The Evanston Land Use Commission voted to forward the city’s draft comprehensive plan to City Council at a public hearing on May 21, 2025, after a night of deliberations and multiple edits to the text. The commission’s recommendation was approved by roll call, 7–1, sending the draft — with the changes agreed at the meeting — to the council for final consideration.

Why it matters: The comprehensive plan is a 20-year guiding document that will shape zoning discussions, capital priorities and housing strategy. The Land Use Commission’s recommendation packages the commission’s edits and conditions for council review; the council can accept, modify, or reject the plan.

The commission opened the hearing by noting that public testimony had closed on April 4 and that the meeting was a deliberation to finalize the commission’s recommendations to council. City staff described a handful of “very minor edits” made to the packet, including correcting a date for the preservation commission and updating a summary in the housing chapter. “These were very minor edits, just some copy paste problems,” neighborhood and land use planner Megan Jones told commissioners.

Major edits and votes
- Housing wording: Commissioners debated how the plan should phrase housing goals. A previously discussed compromise phrase — “preserve and increase Evanston’s diverse housing choices” — was central to deliberations. While the commission adopted some consistency edits during the meeting, commissioners declined at that time to replace every instance of language that referred to “increasing the housing supply,” leaving some chapter headings and paragraphs that discuss supply unchanged. The commission did pass narrower, specific language changes elsewhere in the draft.
- Data/context language: The commission approved adding a short paragraph before the demographic section clarifying sources and directing readers to the U.S. Census Bureau for details about possible undercounts. A motion to add the suggested paragraph passed by voice vote.
- Preservation commission and copy corrections: Staff changed the preservation commission start year from 1978 to 1975 and agreed to spell out “Evanston Cradle to Career (EC2C)” when first referenced.
- Perception wording: Commissioners voted to replace an item in a “housing satisfaction” box to read, “white respondents less positive about integration of new development into neighborhoods,” to clarify that the original language referred to design and compatibility of new development, not racial integration.
- Museums and cultural amenities: The commission voted to change a policy bullet to read “recognize cultural amenities: support Evanston’s museum community,” removing the phrase “and grow.”
- Schools language: Commissioners added language clarifying that a student-centered decision-making statement applies to District 65 and District 202 K–12 institutions.
- Lead service lines and infrastructure: The commission added a sentence stating that replacement of existing lead service lines has been mandated by the state of Illinois and “will be an ongoing effort for years to come,” and approved that text.
- Future land use / industrial label: Commissioners amended the “creation and innovation” label to “creation, innovation, and enterprise” to broaden the land-use category’s framing.
- Open-space clarification: The commission added a sentence explaining why Calvary Cemetery is shown as open space on the future land use map — because it “provides semi-public green space that is unlikely to be redeveloped.”

What the commission did not do
- The meeting did not adopt wholesale rewrites of chapter-level framing beyond the targeted edits described above. Commissioners repeatedly said they did not intend to “relitigate” votes already taken at earlier meetings and limited tonight’s changes to specific language motions and corrections.

Public comment and community reaction
Commissioners heard a mix of public testimony before the vote. Several residents urged greater protections for longtime and low-income residents and criticized the planning process: “I stand here this evening in opposition for this committee to forward this envision Evanston 24/45 proposal to the city council,” said Carlos Sutton, a Fifth Ward resident, who told commissioners he believed the plan risked gentrification and had insufficient outreach to some residents. Other commenters urged the commission not to adopt broad upzoning without clearer affordability mechanisms.

Not all public comment opposed the plan. Connections for the Homeless Executive Director Sue Lobach told the commission she appreciated the work and said the draft made progress on affordability: “Overall, I feel like the set of recommendations in the plan is pretty solid.” Several other speakers thanked commissioners and staff for their work and urged careful follow-through as the plan goes to council.

Next steps and limits of authority
The commission formally closed its public hearing on the comprehensive plan after the vote. The recommendation now goes to the City Council, which has the final authority to adopt a comprehensive plan and to determine subsequent zoning or regulatory changes. Commissioners and staff explicitly noted that some items — such as map refinements, final appendices and data tables — will need additional staff work before the council takes final action.

Ending note: The commission’s recommendation packages the text edits and the record of deliberations for City Council; it does not itself change zoning. The council could accept the draft as transmitted, request further edits, or modify policy language and maps in its own deliberations.