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🥯 Your BloNo weekend: the data center fight's two dates that matter, and a 74° Thursday (Oct. 22–25)

Issue #2 — the first Production Matrix edition. Plus the Commuter Spine, Normal's water pilot, and library Halloween season.

The BloNo Bagel Oct 22, 2026 · 6 min read

DRAFT — rebuilt Tue Oct 20 as the first Approved Production Matrix edition, from the digest pipeline.
Every item below links to its public source. Bracketed [EDITOR] flags mark what
Wednesday's research pull must land before this goes out. Do not send with flags in.

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0. The Hook

Morning, BloNo! ☕ Issue #2 — the first one built on the new blueprint: less noise, more of what changes your week.

This week in one breath:

  • 🏛️ The data center fight now runs on two dates: the hearing continues Nov. 16, and the City Council votes Nov. 23 — and Bloomington voters get a say first, on the Nov. 3 ballot.
  • 🚗 Your cross-town drive runs on the metro's most dangerous road. The Parkway brief in the Radar is the one to read before the weekend errands.
  • ☀️ Thursday is 74° and sunny; Friday's 73°. The weekend plan makes itself.
  • 🎃 The library's Halloween season is on — an Underground Railroad exhibit, story times, and kids reading to dogs.
  • 💧 Normal is piloting new water treatment to bring ammonia levels down.

Three minutes. Let's go. 👇

1. The Schmear

Bloomington The data center fight, week 2

The news: More than three hours of testimony. Dozens of speakers. One message: Bloomington's draft data center rules are not strong enough. At the Planning Commission hearing, residents pushed for stricter limits — and many for an outright ban — on the hyperscale data centers the draft defines as sites of 10-plus acres or 10-plus megawatts. WGLT

The detail: The live arguments are practical, not theoretical: water during droughts, noise near homes (the draft allows buildings 1,000 feet from houses), and who pays the engineers reviewing a project's water use. WGLT The penalties in the draft follow the city's current zoning rules — so the fight is less about whether there are rules and more about whether they bite. WGLT

What happens next: The hearing continues Nov. 16. The City Council votes Nov. 23, days before the city's pause on big data centers expires. And on Nov. 3, Bloomington voters weigh in through an advisory ballot question — details in the Radar.

🥯 Bagel take: Nobody's asking you to read a zoning code. Know the two dates and what they decide: what gets built next to people's houses, and what shows up on their power and water bills. It's poll time (below), and this one counts.

2. The Everything Topping

Thursday-to-Sunday picks from both sides of town.

  • ☀️ The weather is the event Bloomington + Normal · Thu 74° and sunny, Fri 73° and sunny — the best fall stretch of the week. Constitution Trail, Miller Park, a patio: pick one and go at lunch, not after dark. NWS forecast [EDITOR: add the Sat–Sun forecast + any dated weekend events from Wednesday's pull — BCPA, Normal Theater, and Uptown calendars in docs/source-map.md. Nothing runs without a dated source.]

  • 🎬 Film screening at the Normal Theater Normal A film on Minnesota's response to ICE operations screens at the Normal Theater, via WGLT's coverage. WGLT [EDITOR: confirm screening date/time from the article + normaltheater.com before this runs.]

  • 🏈 Game-Day Hub Bloomington + Normal The War on 74 — the ISU–Bradley rivalry — has a presenting sponsor this season in COUNTRY Financial, so expect the game-day push to get louder as the matchup approaches. GoRedbirds [EDITOR: pull ISU + IWU game dates/times for Oct 22–25 from the athletics schedule pages in Wednesday's pull; parking/tailgate facts come from the same pages or they don't run.]

