Erie Family Health Center in Evanston. Photo: Nick Number / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
The City of Evanston invited the people who run the city’s health and wellness businesses to a morning roundtable on Friday, April 12, 2013, with a straightforward topic: how those businesses could work together to make Evanston a model community for healthy living.
The session ran from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. in the Parasol Room on the fourth floor of the Lorraine H. Morton Civic Center, 2100 Ridge Ave. Registration opened at 9 a.m. The city coordinated the event.
Who was invited
The invitation went to business owners and employees at any Evanston establishment serving residents’ health and wellness needs. That covers a broad group, from medical practices to fitness studios. Members of the medical, fitness and wellness fields, local experts and government officials were all to take part in the discussion.
Roundtables like this one are a common tool in municipal economic development. They put competitors and complementary businesses in the same room, and they give officials a chance to hear from owners directly.
The venue
The Civic Center is Evanston’s municipal headquarters. It occupies the former Marywood Academy building on Ridge Avenue and is named for Lorraine H. Morton, a longtime Evanston mayor. Its meeting rooms are regularly used for public and business gatherings.
Evanston is home to major hospitals and clinics and sits beside Northwestern University, so a conversation about how the private health and fitness sector could cooperate had plenty of potential participants close at hand.
What a roundtable can do
The stated goal was collaboration. Businesses in the same field often serve the same residents without coordinating, and a roundtable is a low-cost way to find overlap, such as shared referrals, joint events or programs aimed at residents who are not yet customers of any of them.
It also gives the city something in return. Officials who attend can hear what owners say about licensing, parking, signage or zoning, and can see which concerns come up repeatedly.
The event was open to anyone in the field, from the owner of a single studio to employees of larger practices, and it was held on a weekday morning, when many service businesses are not at their busiest.
Daniel Okafor covers business, startups and the Innovators section for The Evanston Edge.
