Council Member Bobby Burns (5th Ward) tried Monday to get the Evanston City Council to undo its Jan. 22 vote authorizing staff to execute a lease for downtown office space for city operations. But Burns’ motion to reconsider the plan for a 15-year lease at 909 Davis St. failed 4-3, with Mayor Daniel Biss warning that Burns’ request faced “a pretty significant procedural hurdle.”
Biss said he had signed the resolution, giving officials authority to negotiate the lease with owners of the 909 Davis building “long ago” – shortly after the 6-3 vote on Jan. 22. To reconsider the issue “after you pass something and then it’s signed and enacted, and then unpause later, is totally incoherent,” the mayor said during the short discussion that ensued. “You can’t have a government run that way.”
Burns’ request came near the close of Monday night’s council meeting, during the Call of the Wards portion of the meeting, when members typically relate ward concerns and news about upcoming meetings.
Burns had made some of the strongest comments at the Jan. 22 meeting, urging council members to move forward with the move, suggesting that a move of city offices out of the Morton Civic Center at 2100 Ridge Ave. to modern office space might be viewed positively by younger constituents.
Burns, participating remotely at Monday’s meeting, said he voted in favor Jan. 22 “because I felt very strongly at the time that I could work with our economic development manager and the negotiators to at least get them to request what a 10-year lease would look like.”
“I think that request was made,” Burns said, “because we, in a sense, gave away all of our leverage by saying way too much during the last meeting, and the property manager [of the 909 Davis building] was on the call. …
“We were not able to get what a 10-year lease would look like in writing. I don’t support a 15-year lease,” he said. “It’s important to me to put that on the record. I don’t support it without knowing what a 10-year option would look like, and again, I thought it would be easy enough to at least get what that would look like on paper so that staff could at least consider it, and we do not have that at this time.
“We already know that the market is not great for office space,” Burns continued, “and the idea that that’ll improve over the next 15 years is unlikely. Maybe we can lease it out for some other use. … But I don’t think we made the right decision to remove our staff’s ability to even consider a 10-year lease.”
Mayor: ‘You can’t unsign a resolution’
To Burns’ request, interim Corporation Counsel Alexandra Reggie confirmed the mayor’s view that a motion to reconsider could only be made at the same meeting where the action was taken – Jan. 22 in this case.
Council Member Clare Kelly (1st Ward), backed Burns’ proposal. Earlier in the meeting, she had made a motion requesting that the official city minutes from the Jan. 22 meeting be revised, to more accurately reflect that a shorter lease period had been part of council members’ directive to staff. But her request failed to move forward, with no council members seconding the motion.
Kelly charged that the reason the council was in this situation was because of Biss’ change of the council reconsideration policy, “where you could bring it [an issue] back the next time [meeting] but he made it so it had to happen on the same night, which is almost impossible,” she said.
Biss responded that the reason he advocated for the change “is exactly because of the situation we’re in now,” maintaining that a motion to reconsider “after the thing was signed, is itself oxymoronic. In the old rules where you could have made a motion to reconsider, it is not clear what it would have meant, because you can’t unsign a resolution – that act is binding.”
Kelly: Reconsidering is ‘very democratic process’
Burns was given clearance to make a motion proposing that that the council add a special order of business at its next meeting (Feb. 26) to allow city staff to negotiate either a 10- or 15-year lease with the owners of 909 Davis. That motion failed 4-3.
Voting in support of leaving the lease resolution as is were Council Members Melissa Wynne (3rd Ward), Jonathan Nieuwsma (4th Ward), Eleanor Revelle (7th Ward) and Juan Geracaris (9th Ward). Voting in support of Burns’ motion to reconsider 10 years were Kelly, Burns and Tom Suffredin (6th Ward). Two members, Krissie Harris (2nd Ward) and Devon Reid (8th Ward) were absent.
After the vote, Kelly spoke to argue that historically, council members who voted on the prevailing side of an issue, such as Burns, had been allowed to bring it back for reconsideration at the next meeting.
“It’s a very democratic process,” she said. The time in between “gives your community a chance to weigh in and the council member a chance to reflect on a vote that was taken that maybe they’d like to reconsider.”
“So absolutely we should not be moving forward on a long-term lease that will be costing us tens of millions of dollars unnecessarily.”
Only one public meeting on issue
Burns’ request to reconsider the long-term lease vote came as public criticism over the office lease remained sharp.
The Jan. 22 meeting featured the first public discussion of city plans to vacate the Morton Civic Center, which has housed city operations since the late 1970s.
Council members had previously discussed the issue in executive session, including a consultant, Jones Lange LaSalle, in the discussions, under a provision in the state Open Meetings Act that permit closed-door discussions for some matters of real estate.
