Evanston’s City Council will get a report Monday that outlines a path to reduce some of its financial strains and increase its supply of affordable housing.
It proposes to make more effective use of existing city assets ranging from surface parking lots to the civic center.
The report, called Putting Assets to Work, suggests that optimizing the use of now tax-exempt city-owned land could add about 5% to the city’s tax base.
At current property tax rates, that would add about $2.8 million in new revenue to a city budget that now totals more than $400 million a year.
The report comes from an incubator project that’s a collaboration of the Common Ground Institute, the Government Finance Officers Association and the business school at the University of Utah. The city agreed last July to participate in the program.
Mayor Daniel Biss, in an interview with Evanston Now, said he believes the report is “right on the money.”
Evanston is a landlocked, built-up city with a housing supply problem and more assets than it knows how to manage, Biss says.
The report suggests coming up with solutions that would redevelop the Civic Center, police headquarters and the Noyes Cultural Arts Center, although it doesn’t specify future uses for those sites.
Mayor Biss suggested that those answers could be developed with funding from a federal grant the city hopes to apply for that has an application deadline of May 10.
The grant, he said could provide technical assistance in developing plans for transit-oriented development — that likely could involve some combination of affordable and market rated housing on the sites.
Only about 0.02 square miles of Evanston’s nearly eight square miles of land is devoted to public parking lots. But the report sees major opportunities there.
And the city has some experience with that — having converted the underutilized parking lot at Chicago Avenue and Howard Street to the Evanston Gateway apartment development, which also houses the city’s newest cannabis dispensary.
A supplement to the report developed by city staff suggests starting immediately to seek development options for a bundle of nine public parking lots that could become sites for affordable housing and in some cases commercial development, while still providing some public or residential permit parking.
| Surface parking lots – Immediate redevelopment | Ward | Lot # | Spaces |
| 1710-1720 Chicago Ave. | 1 | 3 | 72 |
| 1614-1618 Maple Ave. | 4 | 25 | 32 |
| 1621-1625 Oak Ave. | 4 | 27 | 36 |
| 1300 Elmwood Ave. | 4 | 23 | 38 |
| 925 Sherman Ave. | 4 | 31 | 20 |
| 727 Main St. | 4 | 24 | 32 |
| 711-713 Hinman Ave. | 3 | 39 | 48 |
| 825 Hinman Ave. | 3 | 32 | 77 |
| Northwest corner Main Street and Judson Ave. | 3 | 35 | 56 |
And it proposes beginning a public engagement process leading to a detailed development strategy within six months for four other parking lots.
Surface parking lots – Mid-term redevelopment Ward Lot # Spaces Northwest corner Central Street and Stewart Avenue 7 4 66 1100 Central St., the Chandler-Newberger parking lot 7 21 92 927 Noyes St., the Noyes Center parking lot 1 51 55 811 Main St. 4 8 49
Finally, it recommends in the longer term developing the city’s lakefront parks and beaches to be more attractive for recreation and for revenue-generating activities like food and beverage service and facility rentals.
How about fixing and maintaining the assets we already have first.
Hi Jeff,
One of the goals of the report is to provide some of the money needed to fix up those assets.
$120 million is the estimated minimum tab for just the civic center, police HQ and Noyes.
At least in theory the new housing developments on parking lots, for example, would be created without the city having to put up its own money — and it some cases it might get cash.
That of course is only a theory until specific proposals are developed.
— Bill
Hopefully the City departments will take a close look at the parking situation at the same time. This is a complex issue. One example. The golf course just has been renovated. It’s parking is at the Newberger/Chandler lot. Where would the new golfer’s the improvements are expecting going to park? It seems that as NU has picked off properties and removed them from the property tax roles, we are now faced with selling City lots to add back the tax receipts we’ve lost. At first glance, this seems like another unexpected consequence of NU’s impact on our City. What exactly is the cause of the financial shortfall and stress? Can we petition or modify the law so that NU is grandfathered with their current not for profit but cannot add more land? This is a crisis and our City leaders are grasping at air for a solution.
Hi “Neighbor,”
While NU has acquired some Evanston property in recent years, notably the 1800 Sherman Ave. and 1840 Oak Ave. office buildings, it has also sold a number of properties it owned.
Those include the property at 824-828 Noyes that, after the sale, was redeveloped from a single-story retail building to the four-story apartment building that has the Stacked and Folded restaurant on the ground floor, the office and retail building at 1712-1722 Sherman Ave., and a portion of the property that was redeveloped with the Trader Joe’s grocery store at 1211 Chicago Ave.
My sense is that on balance there’s been no significant recent change in the university’s total property holdings in Evanston. But that’s something that could be more deeply researched.
If you like tilting at windmills, try getting the state legislature to alter the university’s charter to prohibit the school from acquiring more property.
— Bill
Interesting. Thanks for the response. How about thoughts on the use of City parking lots for redevelopment. The Central St. lot offers EV charging, where would that go, and I’ve already mentioned the apparent conflict about parking and the upgraded golf course. Those aren’t windmills but real conflicts.
Hi again,
A parking lot could be redeveloped in a way that increased the number of spaces available — with a multi-level parking deck — or that kept the number of parking spaces the same, or that reduced or eliminated the parking.
What makes sense all depends on what parking demand is now and what it can reasonably be anticipated to be with the new development in place. That all has to be assessed on an individualized basis for each property and each development proposal.
That goes for the parking lot at the golf course or any other location.
The golf course parking lot immediately adjoins a CTA station. One can imagine a transit-oriented development at that location that would have a relatively low demand for parking. And you can also imagine a multi-level parking deck there that would give the east-facing apartment a better view than the rail embankment.
No guarantee, of course, that it would be done right. That’s all up to the planning process.
— Bill
Adding to Bill’s comments, it is not clear if the retail area near Central and Green Bay Rd is better helped by parking vs greater housing density. That location in particular would be an candidate for transit-oriented development given its proximity to the Metra stop.
The City shouldn’t do a thing until we get a new City council. The current bunch will make a hash of everything.
With regard to the parking lots, the question is where the vehicles will go that occupy the 673 spaces noted in this article will go? And it should be noted that at $90/month for a permit, the potential revenue to the City is $725,000. Will property taxes greatly exceed this permit revenue and is that worth enough to off set the increased frustration of more cars on the street?
Hi John,
Insufficient info at this point to reach a conclusion. Some factors you didn’t consider in your comment:
1. How many of the spaces are now vacant?
2. How many spaces would be included in the new developments? (Will the new development actually push more cars onto the street for parking?)
3. What does the city spend to maintain the parking lots now? (At some point they need to be repaved.)
4. Is the $2.8M in hypothetical additional property tax revenue (posited by the study) more than the $725K in hypothetical parking permit revenue that you assume? (Both numbers could be off.)
And there probably are other factors.
— Bill
It seems to me that finding a means to create an income stream from real estate owned by the city of Evanston would be very productive and a good idea to monetize an asset that is sitting vacant. That makes sense.
What doesn’t make sense is for the city to support any form of gambling. Don’t we have enough problems already? Why are we considering feeding a weakness such as those with gambling addictions? The cost benefit analysis tells me that a more positive idea would be to support those struggling with addiction with revenues from the parking lots. That is creating a positive outcome however, the gambling idea is like lighting a match on a bail of hay. No good outcome can arise, only pain and suffering, which we currently have a surplus of in our community.
I would urge Devon Reid to stop operating from a place of desperation and instead think about ways to actually improve the health long term of our struggling community. Bad ideas beget bad outcomes. Think about ways to create positive change instead.