Evanston Now readers are sharply divided about plans for a new Ryan Field.
The readers were asked to rate six different possible outcomes to the stadium project on a scale from strongly oppose to strongly favor. Values assigned to the responses varied from 1 for strongly oppose to 5 for strongly favor.
On that scale, permitting concerts at the field — even if the university doesn’t agree to making large payments in lieu of taxes to the city — ended up with the highest score — 3.41.
But permitting concerts only with a big PILOT payment finished just tiny fraction behind that — at 3.32.
The third-ranked option was building the stadium on the current site but not permitting concerts at all at 2.62.
Still less popular options were building a new stadium on the main NU campus on the Evanston lakefront at 2.24, building the new stadium somewhere other than in Evanston at 1.98 and eliminating the football program completely at 1.81.
So far 730 responses have been tallied in the poll.
We plan to keep accepting responses to the survey through the New Year’s holiday weekend.
Methodology note
Given that this survey is based on a convenience sample drawn from people who visited the Evanston Now website during the period that the article inviting people to participate in the survey has been live, it is not possible to state with confidence the probability that the results represent the views of a true cross-section of all Evanston residents.
Any reader who would like to contribute several thousand dollars to make it possible to conduct a true random sample survey on the subject is encouraged to contact the publisher.