We asked our Facebook friends, “Almost everyone here loves Bloomington, but let’s face it, we don’t have everything. What would you most like to see here?” We got some surprising answers.
Of course, people would love it if Bloomington had an ocean and beaches like the Caribbean and sunsets like New Mexico, but that’s not going to happen.
More down-to-earth yearnings include a Trader Joe’s, a Whole Foods, an International House of Pancakes, a Jamba Juice, Vietnamese and Brazilian restaurants, and a really good Italian eatery. Several readers also mentioned wanting a firstrate shop that specializes in cheeses. Another desire: “A killer locally owned 24-hour diner downtown would be really sweet.”
For children, our readers would like to have more kid-friendly water features in our parks, A Toys r Us, “more fun places for kids to eat,” and a kids-only barbershop.
Other desires include:
—“A place that sells well-tailored, polished-looking women’s clothes”
—“Lots more community gardens and public fruit trees”
—“More Shakespeare in the park”
—“An interfaith community center”
—“More good paying jobs that don’t require highly specialized training”
—“More low-income housing”
—“A better venue for music artists”
What do you want? Let us know by leaving a comment below or contacting us on Facebook!
Looking at the comments listed in the article, I’m see a lot of minds like my own! More cheap/free things for kids to do besides playgrounds. More easily accessible community gardens. My husband I definitely second the Trader Joe’s! It’d be great if apartment complexes recycled and composted as a normal course of business- especially in low income areas where it’s already more difficult for residents to make such commitments. Every school should have an active garden that feeds in to their cafeteria and is tended to by ALL students as part of their curriculum (Not just science! Also math, social studies, literature, art…)
My wish list includes:
More pocket neighborhoods. http://pocket-neighborhoods.net/
Professionalized medical translators for our growing Hispanic community.
Movie theaters where you can lounge and eat while watching good movies (again Portland, Oregon comes to mind)
Alzheimer’s facilties with state-of-the-art, in-the-round architecture that affords residents a large, sky-light-topped community dining space in the middle and easy ways to find their own rooms along the edges (little bay windows with belongings in them) . A really good one would have secure outdoor green spaces for walking and sitting. Portland, Oregon has some lovely ones….with several such homes or pods connected to one another by community spaces for games and singing. Architecture and green space matter for all of us.
More complementary/alternative medical options that are recognized by our traditional medical personnel as essential to some patients’ health and well being. I would hope for respectful dialogues between different medical modalities, with different, but not necessarily inferior, criteria for evaluating what works. A Tibetan medical doctor with training in Western medicine (or vice-versa) would be ideal for our town.