To the north of Evanston Township High School is a neighborhood once known as the “Black Downtown.”

Today, the blocks near the corner of Dodge Avenue and Church Street are marked by boarded-up, vacant spaces that recently held businesses such as Dollars ‘R’ Us. They serve as a gathering place for many young men who have fallen out of the public school system. In the 1950s these same blocks used to be home to vibrant retail stores and restaurants.

This is the home of E-Town Community Ventures Inc., a new community development organization founded in April by longtime Evanston residents. It aims to revitalize the two blocks across the street from ETHS as an example for the rest of the city.

“For us, it is just trying to make Evanston be Evanston,” said Lonnie Wilson, one of the organization’s founders. “It’s like a little forgotten corner.”

In its effort to improve the area around ETHS, in July the group purchased real estate on the 1800 and 1900 blocks of Church through a charitable trust. Originally, the group wanted to completely rebuild the two blocks, but it decided to narrow their plan to use existing buildings.

E-Town plans to promote community-based retail stores and restaurants to provide jobs and revenue for the area. It will rent only to businesses that it thinks will benefit the community.

Wilson said one neighborhood resident told him that if he wanted to buy a cup of coffee, he had to drive to Skokie. The neighborhood has so few businesses and services, there is no reason anyone would want to move there, E-Town founder Gabriel Cheifetz said.

“The point is to bring in and foster businesses that contribute to the neighborhood, not predatorize it,” Cheifetz said.

Another goal is to develop a media center at 1917 Church St. for at-risk youths. The media center would provide training and career counseling to youth in west Evanston, especially those who have dropped out of the school system.

“These kids want the American dream, but they have to come through the back door,” Wilson said.

For at least the next year, the organization will have to do so with limited help from the city. Like many other community organizations, it has received a fraction of the money it requested from the city.

The Economic Development Committee did vote on Nov. 14 to recommend $10,000 in next year’s budget under the Business District Improvement Program to be allocated to E-Town to use for garbage containers, planters, street signs and holiday lighting.

But on Nov. 20, the Housing and Community Development Act Committee approved only $5,000 of the $265,000 that E-Town requested under the Community Development Block Grant program. This is federal funding earmarked for projects that benefit low- or moderate-income areas.

E-Town leaders said they were glad to receive any funding at all because CDBG funds are not frequently given to new organizations. Paul Wallace, another E-Town founder, said the grant made the group confident about future city involvement.

“It was a token of symbolic support,” Wallace said.

Sally Lufkin, the CDBG planner, said money usually is given to groups that have a track record the committee can examine before granting funding, and that the committee may give them more money next year. The initial funding was to help get the group’s project started.

But there has been some concern among the aldermen about how successful E-Town’s project at Church and Dodge will be.

At the meeting in which the group received its money for trash cans and streetscaping, Ald. Arthur Newman (1st) said he wanted to know if it was possible to get a written commitment from the business owners near that intersection to keep the area in front of their stores free from trash.

“Part of keeping it clean out there is the businesses going out and sweeping,” Newman said. He said he does not have the same concern for other areas, such as the Chicago Avenue and Dempster Street businesses, because he does not see the same problem there.

Also, Newman said he “would hate” paying for street benches to seat people who frequent an area business he considers disreputable. E-Town withdrew its request for benches before the meeting.

But members of the neighborhood around Church and Dodge said they were encouraged by E-Town’s work.

“It shows people you can go out and reach for stuff,” said Sonny Morales, an Evanston man from the neighborhood and recent E-Town hire. “It helps people see you can accomplish things and encourages the kids.”

E-Town has lofty goals for the neighborhood surrounding Church and Dodge, and eventually, the entire city. Daniel Cheifetz, an E-Town leader and father of Gabriel Cheifetz, said the ripple effect of community-based action will bring the neighborhood back to the vibrant community it once was.

“The goal is transforming something that’s a pile of junk into something that can be a striving mini-metropolis,” he said.