Kirkwood Avenue will stay open to vehicle traffic in 2026, the Bloomington Board of Public Works decided at its Tuesday meeting, according to a Wednesday press release.
The city began blocking Kirkwood to vehicle traffic in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Bloomington City Council made the annual street closure from April and November official in January 2025.
The program encourages restaurants along Kirkwood to work with the city in the spring, summer and fall months to install seating areas, called parklets, on top of street parking spots.
However, the city announced its intent to reopen the street to vehicle traffic in early February, citing a lack of resources and community engagement. Plans for this year's Kirkwood Avenue Outdoor Dining Program also included enhancing the accessibility accommodations by requiring level platforms. According to a Wednesday press release, the 2026 plan for Kirkwood includes collecting data for a 2027 corridor study of Kirkwood, to “evaluate long-term safety, transportation function, and economic development considerations.”
City staff said that they don’t have the staff capacity to keep the street closed year-round and cited an 8% decrease in “community engagement” from 2024 to 2025 despite a 57% increase in event activity.
Councilmembers expressed concerns about reopening the street to vehicle traffic year round, especially because they had passed Ordinance 2025-02 only a year prior, closing the street from April to November annually.
One section of the ordinance allows the city engineer to suspend the program temporarily or permanently at any time in case of emergency, lack of participation, or any reason that “may render the program impractical.”
“Even if it doesn’t violate the letter of the ordinance, it certainly violates the spirit in my mind,” Flaherty said at the Feb. 4 meeting. “And that’s not the first time that’s happened under the Mayor Thomson administration.”
The Board of Public Works conducts an annual operational review of the program. The department’s meeting packet for Feb. 24 said downtown businesses showed “an approximate 50/50 split” in feedback surveys on keeping Kirkwood fully closed to vehicle traffic.
Bob Costello, president of the Kirkwood Community Association, said he was disappointed Kirkwood was reopening just a year after the council decided to keep it closed year-round at the Feb. 4 city council meeting.
Costello also said that KCA didn’t receive a memo from the city about changes to the program ahead of the city council meeting.
The board’s staff report, included in the Feb. 24 meeting packet, had an acknowledgment that “communication regarding this recommendation could have been more proactive” with downtown businesses ahead of the news of Kirkwood’s reopening becoming public.
