By Bob Seidenberg
Evanston’s City Council approved on Monday night an $82,510 loan to new restaurant Free Flow Kitchen, 1623 Simpson St., to install a new exhaust and fire suppression system and rejected an amendment that the owners be held personally liable to pay it back if the venture fails.
Councilmembers voted 6-3 in support of owners Nichole Pinkard and Nina Wade’s request for the financial assistance, which draws from tax increment finance, or TIF, funds in the Five-Fifths district and will cover the improvements to their leased space.
Voting in support were Councilmembers Krissie Harris (2nd Ward), Shawn Iles (3rd), Jonathan Nieuwsma (4th), Bobby Burns (5th) and Matt Rodgers (8th).
After the vote, Pinkard expressed confidence in the restaurant’s future success, saying the “proof is in the pudding.”
“We’ve been very successful people in this community,” said Pinkard, a professor at Northwestern University and a newly elected member of the District 65 School Board.
Wade, also her romantic partner and a self-taught chef and educator, said, “Everything we’ve done has been successful. So we’re so happy that we got the support of six [councilmembers], and we look forward to people coming to the restaurant.”
‘Fairly confident we’re not getting money back’: Davis
During discussion Monday, Councilmember Parielle Davis (7th Ward) proposed amending the city’s assistance plan to make the owners personally guarantee the loan, meaning they’d be liable to pay it back if their business could not, and to stipulate that no portion of the loan be forgivable.
The overall loan is split between a $45,628 forgivable portion and a $36,883 portion that is to be repaid over the next five years at 3% interest.
“I looked at the business plan — I want to support minority-owned businesses, I understand this area needs economic development,’’ Davis said, but, she added, “I am fairly confident we’re not going to get this money back based on the estimates we were given.”
She noted that the plan doesn’t include important details, such as how much the owners planned to pay employees.
Davis also felt compelled to do something “to make up for … the appearance,” she said, choosing the word carefully, of Pinkard serving on the city’s Five-Fifths TIF Advisory Committee, which reviews and makes recommendations on spending from the district’s fund. The committee did not discuss or vote on Free Flow’s request prior to it going to councilmembers for approval.
She said she saw the necessity to “add a bit to our loan requirements in order to balance out how the appearance of that looked.”
Responding, Burns suggested that he might be open to the personal guarantee element of the deal but would not support removing the forgivable portion of the loan.
He maintained that previous councils have approved assistance grants exceeding 25% of the applicant’s project costs, referring to a “rule of thumb” ratio for TIF investments described earlier by Economic Development Manager Paul Zalmezak.
“This was me trying to work with staff to really create a new standard,” Burns said, “one in which we stick to the 25% [funding ratio], and that’s how the [forgivable] loan came about.”
According to the staff memo for the loan, the $45,628 forgivable portion equals 25% of the $182,510 that covers all work needed for the restaurant. Pinkard and Wade reportedly have invested $100,000 of equity into the project, separate from the exhaust and fire suppression work that is the subject of the loan.
When asked about the loan coming from the TIF, Zalmezak said the city has “rarely done these” compared to more typical TIF grants. He said he’s only seen “maybe two or three” TIF loans since he joined the city in 2011.
Burns also noted that as approved by the previous council in 2021, the Five-Fifths TIF is eligible to fund upgrades to businesses within its district, including streetscape improvements, facade upgrades and leasehold improvements to things like HVAC, plumbing and electrical systems.
“So this request is consistent with what that body said that we wanted to use these funds for,” he said.
He expressed hope that the council would establish a funding precedent with the loan to Free Flow.
He maintained that previous councils have approved assistance grants exceeding 25% of the applicant’s project costs, referring to a “rule of thumb” ratio for TIF investments described earlier by Economic Development Manager Paul Zalmezak.
“This was me trying to work with staff to really create a new standard,” Burns said, “one in which we stick to the 25% [funding ratio], and that’s how the [forgivable] loan came about.”
According to the staff memo for the loan, the $45,628 forgivable portion equals 25% of the $182,510 that covers all work needed for the restaurant. Pinkard and Wade reportedly have invested $100,000 of equity into the project, separate from the exhaust and fire suppression work that is the subject of the loan.
When asked about the loan coming from the TIF, Zalmezak said the city has “rarely done these” compared to more typical TIF grants. He said he’s only seen “maybe two or three” TIF loans since he joined the city in 2011.
Burns also noted that as approved by the previous council in 2021, the Five-Fifths TIF is eligible to fund upgrades to businesses within its district, including streetscape improvements, facade upgrades and leasehold improvements to things like HVAC, plumbing and electrical systems.
“So this request is consistent with what that body said that we wanted to use these funds for,” he said.
He expressed hope that the council would establish a funding precedent with the loan to Free Flow.
“We can’t be making rules and changing expectations as we move through the process,” said Rodgers, previously the longtime chair of the city’s Land Use Commission before winning his current office in April. “If people feel that things need to be changed, then let’s take the time to change those rules, but not while people are in the middle of a process, because these applicants have come to us under a certain expectation.”
He said the applicants in this case have “provided us with a lot of information, as we asked for,” and that it’d be unfair to “keep moving the goalpost.”
No $30 sandwiches
Back at the EDC meeting on May 28, Pinkard told committee members that she and Wade had invested $100,000 in the restaurant after taking over the lease when the owners of prior tenant Jennifer’s Edibles went out of business in March of 2024.
The investment reportedly covered all of the plumbing and electrical work for Free Flow. The two owners had not planned to go to the city for assistance until they found there was no workaround to replacing the exhaust system, Pinkard said then.
During council’s discussion Monday, Councilmember Tom Suffredin (6th Ward) asked Pinkard and Wade if they were comfortable being personally liable for the loan in general.
“To be honest, it’s a labor of love in a place that needed a lot of love,” Pinkard said. “There’s a lot of resources that have gone into this building by the city without [the city] putting care into it.”
“We have no problems taking care of everything but the (exhaust) hood. … It’s the cost of running the exhaust all the way up the side of the building: that should fall to the city or the building owner, she argued.
Pinkard said if she and Wade had to foot this $82,510 in expenses, it would force them to raise their prices for customers, making breakfast “a $30, $25 sandwich, which isn’t what we’re in business to do.”
Wade added, “We’ve invested well over $100,000 in a space that is not ours, because we want to give something back. We live in that community. We feel like that space deserves to be there.”