When city officials first launched Envision Evanston 2045 in February 2024, residents gathered at the Lorraine H. Morton Civic Center armed with Post-it notes and stickers to assess their priorities for the city’s future.
After a move across town and nearly two years of debate, City Council voted 5-4 to pass the comprehensive plan at its Monday meeting. Ald. Clare Kelly (1st), Ald. Tom Suffredin (6th), Ald. Parielle Davis (7th) and Ald. Matt Rodgers (8th) voted against the plan.
“I do want to echo all those who said this is a very important and very exciting milestone, and kind of the starting gun for the hard part,” said Mayor Daniel Biss. “So congratulations, thank you and good luck.”
When Envision Evanston was first introduced, city officials presented the initiative as a broad effort to update the city’s long-term planning framework and rewrite its zoning code. The proposal quickly drew criticism from residents who said the timeline was too rushed and that there were not enough opportunities for public input.
The city released the first draft of the comprehensive plan in November 2024. By January 2025, the controversy over the project’s timeline prompted City Council to split the comprehensive plan from the related zoning overhaul.
The Land Use Commission then spent months scrutinizing specific language and repeatedly postponing a recommendation to Council.
After it ultimately reached Council in June, members spent the summer entrenched in line edits. They approved the final edits to the draft plan in October after six special City Council meetings and two public hearings that spanned a period of almost four months.
From the outset, the planning effort generated considerable controversy — both over how the plan addressed housing and density and over Biss’ handling of the process itself.
Kelly even walked out of deliberations during a July meeting, calling the process “flawed and undemocratic.”
The most intense debate over the comprehensive plan centered on the housing chapter, which Ald. Jonathan Nieuwsma (4th) said that June contained “probably 90% of the drama” surrounding the plan.
The initial draft called for allowing a variety of housing types in “all neighborhoods” and promoting higher-density housing in the city’s centers. This approach quickly drew pushback from residents who feared it would erode neighborhood character or lead to unwanted development.
The Land Use Commission revised this language, replacing it with a commitment to “preserve and increase Evanston’s diverse housing choices.” Critics argued the new wording was contradictory and too vague to guide future zoning decisions.
While the final draft retains much of the initial intent to increase housing supply, it narrows the undertaking by tying density more directly to specific locations and future zoning standards rather than broadly allowing diverse housing types across all neighborhoods.
Sarah Petersen, executive director of Open Communities, said during public comment at Monday’s meeting that she was grateful to live in a city that was working to address the housing crisis.
“We look to you now as our leaders to take action, to say yes to the Evanston we’ve envisioned in this comprehensive plan, where there’s room and opportunity for all,” Peterson said. “We can’t say solve all the nation’s problems, but we can do this if we take action now.”
For many Envision Evanston critics, the housing dispute was inseparable from broader criticism of Biss’ leadership.
Opponents described Biss as a career politician who was using the comprehensive plan to advance his own political interests. At Monday’s meeting, Evanston resident Jenny Washburn accused Biss of attempting to “push through” the comprehensive plan to “pad his resume.”
Biss made headlines when he said it would be “immoral” to delay the plan in December 2024, arguing that the city could not afford to wait to address urgent housing needs. Critics seized on the remark, saying it reflected a willingness to steamroll residents’ concerns.
But Biss saw the debate in different terms. During a forum for congressional candidates earlier this month, Biss said he put his career on the line to benefit the city.
“People told me, ‘The fight’s not worth it. You’re going to piss off too many people. It’s too hard,’” Biss said at the forum. “But I stayed in, and we’re going to get it done.”
In last year’s municipal election, mayoral challenger Jeff Boarini made criticizing a perceived lack of transparency in Biss’ handling of Envision Evanston central to his campaign. In statements to The Daily, he described the comprehensive planning process as “irresponsible” and “predetermined” from the start.
Still, Biss won the mayoral race in a landslide. In his victory speech, he referenced the heated debates around Envision Evanston that defined the campaign.
“It was a little cynical,” Biss said. “It was a little grumpy. It was a little suspicious. And maybe even a little change-averse.”
The roughly 40 public commenters at Monday’s meeting were split in their support for the comprehensive plan. Some reiterated that the planning process did not provide adequate opportunities for residents to share their perspectives. Others thanked council members and city staff for their work to address Evanston’s affordable housing shortage.
Evanston resident Claudia Garcia-Rojas (Weinberg M.A. ’15, Doctorate ’23) offered a more personal reason for her support of the plan. Garcia-Rojas lives in a multi-unit building in the 3rd Ward that she described as “unsafe.” Last year, her dog nearly died due to a mice infestation, and she exhausted her savings to pay to treat him. She could not afford to leave the building.
“Housing is not a reward for wealth, it is a condition for human life,” Garcia-Rojas said.
The city will now turn toward zoning, where it will begin implementing the goals the comprehensive plan lays out.
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the year Claudia Garcia-Rojas received her doctorate from Northwestern and omitted that she also received a master’s degree from NU. The Daily regrets these errors.
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