By Bob Seidenberg
Members of the city’s Economic Development Committee are drawing up both longterm and some “quick wins” suggestions in their effort to activate the city’s downtown, including attracting more ground floor retail, cleanliness, outdoor dining and incentives to bring Northwestern students outside the university bubble more often, among other things.
Fifth Ward Councilmember Bobby Burns, the current chair of the committee, and the city’s economic development staff led a goal-setting session at a meeting on Wednesday.
The session built on a “Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT)” analysis workshop conducted in September.
Officials plan to use the goals developed “to identify ‘quick wins’ strategies that can be put in place, as well as setting medium to longterm priorities for Evanston’s economic vitality,” Paul Zalmezak, the city’s economic development manager, wrote in a memo about the process.
Leading off Wednesday’s session, Councilmember Jonathan Nieuwsma (4th Ward) maintained that bringing more customers to downtown and retaining businesses are two key overriding concerns of his.
“As for bringing in more customers,” he said, “we need to make Evanston comfortable and attractive for people to visit so they can patronize these businesses. And a lot we’re talking about here kind of fits one into the other.”
Other committee members chimed in with goals — and concerns — of their own:
- Lisa Dziekan, an economic development professional, named “business retention, attraction, safety and placemaking” as keys.
- Councilmember Clare Kelly, whose First Ward includes a portion of downtown, said she would like to work on a goal that recognizes the importance of ground floor spaces and the role they play in encouraging pedestrian engagement and economic vitality.
- Cheryl Judice, owner of Hecky’s Barbecue, said the cleanliness of downtown streets is a big issue for her. She repeated concerns about the condition of a stairwell leading down from the Metra tracks at the Davis Street station to the plaza area outside Morton City Hall at 909 Davis St., describing the stairway as “horrific.”
- Councilmember Matt Rodgers (8th), former chair of the city’s Land Use Commission, suggested that a city requirement that developers include retail space on the ground floor of their projects should be reevaluated.
As for Rodgers’ suggestion, he said developers get around this requirement by putting in space “that’s not usable, but they’ve checked it off their box.”