The really odd thing is that the Civic Center/Police/Fire HQ study had just been completed prior to signing this deal. Why wouldn’t we take a few months to decide the long term plan before signing this lease? We had all the information at that point.
It seems to me like the city will buy a piece of property- either the Farmers Market lot or the Northwestern building around the corner and construct a mixed Civic Center / Fire & Police HQ. This opens the door to redevelopment of 2100 Ridge as part of Envision Evanston. Just a hunch…
Also on your point about the study, they spent almost $400k on a study from AECOM to make recommendations for next steps and then completely ignored AECOMs report and just leased a property. I’ll post a link to the AECOM report when I’m back in front of my computer. I get the sense that certain staff members just hate the Ridge property.
I suspect there are people with plans in the works for 2100 Ridge that we don’t know about yet. Remember that it’s in the Fifth Ward TIF too for some reason..
The really odd thing is that the Civic Center/Police/Fire HQ study had just been completed prior to signing this deal. Why wouldn’t we take a few months to decide the long term plan before signing this lease? We had all the information at that point.
It seems to me like the city will buy a piece of property- either the Farmers Market lot or the Northwestern building around the corner and construct a mixed Civic Center / Fire & Police HQ. This opens the door to redevelopment of 2100 Ridge as part of Envision Evanston. Just a hunch…
Also on your point about the study, they spent almost $400k on a study from AECOM to make recommendations for next steps and then completely ignored AECOMs report and just leased a property. I’ll post a link to the AECOM report when I’m back in front of my computer. I get the sense that certain staff members just hate the Ridge property.
I suspect there are people with plans in the works for 2100 Ridge that we don’t know about yet. Remember that it’s in the Fifth Ward TIF too for some reason..