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Evanston staff outlines parks CIP priorities; council seeks clarity on Twiggs Park funding
Summary
City Engineer Laura Biggs outlined the three-lane approach in Evanston’s parks CIP — renovating long-neglected “legacy” parks, funding modernization to prevent failures in other parks, and investing in new amenities — and said staff will allocate modernization funds within the budget approved by council.
City Engineer Laura Biggs told the City of Evanston’s Administration and Public Works Committee that the parks capital improvement program (CIP) for 2025 groups projects into three categories: full renovations of “legacy” parks that have not had substantial investments since 1998; ongoing modernization funds to fix amenities in non-legacy parks to prevent future failures; and funding for new amenities to meet changing community needs.
Biggs said staff had identified 11 legacy parks and that Larimer and Independence parks have been completed and remain in final punch-list work. She said the city is starting work this year on Cartwright, Chandler, Filbrick and Fitzsimmons parks and hopes to address the remaining legacy parks over the next five years. For non-legacy parks, Biggs said staff sets aside a stable annual pool of funding to repair individual failing amenities before an entire park requires a full renovation.
Council members pressed staff for whether the committee or full council needed to take a separate vote to authorize staff to allocate the modernization funds. Council Member Burns asked whether council must “confirm staff’s conclusion and recommendation.” Biggs said that council had already approved the overall budget and specific allocations for each legacy park; she and other staff described the modernization pool as an existing practice similar to other contingency or programmatic buckets (for example, facilities contingency or neighborhood traffic calming).
Council Member (unnamed in the record) raised Twiggs Park as an example where constituents questioned whether CIP funds would be used; council members said they supported the Twiggs scope and wanted assurance the project would not be shortchanged. Biggs and staff noted Twiggs required playground equipment replacement and pathway repairs; she said some CDBG funds were used but were insufficient to cover full replacement and that staff combined pathway and playground work for efficiency.
Biggs supplied recent project cost figures to illustrate increasing construction costs: Harvard Park construction cost about $858,000 in 2020; the nearly completed Larimer and Independence projects had a combined construction contract of roughly $3.4 million, with Larimer representing about $1,460,000 and Independence about $2,022,000. For Twiggs Park specifically, staff estimated a project cost “around it's 900 to a million,” and said pricing has risen sharply since the pandemic.
City legal/administrative staff (referred to in the meeting as Ms. Raghi) told the committee no additional council action was required at that time to allow staff to proceed within the approved budget. Committee members agreed they did not need to move the discussion to full council unless there was a specific item for council to vote on.
No formal vote was taken on the parks CIP at this meeting. The committee approved other items on the consent agenda and adjourned.
