It all comes down to Friday.
After almost five years of proposals, bickering and planning, Evanston on Friday will see the opening of the first phase of Church Street Plaza, the city’s long-awaited $90 million entertainment, retail and residential complex.
“I think everyone is excited — how could you not be?” said Jonathan Perman, director of the Evanston Chamber of Commerce. “This is the kind of business that will generate so many new economic opportunities. It’s a wonderful thing.”
Located in the Northwestern/Evanston Research Park, which city officials had given up on for its failure to generate significant tax revenue, the plaza had been trumpeted as a way to infuse new life into what had long been a barren part of downtown Evanston.
But in spite of what some officials argued was an overwhelming need for the project, the plaza’s road to fruition has been marked by contention. At public meetings and at neighborhood forums, city officials and residents spent hours debating the myriad pros and cons raised by the development’s specter.
But with the plaza’s 18-screen movie theater set to open to the public Friday night after a quiet year of construction, some of the project’s skeptics are starting to change their tune.
With Reservations
In late 1995, when rumors that Cineplex Odeon was interested in bringing a movie theater to the Research Park’s southern tip floated through the city, developers Arthur Hill & Co. — and, later, John Buck Co., the developer of the Park Evanston complex — approached Evanston City Council with their own proposals for the site.
Wanting to explore all options, the council issued a request in December 1996 for proposals to develop the land.
In fall 1997, a committee consisting of aldermen, business experts, and officials from Research Park and NU narrowed a list of eight interested developers to two, recommending that the city’s Economic Development Committee further examine those from Arthur Hill and John Buck.
At an October 1997 meeting, four committee members voted for Buck’s proposal, four other committee members voted for Hill’s proposal, and one — Ald. Edmund Moran (6th) — voted against either development.
Before the vote, said Ald. Stephen Engelman (7th), Buck approached some aldermen with reservations about whether he would continue to pursue the project.
Buck may have pulled out because the developer’s “plate was full,” Engelman said. Buck had just agreed to work on a Nordstrom’s project in Chicago.
Engelman also said Buck “had gone through a series of blistering attacks in Evanston” from city officials and citizens who were initially opposed to Church Street Plaza and the idea of funding it with a tax increment financing district.
According to TIF guidelines, all new property tax revenues in the TIF district are diverted to a TIF fund for improvements within the district.
Aldermen aware that Buck was thinking about pulling out did not publicize news of the developer’s reluctance, instead holding the vote as if there still were two candidates, Engelman said.
He said the aldermen did this to prevent Hill from changing the terms of the negotiations by taking advantage of the fact that he was the only candidate.
Nonetheless, the council voted 8-1 (with Moran dissenting) later that month to negotiate exclusively with Hill.
‘completely disregarded’
Residents involved with the Coalition for Appropriate Development of the Research Park, a residents group opposed to the entertainment complex, soon began directing criticisms of the project toward Hill and the council.
Liz Reeves, head of the former coalition, said the group thought that Hill and the council’s vision of the development was “out of scale and character” with the rest of downtown Evanston.
Specifically, she said, the coalition was concerned that national chain stores would hurt small businesses and that Evanston’s infrastructure would be unable to handle increased traffic and parking problems.
Reeves also said City Council did not inform residents of the plans for the project until negotiations were well under way. Residents grouped together, hoping to have input in the planning stages. But aldermen ignored them, Reeves said.
“At first we had this feeling of, ‘Wait! How could this be so far along the road, and we’re just hearing about it now?'” Reeves said. “We had a hopefulness we’d be able to talk to aldermen, and they’d see that the community wasn’t embracing this. And then there was the experience of basically being completely disregarded.”
Despite criticism from some residents, aldermen and developers moved ahead with the project.
Ben Ranney, marketing manager for Arthur Hill & Co., said his company held community forums to discuss the project’s different components with residents and that opposition was expected.
“As in many towns, what started (the opposition) is a lot of apprehension about change in general,” Ranney said. “A lot of people felt quite strongly that a master overall plan would never be successful because the Northwestern/Evanston Research Park had been deemed to be unsuccessful.
Ranney added: “The idea that you could come up with something that would make it much more vibrant and do a lot to enhance the whole downtown — that was the prize that we had to keep our eyes on throughout even though there were times it was very frustrating and we had to stand up and get slapped around a little by the foremost members of the community.”
Paving the way
On Sept. 23, 1998, the council voted to pay $580,000 to buy land from Dave’s Italian Kitchen, 906 Church St., and $650,000 to buy land from Pine Yard Chinese Restaurant, 924 Church St., to clear space for the plaza.
