Glenn Nixon has worked at Edward’s Shoes, 1627 Sherman Ave., for 35 years.

Over the last 20 years, he has watched as the Varsity Theater turned into Gap, 1706 Sherman Ave. Jim’s Charbroiled Hamburger re-emerged as a Taco Bell Express, 1743 Sherman Ave. And when Sherman Plaza opens in 2006, Nixon will watch as Hanig’s Footwear replaces the shoe store he manages, which has been owned by the same family for about 60 years.

“Evanston is losing a lot of its character,” said Nixon, who will continue to work at the store after the takeover. “I’m not crazy about what’s happening down here.”

Nixon is one voice in a chorus of Evanston residents and small business owners who say redevelopment comes at the cost of diversity and independent retailers. Others say the city has a history of reinventing itself to fit new trends and times.

“Old ladies don’t walk around Evanston (anymore),” said Kathy Leighton, an employee at Saville Flowers, 1712 Sherman Ave., which has been a family business since 1942. “We’re lucky we do a lot of phone business. We might as well close — no one comes in.”

But Robert Teska, an Evanston-based urban planner, calls redevelopment a “political reality.”

“Evanston has few alternatives to enhance its tax base,” he said. “It can’t build new industrial or office parks, so to take the tax burden off residential property owners, its only alternative is to enhance the tax base downtown.”

Downtown Evanston has traditionally been a dynamic environment. A transition after World War II substantially changed the downtown that existed in the first 45 years of the 20th century, Teska said.

“This is the evolution of cities, and although some people are disturbed by it, it’s not unnatural,” he said.

Before 1956, Evanston’s claim to fame was not dining, but retail. Anchored by department store giants Marshall Field’s, Wieboldt’s and Lords, the area was known as the premiere shopping center of the North Shore. Shoppers within a 50-mile radius from Chicago’s North Side to Racine, Wis. came to Evanston seeking everything from penny loafers to washing machines to fur coats, Teska said.

But then the Old Orchard mall came to Skokie in 1956, one of the first to sprawl across Chicago’s suburbs. It “changed the destiny of downtown Evanston,” Teska said.

As cars gained popularity, shoppers preferred the convenience of the malls’ sprawling parking lots to navigating downtown Evanston’s one-way streets.

Over the next few decades, the bustle slowed on Sherman Avenue and Church Street as shoppers shifted westward. One by one, the department stores pulled out of downtown and relocated to the malls. What was left of the fragmented downtown — travel agencies, coffee shops, modest retailers — failed to draw the same volume of traffic.

“We had kind of an empty downtown,” said Dick Peach, former president of the Evanston Chamber of Commerce. “But the small guys stuck around.”

According to a 1985 study by the nonprofit economic development corporation Evanston Inventure, there were 1,295 general merchandise employees in Evanston in 1963. This fell to 576 employees in 1982, a 55.5 percent drop.

In 1976, Westcor, Inc. approached the city about opening a mall in downtown Evanston between Church and Clark streets and Sherman and Benson avenues. The plan was for a three-level mall, anchored by a JCPenney and an expanded Marshall Field’s, 1702 Sherman Ave.

“It appears quite clear that if no strong defensive action is taken in downtown Evanston (such as creation of the proposed mall), the retail base will continue to erode, probably at an accelerating pace,” concluded a study by a Chicago realty company in 1976.

Plans for the mall self-destructed when Marshall Field’s announced it would not expand the store downtown, Teska said. Marshall Field’s pulled out of Evanston in the late 1980s.

Many point to Church Street Plaza and modern condos as models for future downtown redevelopment. The Plaza’s movie theater, restaurants and stores have drawn more nighttime activity to the area.

This vibrancy has come at the cost of independent businesses, which can’t afford the increasing rents of downtown, said Ron Kysiak, executive director of Evanston Inventure.

“Chains can sign leases, and you know they’re good for it because of the deep pockets,” he said. “Local entrepreneurs are just like you and I. We’re only as good as our bank account.”

Even though some small businesses are being forced from downtown, Peach said, change was good for the area.

“I call downtown a chameleon,” he said. “It keeps changing. I’ve been here 58 years, and (downtown) always seems to get better and healthier.”

Reach Beth Murtagh at [email protected].