By Howard Packowitz

BLOOMINGTON – The head of a consulting firm that finds it feasible for Bloomington and Normal to build an indoor and outdoor multi-sports complex here is not willing to reveal potential sites for the estimated $43.6 million venue.

Evan Eleff, chief operating officer for Clearwater, Flordia’s Sports Facilities Advisory, said there are too many variables to make a site recommendation or make public the potential locations.

Eleff said he’s studied 16 possible venues, and narrowed them down to four. He’s not commenting on locations partly because Twin-City governments don’t currently own big-enough sites and they’ll have to find out whether landowners would be willing to sell their property.

“Neither one of them own properties that are large enough right now, so you’d have to find a landowner willing to sell, and for that to be the right location.”

Eleff also said it’s not economical to locate an indoor facility at one location and outdoor facility elsewhere.

“Given the size of a lot of the sites and the synergies that would come from the outdoor complex and then having a full indoor field, you think about rainouts, and you think about local recreation, you think about having a place to play, you think about the infrastructure build-out. There are a lot of synergies of having them in the same place,” Eleff said.

Eleff’s recommendation is for a 130,000 square foot dome with room for five multi-purpose fields or two full-sized youth baseball and softball fields. The outdoor complex would have 16 fields, a dozen of them lighted and with synthetic turf.

Some elected leaders have said the complex is too expensive to be paid for mostly with taxpayer dollars. They said much of the funding will have to come from private investors.

Normal and Bloomington governments shared in the cost of the $47,000 study, along with a contribution from the Bloomington-Normal Area Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Howard Packowitz can be reached at [email protected].