Evanston City Council’s decision to authorize the purchase of a “neglected” building for affordable housing development did not come easily. The choice faced bureaucratic hurdles and transparency concerns at the council’s Monday meeting, which also featured the passing of the new Health Data Protection Ordinance and residential concerns over discrimination in Evanston businesses.
In a 6-3 decision, City Council elected to authorize the city manager to purchase 801-809 Main St. for $735,000. The space currently houses Executive Studio Salon, with other businesses there shuttering or relocating in recent months.
“I think we’ve made a strong case to acquire this property and turn it to better use for the community, hopefully involving affordable housing, and, ideally, permanently affordable housing,” Ald. Jonathan Nieuwsma (4th) said.
The city plans to purchase the property in the next few weeks and gather community feedback about the building’s future over the summer. The city aims to issue a request for proposals to locate an affordable housing developer by September and select that developer in December, Economic Development Manager Paul Zalmezak said.
Councilmembers debated an amendment to the resolution passed at Monday’s Administration and Public Works Committee meeting, which stipulated the property would be sold on the open market if the city does not authorize the sale to a developer within six months.
Nieuwsma called the six-month deadline “arbitrary” and motioned to revise it to 12 months. Zalmezak, however, insisted that the city could authorize the sale within six months — but it would need more time to conduct the zoning process and sell to a developer in August 2026.
After further discussion, the motion to extend the deadline to 12 months failed.
Alds. Clare Kelly (1st) and Matt Rodgers (8th) said the city should establish a procedure for acquiring neglected buildings to avoid such case-by-case decision-making in the future.
Meanwhile, several councilmembers and residents lamented a perceived lack of community engagement in the decision-making process over the property’s fate.
“It concerns me a lot that there’s a lot of discourse around Main Street that we’re going to put affordable housing there, but the claim that we’re going to get community input — it sounds like we’ve already decided what we’re going to have there,” Ald. Parielle Davis (7th) said.
In response to these concerns, Nieuwsma asked Ald. Bobby Burns (5th), who was already drafting an amendment, to apply the six-month deadline to the city releasing the request for proposals and require public engagement before the deadline.
The council decided 5-4 to amend the deadline to seven months, without Nieuwsma’s proposed revisions, and later voted 6-3 to authorize the purchase.
Unlike the discussion to authorize the purchase of 801-809 Main St., the council’s unanimous approval of the Health Data Protection Ordinance garnered little fanfare — despite implications for national policy.
The ordinance prevents the city from sharing data with third parties looking to impose civil or criminal sanctions against individuals seeking or providing reproductive health care and gender-affirming care.
Reproductive health care and gender-affirming care have faced targeted attacks since President Donald Trump took office. He signed an executive order limiting access to gender-affirming care for individuals under age 19, revoked multiple executive orders signed by former President Joe Biden designed to protect reproductive health care and froze millions in Title X funding for family planning services, among other actions.
The directive is modeled after Evanston’s Welcoming City Ordinance, which prohibits data sharing with federal immigration officials for purposes of civil immigration enforcement.
While few individuals engaged with the Health Data Protection Ordinance during public comment, it became heated as several residents criticized the city for its silence on a high-profile alleged instance of racism.
More than a month after a video of a dispute between the Table to Stix Ramen owner and a patron went viral on social media, some Evanston residents, including two Northwestern students, expressed disappointment at the lack of an “adequate” response from the city.
Weinberg senior Roy Zhu criticized Evanston for branding itself as “a city of diversity” while refusing to implement “transformative change” instead of “performative measures.”
“Anti-Blackness is a deeply rooted problem in Asian American communities across the country, and we as a city have failed to properly prepare ourselves to deal with the systemic nature of this issue,” Zhu said.
Echoing many of Zhu’s sentiments, Weinberg senior Sanjana Rajesh criticized the councilmembers for not releasing a statement condemning the Table to Stix Ramen owner.
Evanston resident Christine Escobar concurred with both Zhu and Rajesh, asking why the city has stayed silent instead of acting to make sure such incidents do not happen again.
“Evanston needs to come together and unify, not divide, and actually reach out to other communities, get them together, get them talking and prevent something like this from happening,” Escobar said.
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