By Howard Packowitz

BLOOMINGTON – The Bloomington-Normal Economic Development Council is involved in whatever happens to State Farm’s former headquarters in Downtown Bloomington.

However, the EDC’s new president and chief executive officer Patrick Hoban is not providing details about what the organization is doing to generate economic activity at the site.

Hoban said the EDC is working with State Farm, which is the community’s largest employer, and the city government, which contributes annual subsidies to fund the EDC.

Regardless, Hoban said EDC will be involved whether the nearly century-old building is saved, or if it’s torn down.

“At the end of the day, whenever you’re looking at that building in our eyes, that’s a site. So, our role is to match up sites with developers, sites with businesses,” said Hoban.

“That’s always going to be a site, as a building or as land,” he added.

Hoban said the EDC will always try to market the property.

“We will always be including that in our site selection data, which is on our website,” Hoban said.

Hoban has been on the job as the head of the local EDC for about two weeks. He made his comments about the State Farm building last week during a community meet-and-greet at the Bloomington Country Club.

Howard Packowitz can be reached at [email protected]