The dress code blended communal celebration with manual labor Thursday as about 300 community members gathered at Evanston’s Levy Senior Center to celebrate the unveiling of Evanston150’s top-10 ideas for the City’s future.
Among the winners are a number of initiatives in youth development and environmental protection. After public voting narrowed the initial 100 ideas for the city’s future to 30, a 21-member selection jury chose the final 10 based on their potential for both short- and long-term results. The celebration was themed “Black Tie and Blue Jeans” to celebrate the winning ideas while demonstrating the need to get down to work.
Northwestern theatre Prof. Rives Collins emceed the announcement. Collins said as a storyteller he appreciated the opportunity to represent the community.
“It was a blast to introduce the big ideas,” Collins said. “Every time an idea was read I wanted to just cheer and say ‘I love the vision for that.'”
Sara Schastok, a member of the Evanston150 steering committee, said the committee hopes to have each idea underway by the city’s 150th anniversary in 2013.
“Tonight these ten big ideas start their journeys from ideas to projects,” said Schastok, executive director of the Evanston Community Foundation. “These are not things that are going to be done in six months or 14 months. It’s going to take time.”
Schastok praised the community’s response to Evanston150. She said the over 2,200 ideas submitted surpassed the committee’s goal of 2,013, originally set to match the year of completion.
Several jury members expressed mixed feelings about the winners. Jury member Roger Price said the success or failure of the project will ultimately come down to the Evanston community.
“This was an imperfect exercise – as democracy is – but there was citizen participation for those who wanted to participate,” Price said. “We got a lot of ideas and going through them was a challenging and frustrating and ultimately rewarding exercise. The people will ultimately decide whether we did a good job or not.”
Fellow jury member Linda Stockton said she was especially disappointed two areas were missing from the ideas from which the jury had to choose.
“I was somewhat disappointed that there wasn’t anything from the arts or economic development,” she said. “Those are two things that I wish would have made the top 30.”
University spokesman Al Cubbage represented Northwestern on the steering committee. He said he thought the winning ideas could serve as a starting point for relationships between the University and the Evanston community.
“What Northwestern can bring is some expertise in various areas and certainly we’ve provided financial support for the whole project,” he said. “I can see virtually all of the ideas a being beneficial in some way to the NU community.”
Cubbage was particularly enthusiastic about Walk ‘n Ride, a plan to improve bicycle and pedestrian transportation in Evanston. He talked about the campus’s numerous bikers as being able to benefit from the plan, and said that he planned to sign up to help implement Walk ‘n Ride.
Schastok reiterated the role that the NU community can play in the implementation of the ideas.
“Northwestern students have a lot of different interests and there’s a home for many different people in the ideas,” Schastok said. “While none of them specifically says that the big idea is to bring the University and the community close together, when people work together on common projects they come to better working relationships with each other.”
Steering committee member Jay Lytle ended the presentation and directed those in attendance to tables representing each of the winning ideas.
“Now it’s blue jeans time,” Lytle said. “It’s time to get to work.”
