Council OKs new church, affordable housing for Church-Darrow site

The Evanston City Council cleared the way Monday for construction of a new mixed-use affordable housing development at Church Street and Darrow Avenue. Several years in the making, the development had come under strong criticism from some community members as inappropriate for the area.

In back-to-back votes at their April 10 meeting, council members approved major variations supporting the ambitious Fifth Ward redevelopment project proposed by Mt. Pisgah Ministry and Skokie-based Housing Opportunity Development Corp. for the west side area.

In a complicated land swap, HODC will construct a four-story, mixed-use building with ground floor retail. Meanwhile, Mt. Pisgah plans to erect a new three-story building, including a 200-seat worship space, on adjacent land, with each party separately footing the cost for their own construction.

Council Member Bobby Burns (5th Ward) said at the meeting that the project will address much of the criticism raised by residents who have maintained that it isn’t in accord with the city’s vision for the area.

“I’ve heard community members repeatedly say, ‘Well, it [the city’s plan] calls for an iconic building,'” Burns said. “Well, there’s an iconic building going there – that’s the church – it meets the standard.

“It called for retail, ground-floor retail. That’s what we’re putting in. We’ve lost a lot [of retail] due to storefront churches and not-for-profits.

“So it’s almost like I’m hearing the same things constantly repeated back to me that are my position on those issues,” he said.

One vote against development

Council Member Clare Kelly (1st Ward), was the lone dissenting vote. She opposed HODC’s proposal on the grounds that the city should address conditions at another of the group’s properties – the 48-unit Claridge Hotel Apartments at 319 Dempster St., in her ward.

Kelly said that since taking office in 2021 she has fielded numerous calls from tenants about poor conditions at the Claridge. She said she has spoken repeatedly with HODC Executive Director Richard Koenig and city Community Development Director Sarah Flax, requesting greater oversight.

“People were getting beat up, taken out, aggravated battery, broken bones, lacerated faces, drug dealing, on and on,” Kelly said at the April 10 meeting.

“It’s gone on, and nothing was changing,” she said.

Flax, who was named community development director in March by City Manager Luke Stowe, said at the council’s April 3 meeting that the city had recently inspected the Claridge building and found nothing out of the ordinary from any other housing service with tenants at similar income levels.

Burns stressed he never said there weren’t issues with that building and said he’s tried to do his best working with Kelly and Koenig to come up with a solution.

“If there was a pattern, that this was an issue across the entire HODC portfolio, that is another issue. I have not seen that,” he said. “And I’ve said that repeatedly. What I’ve seen is, we have one building where there’s really big issues … where we need to deal with it. And I felt that way the entire time. But I have not seen any evidence of a chronic issue of chronic breakdown in management of HODC.”

Kelly responded that she could not support HODC’s current project, telling Burns it’s not enough that he acknowledges “that’s it’s a problem place for me.”

“What does that mean to me if you don’t resolve it,” she said. “And there has been no effort, there has been nothing.”

Kelly said she also agreed with residents’ concerns about changes to the Mt. Pisgah-HODC project, including a reduction in height of the building and the number of units, maintaining the issue should have gone back to the city’s Land Use Commission.

The project is to total over $20 million. The city’s Housing & Community Development Committee previously voted to recommend that the council approve $4 million, specifically for the residential project. The developer is in line to receive close to $13.5 million in Illinois low-income housing credits to provide the bulk of the remaining financing for the project.

The commission had held three hearings on the proposal, originally for a five-story building, and ultimately voted 4-3 on Feb. 22 to recommend approval of HODC’s request, subject to conditions.

Those conditions included approval of a construction management plan to address potential impacts to a nearby historic structure at 1817 Church St. and requiring coordination with adjacent properties, stipulating that neighboring owners should be kept informed and involved in the development of the plan.

Responding to criticism about the project’s density, Burns had proposed at the March 13 meeting of the Planning & Development Committee that the size of the HODC building be reduced from five to four stories and from 44 to 33 units.

Burns tabled that proposal at the March 27 meeting, hoping to restore some of the retail that would be lost under the changes. HODC’s revised plans, submitted to the city April 5, would increase retail square footage from 1,233 square feet to 2,250 square feet, while reducing the number of parking spaces from 33 to 31, the minimum number of spaces required.

Some in favor, some opposed

At the April 10 meeting, as at previous hearings on the proposal, Fifth Ward residents spoke up during the public comment period to raise concerns about concentrating affordable housing in their ward and suggested other uses for the site, such as a skill-building center.

“Affordability is not by dumb luck. It’s cheaper to build in the Fifth Ward,” said Xiomara Chambers. “They made it that way. And the more affordable housing they put here, the cheaper it gets to be built here. This is how they keep the medium income and the Fifth Ward low property values low, by putting poverty on top of poverty.”

But some others, including former Fifth Ward Council Member Delores Holmes as well as several representatives of the affordable housing community, spoke up in support of the project.

Longtime real estate agent Bonnie Wilson noted that rents at the Church-Darrow development will be set at $800 for two-bedroom apartments and $1,000 for a three-bedroom unit.

“A prospective tenant who is making less than $40,000 a year [currently] cannot live in Evanston,” she told council members. “Now, however, after this development is built, they would be able to afford to live here.

“A few years ago at a housing steering committee, the committee members were complaining when they interviewed retail clerks, waiters, teacher aides who worked in Evanston, that they told the committee they could not afford to live in Evanston because of the high rent,” Wilson said.

With this coming development, she said, “33 more households, from young families who are starting in the workforce to older adults who are living on Social Security, may be able to live in Evanston without struggle.”