What Should Move into Evanston Plaza?

The new owners of Evanston Plaza are eager to fill the mall's empty storefronts.

In this introductory piece in our new "Empty in Evanston" series, we ask you what you'd like to see go into the 25,000- and 35,000-square-foot spaces. The largest current tenant in the west side mall is .

Last month, the new owners, Bonnie Investment Group LLC, Evanston West Village Business Association, Ald. Peter Braithwaite (2nd Ward) and City of Evanston employees . We are listing some of the ideas from that meeting in our poll below. Vote for your favorite and then elaborate on your answer in our comments section. We're hoping for a lively dialogue about what you want to see.

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Evanston Plaza's previous tenants included Toys-R-Us, Frank’s Nursery, Pizza Hut, Fretters and Phar-Mor, but as some of these national chains went bankrupt and others reduced in size, business dried up. Since then, a number of large businesses have come and gone, including when the brand was consolidated.

The plaza’s most recent owner, Joseph Freed & Associates LLC, lost the property after it used the shopping center as cross-collateral to finance a failed downtown Chicago real estate project. It with .

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