Residents caught in the crossfire between Northwestern and Evanston officials over the Northeast Evanston Historic District didn’t let either party forget their own feelings about the issue.
For almost a year, the often ugly debate pitted neighbor against neighbor. Now, nearly six months after the discussion ended with the council’s vote to establish the district, NU’s lawsuit has reopened old wounds that for some residents had just begun to heal.
Though members of Evanstonians for Responsible Preservation, a group of residents opposed to the district, said the measure would unfairly limit their rights as homeowners, they said they were doubly frustrated because the move always appeared to target NU.
“One of the reasons we were fighting it was because we didn’t think the district should be put in with the major purpose of ‘getting’ Northwestern,” Stuart Novy, an ERP member, said Monday. “If it was for preservation, then OK. My feeling was that the interest wasn’t preservation.”
And Don Collins, a former University College dean who also was a member of ERP, said the city was motivated by its financial difficulties and a “very short-sighted, ill-advised notion to look at Northwestern” to ease the burden.
“The historic district was purely to find a weapon to use against NU to get money from NU,” Collins said.
But for Mary McWilliams, one of the Northeast Evanston Historic District Association board members who spent hundreds of hours drafting the proposal, the lawsuit came as an especially personal blow.
McWilliams said she is disappointed NU administrators feel the district was a way for the city to penalize the university.
“As far as I’m concerned that’s utterly untrue,” she said. “I did not participate in (drafting the proposal) in a vendetta against Northwestern. I would not have been a party to that.”
Although she said she would have preferred for the council to approve the entire district, McWilliams said the smaller one now in place still is able to tell a story about the history and architecture of Evanston.
She said she thinks the council’s decision to cut off part of the original district came not as a backlash to anti-NU sentiments, but rather in response to ERP’s highly organized campaign against the district. She said she attended every meeting held by the council concerning the historic district and that all were conducted fairly with no bias against the university.
“I’m satisfied that what was done was done appropriately,” she said. “I think the perception of bias is all in Northwestern’s head.”
Dave Schoenfeld, a member of Northwestern Neighbors, a residents group that supported the district, said he thought aldermen had the neighborhood’s best interest in mind. Because the university threatens the neighborhood with developmental pressure, members of the group hoped the district would prevent NU from unnecessarily expanding, he said.
And Schoenfeld said a majority of the residents now included in the district had always favored it, in spite of statements made by NU in the lawsuit that contend most of the district’s current residents were opposed to its imposition.
“I am 100 percent certain that an overwhelming number of people included in the district favored the district,” Schoenfeld said. “There’s no doubt about that in my mind.”
Though Schoenfeld said he thought the filing of the suit seemed precipitous, both Novy and Collins said the lawsuit came as no surprise, given the way the city treated NU during the proceedings.
Collins said he thought NU had improperly handled its negotiations with Evanston but also believed the city had been “preposterous.”
“I think it was inevitable,” Collins said. “It was very clear that Northwestern would take legal action if the city pursued (the district).”
The Daily’s Negar Tekeei contributed to this report.
