Three years after the City of Evanston began devising a plan to revitalize neighborhoods in the Second and Fifth wards, some residents now are saying they do not see eye-to-eye with outside developers on the future of the community.
City planners released a draft report detailing the progress of the neighborhood planning effort on March 10, using input from local residents, neighborhood groups, businessmen and property owners.
The report now is being discussed by the city’s Plan Commission and should be approved in six months after further revisions, said Susan Guderley, a neighborhood planner for the city.
As commission and community members continue to revise the plan in a string of meetings, residents and developers agreed it would produce positive results in Second and Fifth ward neighborhoods.
“The Fifth Ward is very much in need of change, and change is happening all around,” said Evanston resident Delores Holmes, who lives in the ward. “And the Fifth Ward needs to be a part of it.”
The draft report calls for increasing economic development, improving public infrastructure, building community bonds and enhancing public safety. It also recommends specific actions ranging from repaving streets and building streetlights to redeveloping local retail centers.
Some Evanston residents said while the city was open to community input, they are worried that property owners and developers who do not live in the area have a disproportionate amount of influence on the plan.
“There has been community input but the city needs to pay attention to what the community input was,” Evanston resident Loretha Henry said. “You’re looking at an outside group of people that has a vested interest in their little small portion and everyone is knocked out of the box.”
Developers’ first interest is making money from their investments in the community, resident Judith Treadway said, but those goals are “in conflict” with what is best for the community as a whole.
“You cannot invest in the community and change the community, you have to enhance the community,” said Treadway, who lives in the Eighth Ward but is involved in the neighborhood planning process. “Interpretations of the community enhancement are different.”
Builder and architect Andrew Spatz of Adas/Spatz Properties, which is developing several plots in the area, said many goals of the neighborhood plan could be achieved with private funds provided by investors, instead of public dollars.
“The neighborhood plan has a lot of attainable goals, and you don’t need money to drop out of the sky,” said Spatz, who grew up in Evanston. “From that respect, it’s excellent, doable and attainable.”
Acknowledging the difficulty of getting a large group of people to agree on anything, Spatz urged the community to seize the chance to make the neighborhood a better place for everyone.
“There is an opportunity now and I think the people who are instrumental in the plan need to be nimble,” he said. “If people mess about for five years, those opportunities will (disappear).”
But Harris Hudson, who lives in the Fifth Ward, said the plan fails to address the true problems in the community.
“A lot of it is public works, and what is lacking is that the emphasis should have been on the needs of young people,” he said. “Ninety percent of the plan should be devoted to (them).”
Hudson said it is up to the people in the community, not city staffers, to make their neighborhood better. He called on local religious institutions to take the lead in improving learning conditions for youths.
“The people who initiated the plan are simply not doing it from a standpoint of looking at the whole picture, or looking at the complete needs of a human being — they have physical, spiritual and emotional needs,” Hudson said. “The community needs to save itself.”
