For anyone concerned about the future of Evanston, or with a strong opinion on Northwestern University’s plan to rebuild its Ryan Field football stadium and add concerts to its slate, a new report on the inadequacy of Evanston’s police, fire and civic headquarters makes for interesting reading.
Simply put, the community to Chicago’s immediate north has chronically underinvested in its infrastructure for the last 30 years or more, leaving it with woefully inadequate facilities that are hemorrhaging money each year just to patch them up.
The police and fire headquarters, built in 1949, is falling apart; on Monday, the council had to approve some $1.5 million in emergency repairs, just to the elevator. The creaking Evanston Civic Center is not in any better shape and other city buildings have major problems, too.
In fact, the internally produced report predicted that future costs to keep Evanston’s aging facilities staggering along will amount to somewhere between $145 million and $175 million, eye-watering sums that Evanston simply does not have. And, of course, these crummy facilities are having an impact on recruitment, given that Evanston has to compete with much nicer facilities for police officers and firefighters in other suburbs.
Unsurprisingly, new buildings will cost a small fortune: maybe $100 million a pop? That’s a lot, but Evanston already has arrived at a point where it is throwing good money after bad.
How did such a relatively affluent community get into this pickle? Part of the problem is the property-tax-exempt presence of Northwestern, which does make some contributions to its home city, and certainly acts as an economic engine, but nonetheless owns a huge swath of the suburb that thus does not land on tax rolls.
Another factor has been a refusal to face the reality of these subpar facilities and Evanston’s long-standing propensity for endless debate and NIMBY accommodations, along with wasting time on civility pledges and other nonsense.
Yet another is a reluctance to approve anything that might actually raise revenue, especially along the desirable lakefront. A potential marina, which could have raised significant amounts of money, has been shot down (at least twice), as have been many other development proposals.
And now Northwestern’s $800 million plans for its stadium, especially the handful of concerts, is being fiercely opposed by nearby neighbors, even though the seating capacity of the new operation will, in fact, be reduced from the present number. Worries over noise and crowds appear to be the main objections to the handful of new concerts.
Some have also pointed to the city’s preference for, and constant focus on, costly social justice programs, including the creation of a new tax-exempt homeless shelter in what was a taxpaying building, or paying reparations to help Black homeowners whose ancestors were the victims of redlining and other forms of discrimination.
Those innovative ideas have received a lot of national attention, making officials feel good, but it’s hardly helping Black or any other homeowners if their equity is being built within a city hurtling off a financial cliff due to its neglect of its own civic buildings.
So what to do? Evanston needs to raise revenue to fix this issue and do so urgently, since the status quo clearly is not an option.
That will have to include working very differently with Northwestern, which has an endowment of some $15 billion, and has a vested interest in maintaining the infrastructure of its home city, where almost all of its students and many of its faculty and staff live. And that will have to be a two-way street.
Derailing a self-funded stadium renovation with plans for new revenue would not appear to be a positive there, any more than the city’s love of demonizing university officials. Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss needs to pay a visit to the university with some big asks in mind. And right now, he has some leverage.
But beyond Northwestern, Evanston also has to become far more entrepreneurial in its approach to civic life. Chicago might get criticism for its embrace of Lollapalooza and NASCAR, not to mention a casino, but those events bring in cash. Revenue-enhancing things don’t have to ruin a city’s quality of life if they’re carefully planned and balanced. They can even be fun. The anti-capitalists do have to be kept in check. Every business plan cannot be allowed to wither on a bureaucratic vine.
Many in Evanston would say that those kinds of noisy events and things just don’t belong in their lovely community. But wise heads need to point out that while there can be endless debate over what should go on which block, and what should be reapportioned to whom, all of that is moot if a city’s basic infrastructure is falling apart, with any replacement decision being kicked down the road for future generations of Evanstonians. The last generation did that and it is not working out so well.
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