Civic Center building in desperate need of repair

By Mike Cherney

The Daily Northwestern

As aldermen debate whether or not to replace the Evanston Civic Center, the aging building’s deterioration is forcing the issue.

This week the city began erecting protective canopies along the building, 2100 Ridge Ave., to protect pedestrians from pieces of slate that are sliding off the roof because of the wind.

The canopies should be fully installed by the end of the week, officials said, but the roof is only one of several problems that plague the Civic Center building, which the city has used for 30 years.

“Every mechanical, electrical and plumbing system is nearing the end of its useful expected life,” said David Cook, Evanston’s assistant director of facilities management.

The deteriorating state of the building prompted the Civic Center Committee, which is composed of all nine aldermen, to vote last month in favor of constructing a new building rather than repairing the old one. The costs of repairing the Civic Center and building a new one are about the same — $20 million. Replacing the roof alone would cost about $1.5 million, said Ald. Edmund Moran (6th).

Repairs aside, the current building simply is too big for its current function, Moran said.

“It’s been very inefficient, rundown and in need of great numbers of repairs that are very expensive, and realistically it doesn’t fit us well,” Moran said. “Our space demands have reduced themselves rather than increased. There’s a lot of dead space not being used in the building.”

The city currently has some sites in mind for a new Civic Center, but aldermen declined to disclose any specifics. New development plans for the Civic Center are a long way from being completed, but Ald. Elizabeth Tisdahl (7th) said that in six months the city could have a “pretty firm plan.”

But Ald. Gene Feldman (9th) cautioned that it “could be a while” until the plan is nailed down because City Council still will need to vote on the issue.

Any development that is slated for the current Civic Center site, which lies in Tisdahl’s ward, would have to match the character of the surrounding neighborhood, she said.

“I love the building, the neighbors love the building and the amount of green space,” she said. “I think we need to (redevelop) it in the best manner possible that would cost the least amount but would preserve the neighborhood.”

The entire city has an interest in seeing an attractive development on the site, Feldman said.

“The city is very sensitive to the importance of Ridge Avenue,” he said. “We would want to be able to control or at least influence the kind of architecture to use so there wouldn’t be the kind of mistakes that people have made with other projects.”

But the cost of building a new Civic Center could be a major problem for the city. The city is exploring creating a tax-increment financing, or TIF, district for the current Civic Center site.

Since the Civic Center generates no income for the city, the new taxes collected for any new development on the site — which would have to be residential — would be put towards paying for a new Civic Center building.

“We hope that the sale and the tax generated by the TIF would pay for the Civic Center, and therefore we wouldn’t have to ask for $20 million from the citizens,” Feldman said. “Any other way, we would have to pay for it out of tax dollars.”

But Moran said he wasn’t convinced that a TIF was the best way to pay for a new building exclusively, and that a more “sufficient analysis” was necessary. By using taxes in the district to exclusively pay for a new building, other entities — like the school districts — would miss out on potential funds.

“The people who have advocated it most ardently have argued that to take advantage of TIF financing is the only way to swing it, because if you don’t do that the city doesn’t have the money to do it,” Moran said. “I have some reservations about it. TIFs tend to have controversies that swirl around them.”