Maybe it was because Evanston refused to completely rename itself after a search engine giant. Or maybe it was because Mayor Elizabeth Tisdahl didn’t leap into the frigid waters of Lake Michigan to demonstrate their cooling effect on overheated servers. Or maybe it was because 2,000 residents didn’t gather en masse to spell out that seven-letter, multicolored word with LED glow sticks.
Whatever the reasoning behind Google’s decision Wednesday to select Kansas City, Kan., as a test site for its fiber-optic Internet network, one thing is certain: Evanston, while among the more than 1,100 cities that applied for the opportunity, will not be graced by the Mountain View, Calif.-based company’s presence anytime soon.
City and Northwestern officials expressed disappointment but not dismay Thursday afternoon, reaffirming their confidence in Evanston’s forward-thinking strategies, with or without Google.
Tisdahl – who, for the record, never agreed to an icy dive like the mayor of Duluth, Minn., did – commended the winning location’s witty self-marketing.
“Kansas City did a great job,” she said. “Their PR campaign was great.”
Other city candidates opted for more outlandish ways of attracting Google’s attention, including the aforementioned shenanigans. Tisdahl said these novelty approaches were “completely fair,” but not game plans Evanston was willing to test out.
“We took it a little more seriously,” she added. “Sure, we would’ve liked to win it.”
NU spokesman Al Cubbage agreed the Kansas City announcement, posted Wednesday morning on Google’s blog, was a mild letdown, especially because of NU’s role in promoting Evanston’s candidacy. The University submitted a video a year ago touting the city’s qualifications for the high-speed Internet system, which Google advertises as 100 times faster than the average American’s connection.
“I think it’s a disappointment, no doubt about it,” he said. “Northwestern was very supportive of Evanston’s bid on it, and it would’ve been great if it went through.”
Other city advocates were blindsided by the winner selection. Ald. Jane Grover (7th) said she first learned of Evanston’s failure to secure the Internet project in an email forwarded to City Council members by City Manager Wally Bobkiewicz.
Bobkiewicz, who organized a related task force of local experts and interested residents in February 2010, is out of town until next week and could not be reached for comment.
“I really thought we were going to be ‘the candidate,'” Grover said. “I thought we were really persuasive in our campaign … but my confidence was in a vacuum. I hadn’t seen other municipalities’ proposals.”
Still, community leaders asserted the city’s ability to continue striving for widespread connectivity.
Lesley Williams, head of adult services at the Evanston Public Library, called Google’s pick a “disappointment but not a setback” in a broader campaign of Internet accessibility throughout the city.
“We’re still pressing forward to make technology available to everybody in Evanston,” she added.
Cubbage said the issue may be a worthy suggestion for the City’s Evanston150 program, which is soliciting resident input on a wide swath of topics. In addition, he added that Evanston is an “ingenious and innovative” city that can advance without Google’s aid.
“I think Evanston, being the place that it is, will find other ways to look at this,” Cubbage said.
And Google has taken note of cities’ exclusion in their much sought-after fiber network experiment. Its official blog was updated Wednesday afternoon with a brief paragraph acknowledging their candidates’ dashed hopes.
“We’re so thrilled by the interest we’ve generated – today is the start, not the end (of) the project,” the addendum said. “And over the coming months, we’ll be talking to other interested cities about the possibility of us bringing ultra high-speed broadband to their communities.”
Google has no further information regarding such longer-term initiatives, a company spokesman wrote in an email Thursday evening.
Google first announced the nationwide competition Feb. 10, 2010. Only American cities with populations between 50,000 and 500,000 were allowed to apply, excluding Evanston’s southern neighbor, Chicago, which has nearly 2.7 million residents.