Then, on Oct. 19, 1998, Hill brought his plaza proposal to the council. The proposal was for a $90 million complex that would include a 16-screen, 3,400 seat movie theater and arts cinema run by Century Theaters; a 1,200-car parking garage with pedestrian crossing; a 24-story apartment tower; a hotel; a performing arts center; and a senior citizens center. Hill said the plaza would create 600 permanent jobs and 700 construction jobs, and that Virgin Records had expressed interest in being an anchor of the plaza’s retail area. The council voted 8-1 to accept the proposal, with Moran again the lone dissenter.
“We were going to spend a tremendous amount of money trying to push this project forward, and I had some serious concerns about whether investing this money in a megaplex was risky,” Moran said. “I wasn’t confident that the area in question would be able to generate the amount of retail that was budgeted.”
Negotiations aimed at signing tenants for the plaza appeared to be going smoothly until April 21, 1999, when aldermen met in a closed session with Hill after receiving an urgent memo from him. In the private meeting, Hill asked for changes in what the council had approved at its Oct. 19 meeting.
Hill told aldermen that he had run into problems — mainly that he hadn’t yet settled on a hotel. In addition, Virgin Records had lost interest in being one of the plaza’s key retailers, and the plans for a senior center and the performing arts center were cut from the project because city officials decided it was not the best use of the property. Publishing house McDougall-Littell had expressed interest in locating its office building at the site of the proposed senior center.
Having these questions answered had been an original condition for breaking ground on the plaza, but Hill did not want to wait any longer to proceed with the project, Ranney said.
Hill asked for an early transfer of some of the city-owned land so work could get under way while he waited for other parts of the project to follow through, he said.
Some Evanston residents complained about Hill airing his concerns in private meetings, saying it was just another example of the council’s attempt to push the project forward without citizen input. Aldermen said the meetings were confidential because they were concerned about unfinished contracts
and negotiations with other businesses, but an investigation by the state’s attorney’s office found the council in violation of the Open Meetings Act, forcing aldermen to release the minutes from the meetings.
On May 26, 1999, the council voted 8-1 to allow Hill to complete the project in phases, with the city turning over land to him as he needed it.
This meant Hill could proceed with construction of the movie theater, some of the retail space and the parking garage in the first phase, while waiting for other elements of the plaza to be finalized. The approval, however, was contingent on the condition that Hill would get a construction loan by September 1999.
Although the phase proposal passed, some aldermen said they were frustrated by the hold-up.
“It’s a big project, and quite honestly, I don’t know if anyone could’ve done it,” said Ald. Steven Bernstein (4th). “It initially should have been sold to us as having been built in stages. He should’ve known earlier he couldn’t have done it all at one time.”
But Ranney said Hill did not want to settle for anything less than the best, which meant waiting for a better deal on the hotel, the apartment complex and the site of the office building.
“From our point of view it didn’t make sense to stop two components that were already en route to getting started just because you were waiting for one other component,” Ranney said. “In some ways that would put undue pressure on you to close the hotel deal, even if that wasn’t going to be the most appropriate hotel deal for Evanston.”
Falling together
In the waning months of 1999, the pieces started coming together.
On Sept. 9, 1999, Hill announced that he had received a $25 million construction loan from LaSalle Bank. He also confirmed that Hilton Hotels was seriously exploring whether to open a hotel in the plaza.
A month later, once construction was under way, Hill also announced that the plaza’s main retail space was more that 70 percent leased. He released the names of two businesses — Wolfgang Puck Grand Café and Urban Outfitters — that had already leased property. Finally, on Nov. 24, 1999, the council approved 8-1 a full-service Hilton Garden Inn.
For the past year, construction has continued with minimal delay and controversy. And last August, Century Theaters announced its grand opening for Nov. 17, 2000.
Ranney said Wolfgang Puck and Urban Outfitters are expected to open just weeks after the theater. The Art Store, a Boston-based art supply store, will open in spring 2001. Other stores that have not yet released their names also are scheduled to open soon. Ranney said the plaza’s main retail space currently is 80 percent leased, with the other 20 percent under negotiation.
Now, with the plaza’s opening less than a week away, even some former coalition members say they’re growing optimistic about the plaza’s chances.
“I think there’s a slight amount of bemusement that Hill hasn’t totally been able to fulfill his promises,” Reeves said. “On the other hand, it’s there, it’s going up, and for the sake of the community, we hope it’s successful. Because if it’s not, we’re all going to end up paying the bill.”
