Evanston invests in Howard Street
Police cite effort in reducing crime
Earlier this year, a Northwestern University student died after a stray bullet hit him over Labor Day weekend near the Howard Street Red Line station on the Chicago side of Howard Street, which serves as the north-south diving line between the city and Evanston.
Later in September, three men were shot with an AK-47 rifle in an Evanston neighborhood just off Howard Street. Then in November, another man was shot and killed on the Chicago side of Howard.
And in 2017, a Chicago resident who’d moved recently from France was shot and killed near the intersection of Clark and Howard, this time on the Evanston side of the street. Evanston Police Chief Richard Eddington said the September shootings in south Evanston near Howard Street left the community on edge.
Those events, especially the shooting of Northwestern student Shane Colombo on Sept. 2, “have, rightfully so, caused huge concern,” Eddington said.
Eddington said at the time that he hoped the “convulsion of violence” was a short-lived increase in what has been a downward trend in criminal activity over the past decade on Howard Street. He said last month that the violence decreased after one of the men police believe was involved in the AK-47 shooting was himself shot and killed in October.
The dividing line between Chicago to the south and Evanston to the north, Howard Street was once considered a hub for criminal activity. But Eddington said the efforts to curb crime on Howard in recent decades, including $6.5 million spent since 2010 to attract and maintain businesses on the Evanston side of the street, have helped curb the violence.
Evanston’s efforts to stop violence and boost business, Eddington said, helped bring down the number of serious “Part 1” crimes — which include murder, assault and theft — from 3,100 in 2007 to 1,900 in 2017. Since 2010, the city has spent $6.5 million to help attract and maintain businesses on the north side of the street, according to city records.
“High-profile calls, those have been reduced,” Eddington said.
While Evanston reports aren’t available to break down the specific areas in town where crimes were committed over the past decade, Eddington said that, anecdotally, he’s seen it drop all over the city. That includes Howard Street.
Eddington blamed Cook County’s legal system for some of this year’s gun crimes, saying violent criminals can get back on the streets too quickly after an arrest.
“The underlying issue is we’re located in Cook County,” Eddington said. “Are we really taking gun crimes seriously?”
While he said the shooter over Labor Day weekend was likely a Chicago resident, two other recent shootings were likely committed by Evanstonians, including the rifle shooting. In other words, he agreed, the problem is not just a big-city issue spilling over. It’s also homegrown.
Howard Street is “not the great wall of Evanston,” Eddington said.
Efforts to stem Howard Street’s crime rate stretch back decades.
In Evanston, the street sits in Ald. Ann Rainey’s 8th Ward, and she tells stories about taking slumlords to court on behalf of Howard Street tenants. She recalled a judge who once ordered a Howard Street landlord to never manage apartments again. In her more than 30 years on the Evanston City Council, she said, she has advocated for more businesses, better living conditions and lower crime.
“It had to do with finally getting more people on the street,” Rainey said. When she took office, “there were never any people on Howard Street except trouble.”
Now, driving down Howard on a sunny weekday morning, young boys laugh and run up the block. Women walk and talk together. Others come and go from the nearby auto repair shops, bakeries, fast-food restaurants, beauty salons and supply stores that populate the stretch of Howard Street between Western/Asbury avenues and Clark Street/Chicago Avenue.
A look at the crime statistics for Howard Street shows that over the past five years, the only years for which a specific breakdown is available, crime has decreased only slightly on that stretch since 2012.
According to information received through a Freedom of Information Act request, police received 47 reports of retail theft in 2013, which jumped to 70 in 2014 before dropping to 57 last year. Retail theft is the most common crime reported on Howard Street in Evanston.
Police received 17 reports of theft of less than $500 in 2013, 18 in 2014, 17 in 2015, 21 in 2016 and 18 in 2017, according to department statistics.
Only one homicide, the 2017 shooting of Moroccan immigrant and former Paris resident Hamza Hammouis, was reported during the five-year period, according to police department data.
Part of that strategy to keep crime down, Rainey said, meant attracting businesses that would draw more eyes to the stretch of Howard between the CTA Red Line station near Clark Street/Chicago Avenue and Western Avenue/Asbury Avenue.
Much of that incentive has been financial.
In 2018, for example, $1.5 million was marked for Theo Ubique, a new cabaret theater that opened earlier this month. The owners of Cafe Coralie this year received $50,000 in loans and another $50,000 in assistance from the HowardRidge tax increment financing district. Hip Circle Empowerment Center, a nonprofit dance and fitness center for women and girls, received more than $40,000 in tax increment financing assistance and a nearly $25,000 loan.
At least nine new storefronts planned to open on Howard Street in 2018. Among those are Good to Go Jamaican Cuisine and Catering, which served Jamaican food on the Chicago side of Howard for 16 years. That business moved across the street into a remodeled building the owners bought in Evanston in 2017.
“Howard Street is becoming more walkable,” said Lenice Levy, who owns Good to Go with her husband, Tony Levy.
Meanwhile the owners of Peckish Pig, a restaurant and brewery that opened on Howard in 2014, purchased their building from the city of Evanston this year. Debbie Evans, who owns the restaurant, said she hopes to expand and open an event space.
Her friends now tell her, “Oh my God, I cannot believe how successful it turned out,” Evans said.
Eddington said he considered the strategy to bring more businesses and customers to Howard Street a key part in reducing crime there.
“Are there recognizable caretakers in the neighborhood? Do people know there will be calls to the police if something is out of order?” Eddington said. When more people are walking down Howard Street, the answer is yes.
But not everyone shares Rainey’s pride, or her sentiment that Evanston should take chances on economic development.
Warren Pitts, who owns Evanston Quick Sign, said he moved his 60-year old business across Howard from Evanston to Chicago to make way for a new luxury apartment building across the street from the Howard Red Line station in 2008.
Pitts questioned whether things like a brewery and a new theater belong on Howard Street, surrounded by what has long been a largely black community that he said doesn’t typically take an interest in such things. He said the new businesses don’t attract nearby residents, and money could be better spent on services to help keep young people out of trouble.
“They’re spending too much money,” Pitts said, of Evanston city officials. “They have the wrong people making bad decisions.”
Levy, at Good to Go, had a different take.
“It’s our long-term dream to own the property” where the restaurant is now located, she said.
“The citizens that live in Ward 8 are very involved in Ward 8 being a great ward,” Levy said. A ward resident herself, “I really like being in an area where people really care.”