Planning Process Needs 'Some Sense of Urgency'

By Bill Smith

Three aldermen say Evanston's downtown planning process is moving too slowly.

At the Economic Development Committee meeting on Dec. 13, Alderman Edmund Moran, 6th Ward, said he found the public meeting held by the Plan Commission's Downtown Plan Committee Dec. 11 disappointing.

"They're talking about transition zones, but on the north end of downtown we've now just about lost on transitions," Ald. Moran said, referring to the recent approval of the 18-story Carroll Place development at 1881 Oak Ave. and the pending proposal from the same developer for a 14-story building at 1890 Maple Ave.

The Downtown Plan Committee has proposed that transitional areas at the edge of downtown should have lower building height limits than what is permitted in the core downtown area, but after nearly a year of work has yet to apply any numbers to the concept.

"Do we have a horizon on this?" Ald. Moran asked, adding, "I felt that there was really not enough to talk about" at Tuesday's meeting.

City Planning Director Dennis Marino said the Dec. 11 meeting "was meant to be a bit of a kickoff" for the planning process and that the Plan Commission hopes to be ready to make recommendations to the City Council's Planning and Development Committee by the end of 2007 or early 2008.

City staff also expects to seek City Council approval in January to hire a consultant to do a pilot study of form-based coding - a test of a new technique for rezoning the downtown area. "We need to know how to apply it on a demonstration basis to see how effectively it works," Mr. Marino said.

Alderman Melissa Wynne, 3rd Ward, suggested the Plan Commission needs to keep the Council "better informed of where this is going, so that over the next eight or nine months we don't approve things that are completely counter to what's going to be the trend from the Plan Commission.

"We're having buildings proposed in the transitional areas that are much higher than what we've seen before. It would be much easier for us to turn them away if we had this new plan in place," she added.

Ald. Moran said, "They need to get onto it. I'm not saying 'Finish in two or three months,' but there are development pressures downtown that continue. A lot can happen in a year or 18 months. This needs a pretty hands-on effort and some sense of urgency."

Alderman Elizabeth Tisdahl, 7th Ward, said she agreed that the process does not seem to be moving fast enough. She called for having a joint meeting of the aldermen with the Plan Commission about how to proceed.

Ald. Wynne said the west-side study scheduled to be submitted to the City Council in January "looks to me like a very good blueprint for the process from start to finish. If we could have a downtown plan move at that same kind of pace, that would be very helpful."

Employment Game: City Appears To Win Some, Lose Some

By Bill Smith

Evanston lost 6 percent of its private-sector jobs last year, the biggest drop for any north suburban Cook County community.

The numbers, contained in a report from the state Department of Employment Security (IDES), were distributed at an Evanston Economic Development Committee meeting Dec. 14.

The jobs report, though only recently released, compares the number of jobs in the community in March 2004 and in March 2005.

Jonathan Perman, executive director of the Evanston Chamber of Commerce, said that during that period Evanston lost as many as 1,000 jobs when both Kendall College and National Louis University moved out of the City.

In addition, he said, the Hotel Orrington closed for a year for renovations, costing the City perhaps another 300 jobs.

Unemployment
A different state report shows that unemployment among Evanston residents, which stood at 4.4 percent in Oct. 2005, had declined to 3.0 percent by this October.

The two reports cover different aspects of the economy. The jobs report looks at the number of jobs in a community, whether they are held by residents or non-residents. The unemployment numbers look only at community residents - whether they work in the town in which they live or elsewhere.

This October's Evanston's jobless number was not the lowest in the region: Highland Park and Elmhurst shared that honor at 2.3-percent. But it was lower than the 3.6-percent average for Illinois and the 4.1-percent average for the nation.

Downtown Plan Committee Seeks Community Input

By Beth Demes

The City's ad hoc committee to develop a new downtown plan held a public meeting recently to solicit community input.

The Dec. 12 meeting gave the roughly 50 community members in attendance a brief look back at the downtown's ups and downs and a progress report on the group's work, before opening for public comment.

