*Due to a reporting error, a story in Tuesday?s Daily misstated the distance between Dale and Jack?s Marathon, 555 Howard St. in Evanston, and Tasty Sub, 2001 W. Howard in Chicago. The stores are about two blocks apart.The story also quoted a source who said the city of Evanston had spent $1.2 million on a study of Howard Street. This had not been verfied at press time.The Daily regrets these errors.
Allowing a gas station on Howard Street to add a convenience store will encourage crime in south Evanston, one Evanston alderman said.
Ald. Ann Rainey (8th) was pessimistic when Evanston City Council voted at its April 12 meeting to allow the owner of Dale and Jack’s Marathon, 555 Howard St., to build a convenience store. Rainey said zoning officials have ignored the impact of the “multiplicity” of convenience stores in the Eighth Ward.
John Peterson, a Glenview resident and owner of the Marathon station, was granted a zoning exemption to build a convenience store selling pre-packaged items. Before the City Council approved the exemption, Rainey amended it to limit the amount of space the convenience store could occupy in the station’s existing garage building.
Rainey and other south Evanston residents have complained that late-night convenience stores and restaurants along Howard encourage gang members to loiter and commit crimes in the area. In November 2003, two men were shot to death outside Tasty Sub, 2001 W. Howard St. in Chicago, 1.2 miles away from the Marathon station.
Under the terms of the exemption, Peterson’s convenience store can only be open between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.
Peterson said he keeps his lot clean. He cuts down on crime by prohibiting loitering at the gas station.
“My family has owned this place for 50 years, and I am the best friend of crime prevention and have been for all these years,” he said.
Howard Street runs along the border of Evanston and Chicago. According to the City of Chicago’s Web site, eight crimes — including three batteries, two assaults and a motor vehicle theft — occurred in Chicago over the last two weeks within a quarter-mile radius of the intersection of Howard and North Clark streets, half a block from the Marathon station. Evanston Police Department could not provide statistics on crime on the Evanston side of Howard.
Litter would also be a problem with the new convenience store, Rainey said at the council meeting. She said worried about a convenience store becoming “abusive, disgusting, dirty, litter-generating (and) crime-generating.”
“That is no model for a gas-station convenience store,” Rainey said.
At the council meeting, Rainey said she feared that Peterson would sell the property to another gas station that would install a much bigger convenience store. Currently, zoning exemptions, known as special-use variances, are permanent, she said.
“What I am concerned about is the foreverness. I fear this property, which while not being marketed for sale, is so for sale you wouldn’t believe it,” she said. “That’s not my vision for Howard Street, and it’s not in the vision of anyone who lives there.”
Peterson said he has told multiple city committees that his property has never been listed with a realtor, but he is open to offers.
“If somebody comes in and offers me a good amount of money for the property, like any good businessman I would sell it,” he said.
Rainey’s vision includes condominiums and not convenience stores, he said.
“She told me that the City of Evanston spent $1.2 million on a study for the best use of Howard Street, and that it should be residential,” Peterson said. “She told me that if I wanted to put condominiums up, she would support that.”
Reach Tina Peng at [email protected].
