New Office Building Planned For Vacant Lot In 2nd Ward

EVANSTON, IL — Plans for a two-story office building on a long-vacant lot on Hartrey Avenue are due to be reviewed Wednesday by Evanston's Design and Project Review Committee.

Developer Andy Spatz has requested a building permit for a three-unit building at 1310 Hartrey Ave., immediately north of the car wash at the corner of Hartrey and Dempster Street.

The office and car wash parcels are zoned for commercial use, with areas to their east zoned for industrial use and the north and west both residential.

Spatz bought the property for $65,000 in April 2014 after determining it was a good location and a good price.

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Berry/Spatz Architects, his design firm, began work drawing up plans for the office building shortly after last year's completion of a duplex design at 2122 Dewey Ave., located across the street from the Stamp Factory, a 19-unit live-work rental development finished in 2007.

Spatz's firm has completed about 20 buildings around Evanston over the past three decades — both ground-up construction and award-winning adaptive re-use — with many featuring distinctive angular exposed metal structures, standing steam metal and green building techniques.

"We build super-insulated buildings," Spatz said. While the firm's designs uses high-efficiency mechanical equipment, they rely on passive, rather than active, energy-saving technologies that allow for an affordable price point. "We put that money into insulation, which has virtually no maintenance to it."

Notable local projects include the Christ Temple Missionary Baptist Church at 1711 Simpson Ave., the downtown live-work space at 604 Davis St., and the two metal houses in the 1200 block of Main Street, the eldest of which Spatz built for his own family in the mid-1980s as his first Evanston project.

The Hartrey Avenue site had been the office of Dr. Warren Frank Spencer, one of the first Black graduates of Northwestern University's medical school, a co-founder of Community Hospital and civil rights activist who died in 1987. His wife, Mayme Spencer, was the first Black woman to be elected alderman in Evanston. Dr. Spencer's offices were demolished more than a decade ago.

Plans for the design were presented last month at a 2nd Ward meeting. Ald. Peter Braithwaite did not respond Monday to an inquiry regarding neighborhood feedback about the project.

Units in the front and back will be about 1,500 square feet, spread across both floors, while a middle unit will include about 800 square feet on the ground floor and a 265-square-foot mezzanine.

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The project requires only minor variations, Spatz said, with its front overhang protruding into the front yard by only about 2.5 feet, and a 6-foot-tall wall extending into the front yard on its south side.

Once city staff sign off on a building permit, Spatz said it the project will take about a year to complete.

"We just turn the crank and we start," Spatz said. "We have to finish up the permitting process and then we start, assuming the world doesn't come to an end between now and then."