City staff has strongly advocated for the move. The city plans to lease approximately 53,000 square feet of office space, officials said at the Jan. 22 meeting.
“Office space rentals are currently low,” officials said in a memo. “If the City were to enter into a short-term lease and then decide to make the move permanent, there is a risk that the rental rates will have begun to make a significant recovery, and it will be difficult to negotiate a rate as competitive as the current rate [an estimated $2.5 million annual occupancy cost] plus the 2.5%/year escalation. This long-term lease mitigates this risk.”
Further, staff maintained that the move was necessary because of the condition of the Civic Center. “The relocation to 909 Davis will allow the City to forego the immediate necessary capital expenditures to the Civic Center while still providing a safe and efficient working environment for City staff and for community members accessing city services,” staff wrote.
Speakers urge revisiting lease
During public comment earlier in the meeting, several speakers urged council members to reconsider the change.
“I’m here to ask you if you’re really confident that the city got the best deal in the 909 Davis lease,” said Meg Welch. “A 15-year lease is very unusual. According to real estate professionals, the city is a very low-risk tenant. We’re not going to go out of business. The building sold, in case you didn’t know, in 2023 for $28 million. After seven years, for us to get out of this lease, we’re going to have to pay $8.8 million. So that’s like a third of the building as of 2023. That seems super, super high.”
She suggested the deal would serve as “a kind of a windfall for the owners of the 909 Davis building. They have a guaranteed tenant for 15 years. We’re going to add to the value of their building.”
Another speaker, John Kennedy, told council members that the city video of the Jan. 22 meeting showed six of the nine Council members in favor of a shorter lease, “presumably because a longer 15-year lease does not make sense, whether we build a new [building] or rehab the civic center.”
Kennedy maintained that the only way to engage the 909 Davis owners in meaningful negotiations is to have an alternative, and he said that exists – a building downtown with an owner willing to do a shorter lease, perhaps as short as three to five years. “Furthermore, that building may not require anywhere near the $5.9 million in build-out [costs] in this plan for 909,” he said, not naming the building.
additionally a “Letter of Intent” is exactly what it says it is: intent is not a contract
It is NOT too Late! As revealed in Finance & Budget committee last night, this lease has not yet been signed… And good thing too! This is the softest Commercial Real Estate market in decades…it is a tenant’s market! It’s clear that staff have been making false statements about the possibility of 3 – 5-year lease opportunities… Did JLL contact the Rotary Building Managers yet? And whose best interests is JLL representing?
As reported in The RoundTable on January 29th, a week after the “Special Order of Business” vote, Mayor Biss told a Levy Center crowd: “Before we make a long-term choice, we’re going to have a ton of community input, so the long-term choice of where the seat of our city government is, is one the whole city needs to be at the table to help us work out,” Biss said about choosing between a renovation of the Civic Center or constructing a new City Hall.
To say this is not possible is disingenuous… Mr. Mayor, the residents+taxpayers await your invitation to a seat the table!
Respectfully, Brian G. Becharas
That wonderfully old – fashioned term “hornswoggle” comes to mind here, Brian:
https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/hornswoggle
hornswoggle
Other forms: hornswoggled; hornswoggling; hornswoggles
“Looking for a colorful Americanism to describe how you’ve just been deceived out of all your money? Say you’ve been hornswoggled!
American English has a rich array of verbs to refer to swindling someone, like bamboozle, hoodwink, and humbug. Hornswoggle is one that’s particularly fun to say. According to one story, the word comes from the way that a lassoed cow would move its head back and forth to try to break free. But most dictionaries simply say its origin is unknown, so let’s just thank the anonymous 19th-century American wit who came up with this ridiculous word…”
Respectfully,
Gregory Morrow – Evanston 4th Ward resident
Biss displays arrogance and disregard for democratic processes again and again. He is such a disappointment! Who is he so eager to please. Why is he so eager to give a sweetheart deal to the owners of 909 Davis?
Also, excellent comment by Meg Welch:
“I’m here to ask you if you’re really confident that the city got the best deal in the 909 Davis lease,” said Meg Welch. “A 15-year lease is very unusual. According to real estate professionals, the city is a very low-risk tenant. We’re not going to go out of business. The building sold, in case you didn’t know, in 2023 for $28 million. After seven years, for us to get out of this lease, we’re going to have to pay $8.8 million. So that’s like a third of the building as of 2023. That seems super, super high.”
She suggested the deal would serve as “a kind of a windfall for the owners of the 909 Davis building. They have a guaranteed tenant for 15 years. We’re going to add to the value of their building.”