While students were on Spring Break, the Evanston City Council made key decisions about a proposed downtown 49-story tower, the city budget and immigration issues.
At a council meeting last Monday, developers for the Fountain Square tower proposal asked the council for another week to revise the plan, possibly to shorten the height of the tower design, before the council voted on it.
"I think if they had a vote on the tower, it would have lost 2-7," said Ald. Steven Bernstein (4th).
The proposal for the residential and commercial tower at 708 Church St. will be discussed at the council meeting Tuesday, April 8.
Although the developers didn't specify what their revisions would entail, some council members suspect that a shorter tower plan is in the works, Bernstein said.
The height has been one of residents' biggest concerns about the tower since its proposal. At 523 feet, the building would be the tallest in Evanston, almost double the height of the Chase Building at Orrington Avenue and Davis Street, currently the city's tallest building.
But Bernstein said the height of the tower is not the council's main concern.
"Some of us said, 'Hey, it's not so much the height, but the benefits to the community,' " he said. "And what they purported as benefits to the community, many of them were illusionary benefits."
Although the revised proposal will be discussed Tuesday, Ald. Delores Holmes (5th) said a decision probably won't be reached.
"I doubt (a decision) will be made," she said. "We do discuss things and weigh things. We listen to developers and opponents and proponents and take all of that into consideration before we make a decision."
Two weeks earlier, at the March 10 council meeting, tensions erupted when Mayor Lorraine Morton announced she had vetoed the budget that aldermen had been working on for months and approved Feb. 27.
Morton was concerned about a 7-percent spike in property taxes to pay for police and fire pensions. But the state informed city officials they were not funding the pensions adequately.
2008 Woodie Awards
The DAILY encourages you to share your thoughts on this story. Please help us keep the discussion lively, but civil. Comments that are abusive to others, off-topic or vulgar, or comments that misrepresent someone's identity, will not be tolerated. We reserve the right to delete any comments in violation or to close comment threads on articles.
Please e-mail online@dailynorthwestern.com to flag a comment or for more information.
Be the first to comment on this story