtors Association focusing on the residential side and Randy Lloyd of First Capital Group focusing on the commercial side.
Much like other parts of the Bloomington economy, growth in these two sectors has been slow but steady, according to the two presenters, and much work remains to be done.
In addition to structural problems with commercial real estate nationwide, Lloyd brought up problems he thought were specific to the Bloomington area.
“We get blinded by our own enlightenment,” Lloyd said. “We think we’re that good, and that blinds us to improvements we could make by looking outside our community.”
