As skaters twirled beneath the windows overlooking the Robert Crown Community Center’s ice rink Wednesday night, residents above debated the future of three city properties during a community meeting for Evanston’s Putting Assets to Work program.
PAW is a federally funded initiative aimed at reimagining and rehabilitating city properties. Locally, the program is focused on improving the former Lorraine H. Morton Civic Center at 2100 Ridge Ave., the Evanston Police and Fire Headquarters and the Noyes Cultural Arts Center.
Funded by a $985,000 Department of Transportation grant awarded in September 2024, Evanston is one of 25 cities nationwide selected to participate in PAW.
Consultants Ryan Porter of the MPACT Collective and Michael McLean of Sentient Co. facilitated a presentation, a Q&A session and breakout groups to familiarize residents with the program and encourage brainstorming about public assets.
Porter and McLean are part of a team of consultants hired to work for Evanston’s PAW in February 2025. Their contract was reauthorized in July 2025 after being put on hold due to paperwork issues.
Because the grant is designed to promote transit-oriented development, eligible properties must be located within a half-mile of a transit station, according to Porter. Through PAW, consulting teams work with residents to generate and evaluate ideas for these public assets before producing a Recommended Action Plan for City Council.
Wednesday’s was the second of three larger planned community meetings, with the next scheduled to take place next month.
Currently, the program is crowdsourcing ideas from the community and conducting ward and stakeholder meetings with local groups, including Evanston Latinos, according to the consultants. Community members can also post ideas on an Evanston PAW page, which as of Wednesday’s meeting, had collected 49 submissions.
“We’ve also set parameters around social, environmental and financial responsibility,” McLean said. “So if it’s not environmentally responsible, it’s not going to make the list.”
Porter and McLean stressed that City Council will make final decisions regarding these properties.
PAW hopes to end the ideation and crowdsourcing process in June or July, leaving enough time to conduct a feasibility analysis for their proposals ahead of a Recommended Action Plan presentation in September.
From there, councilmembers and city staff will decide whether they want to begin implementation or seek more community input, Porter said.
“Ultimately, it’s gonna be the City Council’s decision,” he said. “We’re gonna make a recommendation in the RAP around what we see and what’s supported and what we think is feasible.”
Third Ward resident Sheila Sullivan explained she hopes the program will be a “true visioning process” and that city officials have “no predetermined use” for the buildings in mind.
She added that she hopes City Council will return to the former Civic Center after the building undergoes some repairs or upgrades, instead of the city continuing to lease the 909 Davis St. building.
“I don’t know how feasible it is at this point,” Sullivan said. “The fact that they signed the lease before even going into this process, it just makes it hard to return it now to that original.”
Community members also voiced concerns about the program’s federal funding.
According to McLean, the government reviewed and decided to maintain PAW’s grant. So far, the city has received reimbursements for its spending.
Seventh Ward resident John Bifulco, who said he lives across the street from the old Civic Center, recalled submitting a proposal for its rehabilitation into a mixed-use educational facility.
The economic feasibility analyses of participants’ proposals conducted by the consultants will allow residents to understand what is “realistic,” he added.
“If we’re coming up with all these grandiose ideas, but they’re not economically feasible, then that’s not really responsible,” Bifulco said. “The fact that the consultants are helping us weed that down to put economically feasible ideas in front of the city officials — I think that’s really good.”
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