Developments, Settlement, Contracts Pack City Council Agenda

EVANSTON, IL — Aldermen are considering 921 pages of meeting materials for Monday's meeting, where they are set to consider, among other things, a memorandum of understanding with the Friends of the Robert Crown Center, a new labor contract with firefighters, an increase in the city's debt limit, approval of a car wash and a development of 40 attached townhomes.

The Friends of Robert Crown nonprofit fundraising group was formed three years ago to raise money for the new Robert Crown Community Center at 1701 Main St. The group has raised over $12 million from more than a thousand Evanston residents, according to a memo from city staff. The group's goal is raising $15 million toward the project. Originally estimated at $30 million in 2016, the projected construction cost of the project rose to more than $50 million last year.

The agreement with the group before aldermen at the April 8 meeting requires for the Friends to transfer $5 million in the current year and $1 million next year to go directly toward paying for construction costs. The following year, the city will bill the group annually for 95 percent of its cash, which will go toward paying the project's annual debt service payments of more than $1.5 million on bonds issued over the past two years. Once the Friends has given the city $15 million, any future payments will be directed to the center's maintenance fund, according to the agreement.

Also before aldermen are naming rights agreements with two businesses for portions of the new community center. A bank that donated $500,000 over eight years to the nonprofit fundraising group will be acknowledged in the name of an outdoor artificial turf field and a conference room in the facility. A local grocery store that pledged a donation of $250,000 over a 15-year period will have the center's lobby named after it as well as its logo or other graphic on an advertising board on one of the center's ice rinks.

To fund the project, the City Council was asked to approve the latest round of general obligation bonds to fund the Robert Crown Center, bringing the total amount of bonds issued for the project to $40 million, which equates to a cost of more than $70 million including interest and fees. In order to issue its latest round of bonds, city staff recommended increasing Evanston's self-imposed limit on unabated general obligation bond debt another $10 million to $160 million. Last year, aldermen signed off an increasing the debt limit from $113 million to $150 million.

UPDATE: During the Administration and Public Works Committee meeting, aldermen voted to reduce the increase in the debt limit to $152 million. At the meeting of the full City Council, the debt limit increase and $18 million bond issue was approved by a 6-1 vote. Ald. Robin Rue Simmons, 5th Ward, voted against. Ald. Cicely Fleming, 9th Ward, and Ald. Melissa Wynne, 3rd Ward, were absent.

For several months, the city has been negotiating a new firefighters contract with the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 742, the union that represents the Evanston Fire Department, according to a memo from staff.

The agreement was worked out during mediation between the union and representatives of the city and has already been ratified by the union. It "represents a fair compromise between the city and the union in light of the current financial situation of the city," according to city staff.

In a four-year contract recommended for approval Monday, the union accepted a 0% wage increase in 2019, a 1.5% increase in 2020 and a 2.25% increase in 2021. Starting in 2022, the total amount of paid sick time will be reduced by 20 hours to 600 hours, the equivalent of 75 eight-hour shifts. In exchange for union concessions on wage increases, firefighters will receive and additional 36 hours of comp time every year until 2022, according to city staff. After that, each member will receive an additional 24 hours of floating holiday time.

City staff, the Plan Commission and 9th Ward Ald. Cicely Fleming recommend granting a special use permit for a car wash at 2425 Oakton St. The proposed 4,900-square-foot facility would include 20 vacuum spaces under two canopies on a 1.09-acre vacant lot formerly owned by the Salvation Army. The developer is Robert Stambolic, the Lake Forest-based owner of numerous gas stations in the region.

The only site development allowance being requested for the project is allowing a detached vacuum canopy to be 3 feet from the main structure, while code requires it to be 10 feet away. A representative of the developer told the Plan Commission there were concerns about the wind load and possible damage to the main building if the canopy was attached, and a detached canopy would make it easier to maintain the vacuums.

UPDATE: Ald. Ann Rainey, 8th Ward, did not agree with 9th Ward Ald. Fleming's request to allow the passage of the project at a single meeting. It will require final approval at a subsequent meeting after being introduced.

The Plan Commission and Evanston city staff also recommended aldermen approve a plan to rezone an area of Custer Avenue that dead-ends north of Main Street and just west of the train tracks for a multi-unit residential development called Evanston Commons. Developer Kevin Lee wants to build 40 single-family attached townhouses across five structures.

The special use permit would allow 40 units where the code allows for 32, an extra 3.2 feet and one story above what would be allowed, a 10-foot reduction on the back yard setback in the west, townhouses facing interior yards instead of the street, smaller yards and a reduction in required landscaping along the boundaries.

The requested rezoning changes the area from its current transitional manufacturing-employment district, or MUE, to a mixed-use employment district, or MXE. Such a zone is intended for areas where manufacturing and industrial uses can coexist with residential uses. The proposed change in the 900 block of Custer Avenue would change a third of the city's only MUE district, and with more anticipated development to its north, the MUE district would be eventually rendered obsolete.

The developers are no longer requesting Tax Increment Financing district funding, so the promised public benefits were reduced, according to a staff memo. The current proposal includes $25,000 for public art, $15,000 for a pedestrian countdown timer and $9,000 for an on-street parking pay box. The project will also include alley reconstruction and a widening of part of Custer Avenue at the dead end. Instead of including four affordable units, as mandated by Evanston's Inclusionary Housing Ordinance, Lee's Evanston Custer LLC agreed to pay $400,000 to the city.

UPDATE: The planned development was approved by a 6-1 vote. Only Ald. Judy Fiske, 1st Ward, voted against.

Other items on the April 8 Evanston City Council agenda were approved unanimously on the consent agenda:

• A $1.25 million settlement payment city staff recommend approving in order to end a lawsuit filed on behalf of a man who was critically hurt when he was struck by a car fleeing Evanston police down Sheridan Road in Chicago in April 2016.
• Changes to permitted uses on the ground floor in the Central Street Overlay District, including the addition of brew pub and craft distillery uses, banquet halls or business schools with permits and car dealerships in certain portions of the district.
• A $2.06 million contract with Landmark Contractors for a project to improve the Main Street corridor along with $270,000 with Stanley Consultants.