Evanston recently applied for a $2.5 million federal grant to help build a west side development dubbed Emerson Square.

Bounded by Emerson Street and Foster Street, the nearly five-acre parcel sits on a vacant industrial site and auto dealer parking lot that city officials say acts as a physical barrier, severing the neighborhood and making pedestrian travel difficult.The money would be used to create about 67 units of affordable housing, from town homes and condos to single family homes, both for rent and to own.

Emerson Square would also see a new central park to replace Gilbert Park, which city officials have said is home to “significant criminal activity due to its poor layout and design.”

Emerson Square is the centerpiece of the city’s West Evanston Master Plan, approved in 2007. Early this year, the city received about $18 million in U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Neighborhood Stabilization Program 2 funds to purchase foreclosed and abandoned properties on the city’s south and west sides.Because funds awarded in that grant were lower than what was sought, city officials had planned to develop Emerson Square in two phases, turning to other sources such as Low Income Housing Tax Credits, tax increment financing, and private funding.

But if the city gets the $2.5 million from HUD’s Sustainable Community Challenge Planning Grant program, officials claim the work could be done in one phase, shaving two years and nearly $1.9 million from the project.

“It will help us do some of the kinds of things we’ve been talking about doing for many years,” said 5th Ward Ald. Delores Holmes, whose ward includes the Emerson Square site. …More