Bloomington has been on the right track, even when it has been on the wrong track over the last several decades as it has struggled to preserve and revive its downtown.
That's according to Urban Historian Alan Lessoff of Illinois State University. Lessoff is the fall arts and sciences lecturer Thursday evening at the Bone Student Center.
Lessoff's title is 'Uptown Normal is not downtown Bloomington.' Lessoff explains that's based on his examination of un-implemented plans, failed development projects and unbuilt buildings.
"Bloomington has basically debated every state of the art solution to problems of central business districts right up until new urbanism and sustainability through traditional town development, using heritage, and historic preservation, all these things, right?," said Lessoff.
Lessoff said downtown business districts that have had distinctive revivals all have some significant economic engine that helps sustain the moves that local leaders make. Greenville South Carolina was a rundown textile town in the upland south and has become a headquarters town for european high tech manufacturers. Burlington, Vermont centered its revival on a university. Portland Maine, an old harbor, benefitted from being a picturesque spillover from Boston.
"Bloomington has nothing so dramatic. And in that sense there are many more cases of these mid-sized downtowns which have tried various expedients with mixed results," said Lessoff.
Uptown Normal was conceived as a transportation center, government core, and support service center for a large institution, ISU, said Lessoff.
"In Bloomington it has taken just massive amounts of time to try to conceive of just what would the place be. There's nothing like the university neighboring on downtown Bloomington. So, what are you going to do with it," said Lessoff.
Normal also did not have a large inventory of legacy buildings that would be expensive to take down or difficulty in repurposing.
Lessoff said this should not take away away anything from an astonishing achievement over time in Uptown Normal.
"It takes enormous political ability to organize, finance, conceive and maintan a development over time. problem of developing what was not there before." said Lessoff
Lessoff also said Bloomington leaders should not be critiqued too much for having false starts and difficulty sustaining efforts. That is typical.
"Argument about these things is pretty much par for the course. Bloomington is, in a lot of ways, more normal than Normal. And Normal's situation is, to some degree, I don't want to say exceptional, but it's a kind of distinctive problem facing a separate special district," said Lessoff.
Lessoff said cities that have become more vibrant don't shy away from manufacturing, but try for economic diversity as they tap into the urban sensibilities of the next generation. Those preferences are driven at least partly by cost and a lack of the large institutional employers of past generations.
"The kind of dispersed decentralized homeowner auto-oriented way of life has a high overhead. Money and time, committment to a place. the investment by families that they are able to make. That represents a city of secure employment," said Lessoff.
To compete, cities need to offer lower cost options for more transient available employment.
"I have in mind things like, better connections to Chicago, high speed rail, sort of this city as an attractive and relatively low cost outpost of the metropolitan economy in this area," said Lessoff.
He said Bloomington Normal's airport, universities, highway networks, and building stock, all still confer advantages that need to be exploited.
Lessoff said his speech Thursday comes out of a project he's working on with the Mclean County Museum of History that will eventually be an exhibit and a book.
