Good Wednesday morning, Evanston!
It’s an overcast July morning with a chance of an isolated thunderstorm in a few hours, so an umbrella is called for. But there’s good news for later – the forecast calls for a partly sunny afternoon with a high of 84 degrees. Now, on to more news.
It was not an easy meeting. In fact, when city officials and representatives from Chicago-based Horizon Realty Group met Tuesday with First Ward residents it was a tumultuous online discussion about an ambitious proposal, the Legacy Evanston.
The 13-year-old girl shot Monday night remains in critical condition at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. The injured teen, an Evanston resident, was not the intended target of the shooting, Evanston police said. She was attending a backyard gathering on Fowler Avenue when an unknown shooter fired over the backyard fence.
Evanston City Council members voted unanimously at their Monday meeting to allocate up to $500,000 in COVID-relief funds for a Child Care Workforce Retention Program. The program will provide premium bonus payments, estimated between $600 and $1,200, to employees working in-person at Evanston child care facilities with children up to the age of 5.
COVID-19 by the numbers: 14 cases were reported on Monday, July 25, the last day the city updated case totals. The seven-day average is 24.4 cases per day.
Elsewhere on the RoundTable website
A street naming for ‘Ms. JoAnn.’ JoAnn McKire-Avery celebrated 40 years of supporting Evanston youth through her work as program manager at Family Focus in March. She is known as Ms. JoAnn and beloved by community members, so the City Council unanimously voted to rename a portion of Simpson Street between Darrow and Dewey avenues in her honor – JoAnn Avery Way.
Staff proposes modernizing plan for building considered ‘heart of city operations’ The City of Evanston staff proposed to the City Council Monday night that the 42-year-old Service Center at 2020 Asbury Ave. needs an update. The building houses the Public Works, Fleet Management, Parking Management and other city departments.
Community Development Director Johanna Nyden resigns. Nyden said she will officially leave her position effective Aug. 16 for a new opportunity with the Village of Skokie, after serving the City of Evanston since 2010, most recently as community development director.
They do: Long-distance love finds its way home. While she was head of the stage crew in the 2013 Brillianteen production of High School Musical, Anna Hamrick had no idea the teenage boy who jumped her dead battery would someday be her husband. Years later, on their official first date Teddy Keenan drove 843 miles from Carbondale, Ill., to visit Anna in Austin, Texas.
The Evanston Fire Department responded to the scene of a fire on the first floor of a two-story residential building at 741 Howard St. just after 2 a.m. Tuesday, according to a press release. Firefighters found “heavy smoke and fire conditions” but were able to put out the blaze within 15 minutes and safely evacuate residents. Nine people were displaced as a result of the fire.
REVIEW: ‘The Mamalogues’ delivers heartfelt comedy at Noyes Arts Center. Lisa B. Thompson’s satirical comedy The Mamalogues rests on 90 minutes of intense sharing at a retreat for “Black bougie single mothers.” The women, of a certain age and economic strata, meet periodically to network, empathize and gripe about their lives and the decisions they’ve made (and are making) raising Black children in a country not always kind or fair to people of color.
At This Time: Tuesday at 12:42 p.m. Chelsea Hood and Sheldon Neumann spruce up a 1979 Fleetwing trailer near Evanston SPACE, off Dempster Street and Chicago Avenue. “We are facelifting it,” said Hood. The RV was recently picked up in rural New York. They vacuumed the door strips, cleaned the windows, removed the vinyl floor, painted the stripe and installed lighting so that it can be used to sell merchandise at Out of Space live music festival from August 4-7 at Canal Shores and September 1-4 at Temperance Beer Co. (Photo by Richard Cahan)
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Around the web
Monkeypox cases in Illinois surpass 300 as big summer festivals approach. The state reported more than 100 new cases of the virus between Friday and Monday as infectious disease experts and public health authorities struggled to provide enough vaccines for those at high risk of infection and antiviral medicines for people who are already sick.
Thousands More Chicagoans Are Getting Mental Health Care, City’s Top Doc Says — But Critics Say More Must Be Done. The pandemic shifted the mental health landscape in Chicago and across the country, and the city is now providing services to an estimated 60,000 people. Chicago’s top doctor said Wednesday the city is planning to provide funding to at least one mental health clinic in each of Chicago’s 77 community areas, but experts have argued that putting the burden for mental health care on underfunded nonprofits won’t fix the problem.
A new study found millennials didn’t stray far from where they grew up. Three quarters of young people who grew up in the Chicago area stayed here, and Rockford was the most popular in-state destination for people who moved away. Meanwhile, Los Angeles was the most popular out of state location where young adults from Chicago ended up.
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