  • 🎃 Halloween season at Bloomington Public Library Bloomington The fall exhibit — Journey to Freedom: Illinois' Underground Railroad — anchors the library's Halloween-season lineup. Library events

    👨‍👩‍👧 Parent Survival Matrix — the library lineup, sorted by kid:

    • Under 5: Lapsit Story Time · Preschool Story Time
    • Grade-school: Tales for Tails (kids read to dogs) · Halloween Tic-Tac-Toe
    • All ages: the Underground Railroad exhibit · the Bookmobile's neighborhood stops (Four Seasons, Oakwood, Laesch Acres, Wine Way, North Pointe)

    [EDITOR: the groupings above are program titles from the library's own events list — confirm each program's date/time from that list in Wednesday's pull before this ships.]

3. 🐾 The Neighborhood Radar

⏰ The 6 AM Shift Change — the Commuter Spine. The block that changes your drive, not your opinions.

  • 🚗 Veterans Parkway Survival Guide Bloomington + Normal It was built in 1941 as a bypass, and it still drives like one: six to twelve lanes, the highest traffic volume in the metro, and minimal room for anyone not in a car. The toll, per the McLean County Regional Planning Commission: more than 75 life-altering injuries and deaths in a decade. The Reinvent Veterans Parkway study — run with IDOT — is in its final stretch, weighing fixes like mid-street pedestrian refuges and actual bus stops on a corridor where buses currently can't stop. The finished plan goes to IDOT, which owns the road. Until it lands, treat the Parkway as a timing decision: cross early, or cross patient. MCRPC

  • 🛣️ Highway status — I-74 / I-55 / Route 9 Bloomington + Normal [EDITOR: pull the current IDOT construction and closure status for the Thu–Sun window in Wednesday's research and insert it here. No road claim runs in this block without the IDOT notice in hand.]

  • ⚠️ No active weather alerts for McLean County as of this draft. NWS

  • 🗳️ Yes, there are three extra questions on your Bloomington ballot Bloomington All three Nov. 3 questions are advisory and nonbinding — they send the City Council a message, not an order — and all three got there by resident petition. The headline act asks whether the city should impose a moratorium on large-scale data centers; the other two ask about a local grocery tax and international weapons manufacturing. A big yes on the moratorium lands two weeks before the council's Nov. 23 data center vote, which is why both sides are treating an "advisory" question like a real one. WGLT

  • 💧 Normal's water pilot Normal A new water treatment pilot program aims to lower ammonia levels in Normal's water — the water half of the town's utility bills, and a chemistry fight Normal has been in for years. WGLT

  • 🕯️ Normal remembers Chief Walt Clark Normal The town is honoring the legacy of former police chief Walter Clark. WGLT

4. 🛠️ The BloNo Pro Sheet

Fall furnace-check edition is open. Before the first cold snap, the Pro Sheet wants the HVAC and plumbing pros your neighbors swear by — the ones who show up, charge fair, and fix it right.

Have a pro you swear by? Nominate them. Reader picks fill the Pro Sheet. (Businesses: the Pro Sheet's Primary Partner slot for an upcoming issue is open — see the media kit.)

5. Local Bites

🍔 Lunch Rush Specs — the fastest good lunches near the big campuses, in the form that matters: the spot, the order, the total. The total only runs when it comes off the business's own menu or posts — a guessed price is worse than no price.

[EDITOR: land 2–3 verified bites in Wednesday's pull — openings/closings via WGLT + the source map, each Lunch Rush Spec priced from the business's own menu/posts. If nothing new verifies, this section ships with the tip-line call alone.]

Hungry for something we missed? Openings, closings, and coming-soons — send them to the tip line and we'll verify and run them.

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✉️ One question before you go

Reply to this email and tell us: what's your BloNo hot take — the opinion about these two towns you'd defend at any dinner party? Data centers, the best pizza, Uptown vs. Downtown — if it's good, it runs next week with your name on it. We read every reply.

Thanks for reading Issue #2. If you made it all the way down here, you're our kind of people. 🥯

📊 One-click reader poll

Data centers in Bloomington: good jobs or bad neighbors?

💼 Good — jobs and tax base🚫 Bad — water, power, noise⚖️ Fine, with strict rules🤷 Need more info

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