Central Street Neighbors Association Est. 2007

Guest Essay by Steve Test and Paul Breslin

There is a national trend of urban planners loosening or removing zoning limits on height and density and to eliminate or reduce zoning for detached, single-family homes to allow building more multi-unit residential buildings, so called “missing middle” housing. Minneapolis, Austin, and Houston, as well as the states of Oregon and California, are among the jurisdictions that have enacted these policies. All of these jurisdictions are distinctly different from the much smaller, land-constrained, built-out city of Evanston. The cities' housing stock has a much higher percentage of detached, single-family homes: Minneapolis 45.3%, Austin 46.5%, Houston 46.6%. Evanston: 31.8%.

The first draft of the EE45 Comprehensive Plan called for elimination of single-family home zoning and allowing by-right building up to four-unit residential buildings on any R1/R2 lot. In fact, significant portions of the language in the first draft could have come straight from many of the rezoning projects in other parts of the country. Much of that language has been removed from subsequent drafts, but significant vestiges are still there. So let’s examine those vestiges and the ideology that spawned them.

CSNA would like to thank all who sincerely participated in the survey we ran in May on how residents feel about some of the basic choices confronting the city. The response was nearly overwhelming for a volunteer organization. However, we have been able to compile the responses and are issuing a preliminary report, downloadable below.

The findings won't be surprising to any longtime observer of Evanston. The short takeaways are as follows:

A staple of spring in north Evanston for many years is the annual Garden Fair, tho participating organizations and locations have varied. This Saturday, May 17, from 9am to 4pm at Ackerman Park (Central St.

Despite what seemed like some hot division over direction of both the City of Evanston and its elementary school system, a large majority of voters in Evanston last week elected to sit not just on the fence but on the couch. The Cook County Clerk counts over 52,000 registered Evanston voters on the county rolls. Only 33.5% of them voted. However, the results are interesting.

For decades, Central Street has been home to ice cream,  fitting for a town that claims to have invented the sundae. Hartigan's at 2909 Central, a must-stop at least once a summer for every youth sports family, has been dishing it out since 1996, and old-timers will remember when it was a Baskin-Robbins before that.

“In 2023, about 77,800 residents lived in Evanston, which is nearly 5% more than the population in 2000 … [and a] growth rate of 0.35% annually [from 2010 to 2023], with a projected population of about 84,175 by 2045.”
    City of Evanston, “Envision Evanston 2045” (Nov. 2024 draft), at 16

“Evanston’s total population decreased slightly between 2000 and 2020 (-2%) and the number of households decreased by 5%.”
    City of Evanston, “Draft FY 2025-2029 Consolidated Plan and 2025 Action Plan” (Nov. 2024) at 81

Is Evanston growing so fast that it needs to build a lot more buildings to accommodate a projected additional 8,400 residents in the next 20 years,¹ growth of more than 10%? This was a core tenet of the Envision Evanston 2045 process and the upzoning agenda that's been driving it for over a year, even before its launch. But for several reasons, this assumption was always so broken that just by itself it warranted a reset of the entire planning process. The good news?

While focus in ongoing "Envision Evanston 2045"  debate has been on the proposed upzoning of current lower-height residential districts (R1, R2, and R3), eliminating all single-family, 2-flat, or 3-flat zoning to allow 3-story, 4-unit buildings as of right everywhere, all business districts are also quietly targeted for dramatic upzoning to turn our streets into "corridors." What would this look like?

Documents coming to light through FOIA plus comments by staff show that the “Envision Evanston 2045” planning process has been steered since the bidding phase towards a “Minneapolis model” of rezoning. Proponents claim that Minneapolis has shown that upzoning and increased population density will lower housing costs. Is that true? Research suggests “not really.”

What Did Minneapolis Do?
Minneapolis lowered parking requirements and then, in 2019, eliminated single-family zoning districts, along with other upzoning, ostensibly to increase affordability through more supply. Tens of thousands of units were built, mostly through larger developments. Minneapolis’s upzoning has been called “far and away the largest densification project ever attempted in all of North America.”¹ So its recurrence in City of Evanston communications, going back to before any public meeting, is no accident, but amounts to an explicit call for upzoning and density. This is significant, evidencing that a predetermined desired zoning change has shaped the Plan, rather than the normal. logical, and fair sequence of letting community-driven planning first occur.

The purpose of this writing, however, is not to dwell, for the moment, on the procedural implications of that, concerning as they are. The purpose here is to take a deeper dive into the assertion that Minneapolis's experiment "worked" and provides a template that Evanston can readily adopt with similar results. Is that so?