The CTA Purple Line's Main Street station, beside the area where the announcement was made. Photo: Mudwater / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Gov. Pat Quinn came to Evanston on Jan. 18, 2013, to announce $1 million in state money meant to bring gigabit Internet service to Northwestern University and the surrounding start-up community. The grant came from the Illinois Gigabit Communities Challenge, a competition under the state’s Illinois Jobs Now! program that set aside up to $4 million in prizes for ultra-high-speed broadband projects.
Evanston and Northwestern were one of three winners, chosen from more than 40 applicants. A gigabit is one billion bits per second, many times the speed of a typical broadband connection at the time.
What the money was for
The city and the university had submitted a joint $2.5 million proposal in 2012, so the state grant covered a portion of the total. The plan called for running fiber from downtown Chicago to Northwestern and then extending it to more than 400 access points. Those included research labs, instruments, servers and the university’s high-performance data center, along with sites in what organizers called an innovation corridor: the campus, the area around Chicago Avenue and Main Street, the downtown Technology Innovation Center, and the Evanston Research Park at 1840 Oak Ave. Other partners named in the proposal included coLab Evanston, Urban Communications and the Illinois Century Network.
The idea was to connect researchers, start-ups and investors. Supporters said Evanston had more than 160 technology start-ups spread around town with little shared infrastructure, and that faster connections could help growing companies stay in Illinois. Ald. Melissa Wynne of the 3rd Ward, who spoke at the announcement, called the award a catalyst for a public, private and nonprofit partnership.
A setting beside the Main Street stations
Quinn made the announcement at the Chicago Main branch of the Evanston Public Library. Next door is coLab Evanston, a coworking space. Across the street was the site of a proposed 175,000-square-foot building by developer John O’Donnell, with about 48,000 square feet of office space, 15,000 of retail and an 18,000-square-foot health club.
The location sits next to the Main Street CTA and Metra stations, which the governor noted are one of only five co-located transit stations in Illinois. After the announcement, coLab co-founder Eric Harper led him on a tour, where he met entrepreneurs from CoilSprings, Tall Green Tree, Global English, Esskay, Japanese 39 and BigTech. Northwestern President Morton Schapiro was also among the speakers.
Quinn also proclaimed the day Northwestern Football Day, honoring the Wildcats’ Gator Bowl victory, the school’s first bowl win since 1949.
The project did not go ahead as announced. The Daily Northwestern reported in April 2015 that Gov. Bruce Rauner had terminated the grant.
Daniel Okafor covers business, startups and the Innovators section for The Evanston Edge.