Downtown Plan Committee members charted the central business district's course from the post-war boom as the North Shore's commercial and shopping center to the decline that began in the 1960s, escalating through the 70s and 80s with rise of Old Orchard and other malls.

In 1989, Evanston adopted a plan to regenerate the downtown's economic vitality. That plan and a new zoning ordinance in 1993 helped shape the tremendous downtown development activity over the past eight years. The plan envisioned a mix of uses, increasing residential, pedestrian and transit-oriented development in the core downtown. This vision was embraced again in Evanston's 2000 Comprehensive General Plan.

"As we've looked at some of these planned developments [in the past few years], there have been a number of people who have said, 'you've brought life back to the City,'" said Larry Widmayer, chair of the Committee and a member of the Evanston Plan Commission. "There are others who have said, 'you've ruined my old downtown.' To understand where we are going I think it's important to step back and remember where we've been," he added.

The nearly 1-year-old Committee, whose members include Plan Commission members and Evmark staff, hopes to have a final plan ready for the City Council's approval by early 2008. They have not focused to date on altering any of the uses in the 1989 plan, but have concerned themselves more with how to control the physicality of future downtown development.

The group endorses shrinking the downtown, moving the western boundary, set two years ago at Asbury Avenue, eastward to Ridge Avenue. They also have created a third type of sub-area - "traditional" - that was added to the two existing sub-area types: "transitional" (the downtown's fringes) and "downtown" (the core). The Committee mapped three traditional sub-areas built in the 1920s and 30s with the character and scale that they feel is worth preserving. The Preservation Commission is working with them in developing a planning strategy, which may include securing landmark status for these blocks.

The areas are Sherman Avenue at Grove Street; Sherman Avenue south of Clark Street; and Davis Street west of Maple Avenue.

The Committee is also exploring form-based zoning and plans to hire a consultant to test it in some pilot areas in the downtown area. Form-based zoning is a three-dimensional approach, which downplays traditional zoning controls for use and density, emphasizing instead a building's shape, mass and scale as it relates to adjacent structures and the public space. Form-based zoning produces an envelope for a building design. Communities have used it across the country, often in response to a particular development or neighborhood challenge. Evanston's west side neighborhood is presently following it.

"Form-based zoning involves more of a cooperative effort between the citizenry and government," Plan Commission and Committee member David Galloway explained in a separate interview.

That cooperative effort is one that the Committee supports. Mr. Widmayer said at the meeting that the Committee members intend to work with all of the downtown stakeholders.

Evanston resident Jean Lindwall, who worked on the 1989 downtown plan and attended the meeting, said, "The downtown is everybody's neighborhood."

Southeast Evanston residents at the meeting urged the Committee to pay attention to environmental concerns such as noise and air pollution, green space and bicycle safety.

Some residents of new downtown high-rises said that they do not feel part of a community.

"I've been living here for three years and have never received a survey and have never been invited to an aldermanic meeting," said a resident of Optima Views. She also said if tall building development continues unabated, "Evanston may end up like the canyons at Sheridan and Hollywood [in Chicago]."

City staff said that they are updating mailing lists to include all of the newer downtown residents, because the 2000 census data on which the City relies does not include them.

Responding to another comment, Diane Williams of Evmark, the downtown planning and marketing organization, said they will be adding two residents to Evmark's board of directors, which presently only has downtown businesspersons.

There were other comments about fixing and widening the sidewalks, or at least not disrupting them as much with large tree grates and sidewalk cafes.

And there was support on both sides of the "national vs. local retailers" debate.

Others raised concerns about traffic safety and viaduct improvement. Assistant City Manager Judith Aiello said that the Chicago Transit Authority was aware of the City's priority for viaduct improvement but that it lacked funding at present for all of the projects.

Travis Marlatte, owner of The Things We Love, 614 Davis St., who said that many of his customers do not live in Evanston, suggested the Committee also examine how to attract non-Evanston customers to the downtown.