Politics & Government

Evanston Children's Choir Faces Eviction From Noyes

The Evanston Children's Choir will lose its space in the city-owned Noyes Cultural Arts Center if the aldermen approve plans for a $2.2 million expansion of Piven Theater.

The Evanston Children’s Choir may lose the space it has rented at Noyes Cultural Arts Center for the past four years if the city council approves a $2.2 million expansion of Piven Theatre

Piven is one of several arts organizations that lease space at the city-owned Noyes Cultural Arts Center. Now, Piven hopes to expand its footprint within the building—but doing so appears to means some tenants will be kicked out. The 40-year-old organization puts on professional theatre productions and offers acting classes for children and adults, and the proposed expansion would give it more space for classes and staged productions. 

City officials, tenants and Piven Theater have gone back and forth over plans for the theater’s proposed expansion for months. The most recent plans, which will be presented to the human services committee May 6, would leave no space for the Evanston Children’s Choir.

Find out what's happening in Evanstonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

“I am stunned that we are the ones singled out to leave,” said director and founder Gary Geiger.

If city council members approve the current proposal, Piven Theatre would enter into a 25-year lease to the city, which would loan the theater $2.2 million to construct improvements to the building. In order for the loan to go through, Piven must raise $355,000 by the end of the year, according to the proposal, and commit to in-kind contributions such as legal and architectural work. The theater would repay the loan over a 30-year term at simple two percent interest.

Find out what's happening in Evanstonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

As outlined in a floor plan on the city website, the Piven Theatre expansion would mean several of the tenants inside the building must move to new locations within Noyes Cultural Arts Center. According to the proposed floor plan, there will be no room for the Evanston Children’s Choir or for a figure drawing class. The figure drawing class, however, will probably share space with another tenant, according to Maggie Weiss, president of the Noyes Tenant’s Association.

City manager Wally Bobkiewicz says this floor plan is one that city staff and Piven Theater representatives have agreed to move forward with as a final footprint for city council consideration. The lease proposal and floor plan will first be voted on by the human services committee, which then makes a recommendation to city council. 

“It was my decision to recommend that the children’s choir should be relocated,” Bobkiewicz said. “Largely because of the criteria of a number of longstanding tenants, and the children’s choir has been a more recent tenant.” 

Bobkiewicz noted that some of the arts organizations renting space in Noyes Cultural Arts Center have been there since 1980, and Geiger confirmed that the children’s choir is the most recent tenant. 

Still, Geiger says, the loss of his lease would be a major blow to the choir, which won the Mayor’s Award for the Arts in 2011. Like the other arts organizations at Noyes, the children’s choir leases space at a subsidized rate from the city. Rent is $1,200 a month for 950 square feet, and he said the rate “could easily double” if he had to move to another location. 

“We operate on a shoestring,” Geiger said. “I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

There are roughly 100 families whose children participate in the choir, according to Geiger, and he estimates they perform before at least 2,000 people every year. 

“We feel we deserve to be in the city’s premiere arts center,” he said. “I feel it’s our home. It’s where we belong.”

Maggie Weiss, president of the Noyes Tenant Association, said most tenants felt that there should be some way to compromise with Piven on an expansion that doesn’t force people out.

She suggested Piven Theatre could expand into the attic or basement space, or shrink its footprint. Bobkiewicz, however, said that there was not enough useable space in the attic, and the basement is currently occupied by industrial artists like potters and metalworkers, whose work creates debris and does not coexist well with a theater.

While Weiss will not lose her space in the building due to the Piven expansion, she said the reorganization would probably force her out. She is a textile artist who works in a second floor studio, but the new floor plans call for her studio to move to the basement.

“This could be interpreted as an invitation for me to leave the building,” she said.

Weiss worked out of a basement studio at Noyes for three years before moving to a second floor studio, where she has worked for the past five years. The basement is not a feasible location for a textile artist because it is damp and lacks ventilation, she explained. When she dyed or painted fabric, it doesn’t dry well, and the moisture would also cause the fiber molecules to degrade. 

“We think there’s room to accommodate people, but Piven has been inflexible and the city has not demanded any changes from Piven,” she said. “I would think it’s fair to say that there’s a lot of support for Piven here, but the way this decision-making process has proceeded has left people flabbergasted and dismayed.”

Bobkiewicz said the proposed changes at Noyes were part of a push to make the center more vibrant and active year-round. 

“For people to come from outside the community to participate in an arts class, that’s a driver of all this and has been a driver for our initial discussions with the Piven Theater Workshop for the last couple of years,” he said, noting Noyes Cultural Arts Center’s location next to the CTA station. 

“It’s about the arts being an economic development engine for the community.” 

The human services committee will discuss the proposal at 7:30 p.m. Monday, May 6, during a public meeting at the Civic Center, 2100 Ridge Ave. in Evanston.  


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here