Nearly three years after Evanston approved the sale of a long-vacant city-owned lot on the 1800 block of Church Street, shovels hit the dirt Monday, breaking ground on a 33-unit affordable housing complex in the city’s 5th Ward.
The project is a partnership between nonprofit Housing Opportunity Development Corporation, which acquired the vacant lot at the corner of Church Street and Darrow Avenue from the City of Evanston in 2023, and Mt. Pisgah Ministry, a small church in Evanston’s 5th Ward that owns a majority of the land for the proposed development.
HODC and Mt. Pisgah plan to work together to construct two new buildings on the combined site: a mixed-use retail and residential building with 33 affordable apartment units and a new church for Mt. Pisgah at 1805-1815 Church Street. Their hope is that it will revitalize the area, according to HODC’s website.
According to HODC, Mt. Pisgah and the nonprofit developer will partner “on all aspects of the development as one overall project,” but each building will be “owned and financed separately.”
Mt. Pisgah will contribute the land it currently owns for the new housing development in exchange for the vacant corner lot managed by HODC, where the new church is slated to be built.
“With the land swap, we’re contributing to the community,” Pastor Clifford Wilson of Mt. Pisgah Ministry told the Pioneer Press.
“We’re working and contributing to the community, and I hope that the community sees it as such, because sometimes churches get a bad reputation of always taking and never giving, but there was no money exchanged.”
Wilson said he hopes neighbors of the site will view the development as an asset rather than a liability to the 5th Ward.
Richard Koenig, executive director of HODC, said the organization first got involved with the site in 2003, when late former Ald. Delores Holmes, 5th, envisioned subsidized housing for local families in place of the empty lot, which has remained vacant for decades.
“While that earlier effort did not move forward, the City of Evanston later acquired the lots and issued a request for proposals in early 2020,” Koenig told the Pioneer Press.
“HODC is excited to partner with Mt. Pisgah Ministries to help bring that long-standing vision to life. This project has always been about creating quality, affordable homes for families and strengthening the surrounding community.”
The four-story complex will include 12 one-bedroom, 10 two-bedroom and 11 three-bedroom affordable units for households earning below 60% of the area median income, according to HODC’s proposed site plan.
Koenig said rents will average to about $800 per month for a one-bedroom unit, $950 for a two-bedroom and about $1,1000 for a three-bedroom unit.
The proposal expresses a possibility that Evanston residents will be given priority in renting an apartment in the complex, but this would require further approval from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, as federal law prohibits “discriminatory” housing practices that preference any group over another.
Additional street-level shopping is also included in the mixed-use development plan.
Mt. Pisgah’s new church will be a three-story building on the corner of Church Street and Darrow. The building plan includes a 200-person worship space, a separate fellowship space, meeting rooms and additional offices.
The church will use the space as its primary worship center for weekly gatherings and annual conventions.
But the project hasn’t come without its fair share of resistance.
Among the exhaustive list of complaints from nearby homeowners, neighboring residents have voiced concerns over a potential increase in traffic in the area, a lack of available parking and the disproportionate number of affordable housing units being built in the 5th Ward compared to other areas of the city, per previous reporting.
Crosby Theodore, LLC, a property owner located next door to the proposed site, sued the City of Evanston in 2023 over their decision to sell the vacant lot to HODC, according to documents.
Attorneys for Crosby Theodore argued the site would pose “imminent and irreparable harm upon demolition,” given that the owners maintained a nearby 100-year-old historic property that they said would be at risk for structural damage.
Evanston settled the suit last August with a $158,000 payment to the plaintiff, effectively reinstating land agreements for a future build in 2026.
Wilson told Pioneer Press a local Evanston bank has agreed to provide the funds needed for construction of the new church, but declined to identify the financier as the deal “is not done yet.”
“We have the architect, we have the attorneys and everything is proceeding according to plan,” Wilson said.
The timeline for construction on the church building has not yet been set, he added.
Koenig said construction on the Mt. Pisgah Apartments will begin as early as July, and families can expect to move in during the summer of 2027.
