By Bob Seidenberg

Members of the city’s Preservation Commission at their meeting earlier this month largely agreed that city designs for a protected two-way lane on Church Street west of Dodge Avenue and an expanded shared biking and pedestrian path along McCormick Boulevard pose no adverse effects to the two historic properties in the area — Evanston Township High School and the North Shore Channel.

Commission members didn’t take a formal vote at the meeting. But in responding to a question posed by commission member Carl Klein, who was serving as chair, they didn’t argue that the project would adversely impact that area of town.

During the discussion, however, one commissioner, Amanda Ziehm, voiced the lone dissenting view. She questioned officials about a proposed path along the east side of the channel between Dempster and Church streets, and particularly the need to cut through green space at the channel to run the path under Dempster Street.

“Right over on McCormick on the Skokie side, there’s a long path — it’s parallel to that one,” she pointed out, suggesting the McCormick option would make more sense. “I don’t know that there’s a huge demand for that piece.”

The city is working with the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) on the $4.5 million federally-funded project, which is still in the preliminary engineering and environmental studies phase.

IDOT identified two resources in the project area that are of potential historic significance — Evanston Township High School at Church and Dodge and the North Shore Channel and its associated landscape along McCormick. The Preservation Commission serves as IDOT’s designated party for determining if the project will have any potential adverse effects on those properties.

The improvements proposed in the project include the following:

• A protected two-way east-west bike lane to be built along the south side of Church Street between Dodge Avenue and the North Shore Channel. The lane would be built within the existing pavement limits, said Jim Woods, a representative from Civil Tech, the engineering firm retained by the city to do the engineering study for the project.
• A temporary easement built at the far east end of the improvement at the Church and Dodge intersection to allow for the re-grading of curb ramps to meet ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) standards.
• New crosswalks, ramps, lighting and curb extensions along Church Street. A new traffic signal will be installed at Church Street and Pitner Avenue.
• A top goal of the Church Street plan is to improve accessibility and safety for children walking or biking to and from school, Chris Sous, an assistant city engineer, told the commission.

A deep dive under Dempster Street

At the canal, officials are proposing construction of a shared-use path running north-south along the east side of the North Shore Channel between Dempster and Church streets. The project will close a gap in an existing bike trail network between Harbert-Payne Park and Beck Park, officials said.

The design calls for the path “to dive down and go under the street” at Dempster “along the east side of the embankment there,” Woods told commissioners. It will then “pop back up and come back along the top end of the embankment,” he said. Similar shared-use paths can found farther south at both Bryn Mawr Avenue and Foster Avenue in Chicago.

“And the reason for this is Dempster Street carries over 20,000 cars, and it’s not a desirable crossing right there,” he said. “So we have schools up here, different facilities, and this is really seen as a significant safety improvement.”

At the far north end, the path would run alongside the back driveway of the Joseph E. Hill Early Childhood Center at 1500 McDaniel Ave., with the fence there now moved farther to the west.

When the District 65 school board heard the plan as part of public engagement for the process, Woods related, officials there “really saw it as a way to improve accessibility and mobility for the users of their facilities, and especially safety down at that Dempster crossing.”

In discussion, Ziehm, who lives on Church Street and has a child who rides a bike in the area, asked about the commuter base that would use the proposed north-south trail. Woods replied that Strava Metro, a website that monitors bike use, has heat maps showing bikers frequently using that area.

Focus on the high school

On the Evanston side, “you can see people coming up from the south, and they pretty much hit Dempster and then they kind of disperse. Some go up McDaniel and kind of work their way through the neighborhoods,” he said.

“Some probably go further west, and by the time they get to the north side of Church Street, you can see that kind of thick line pick up again, showing a kind of gap in the system.”

Lara Biggs, Evanston’s lead city engineer, told commissioners that District 65 officials were excited about the benefits of the new trail for King Arts, the K-8 magnet school adjacent to JEH.

“But really,” she said, “what we’re trying to do is create a connection that is really helpful to the high school, where students are concerned. We’re really looking at: ‘How do children from around the city make their way to the high school?’ in order to better make that feasible.”

In addition, she said, “we’ve had a lot of concerns expressed from the Evanston Transit Alliance [a community group that advocates for improved bicycle, pedestrian and public transit connectivity]. They’ve really … wanted us to create these additional connections where we have gaps, this being one of them.”

Regarding the high school, Ziehm suggested a bigger priority for her would be the existing bike lane along Dodge Avenue, which is not protected.

“It’s super busy on that road, [and] for me personally, if I were to build something — and I am a big proponent of bike lanes — that is where I would put it,” she said.

As for King Arts, if a solution is being planned around that school, “for those not familiar with the district, they’re closing a lot of schools in the next year,’’ she told Woods. “They haven’t announced which ones, but I wouldn’t necessarily put all your weight on that school.”

Channel not just ‘a pretty piece of landscape’

“I love what is happening on Church,” Ziehm said of the east-west protected bicycle path planned for there. “Having a protected two-way lane is awesome. I would actually love to see that two-way lane even extended from Church all the way into downtown, because if you watch people, kids travel both ways on that.”

Commissioner Matthew Johnson, meanwhile, expressed hope that officials would use the proposed changes for the north-south trail to highlight the channel’s importance as “one of the engineering marvels of the 1800s.”

He said it would be really great if the channel path project’s significance could be expanded, perhaps through information boards and/or views from the bike lane down to the channel, “so that people riding their bikes or walking up and down that space understand they’re not just looking at a pretty piece of landscape.” Rather, “they’re looking at something really important in Chicago history.”

Commissioner Carl Klein also noted that there are several mature trees close to District 65’s headquarters at JEH. He wondered if construction fencing will be used in that area to protect them if the north-south trail moves forward.

Klein also noted that the temporary easement officials are talking about creating at the Church and Dodge intersection for the protected bike lane project is a huge “pinch point” around school start and end times.

If construction is to take place there, he said, there should be some kind of impact study or measures put in place so students can safely cross the street while crews work on the bike path.