Although administrators say a lack of usable land spurred the project to fill one-fifth of the Lagoon, the university owns an acre of land just blocks from campus with some potential for development.
Northwestern received an acre of land in 1998 south of Emerson Street and west of Maple Avenue in exchange for several acres that it gave Evanston, which the city eventually used to build the Church Street Plaza, Vice President for Business and Finance Eugene Sunshine said.
The land, which became parking for the NU/Evanston Research Park, still can be developed, Sunshine said, but its distance from campus would make construction of academic buildings more difficult.
“While it’s valuable to us, it has many more limits than the land on the Lagoon would,” Sunshine said. “Even if it were in the mainstream of the university, one acre of land doesn’t give (us) a great deal of landbanking capacity.”
Plans for the Lagoon’s four filled-in acres call for 240 parking spots and at least four buildings.
NU probably will build on the Research Park’s acre of parking space in the future, Sunshine said, declining to speculate on the types of buildings. But he said that open spaces Deering Meadow and Long Field will remain untouched.
“There’s some opposition to building a few acres on the Lagoon – can you imagine the opposition to building on Deering Meadow, which is one of the prime open spaces historically on campus?” Sunshine said. “Nor would we build on Long Field. It’s too important for (its) recreational purposes.”
The deal with Evanston also included a rezoned acre of land near the Englehart Graduate Hall. Administrators eventually plan to construct a parking garage but currently cannot afford to lose spaces because of the surplus of construction on campus, Sunshine said.
The Research Park in general has had potential for development but the space is now mostly filled, although not with academic research as originally intended.
In 1984, NU and Evanston each put seven acres toward the park, aiming to attract businesses to Evanston and academic researchers to NU, said Ron Kysiak, director of the Research Park.
The park initially attracted companies such as Arthur Andersen as well as several researchers, including artificial intelligence specialist Prof. Roger Schank from Yale University.
The Park progressed smoothly until 1992, but progress “ran into a stone wall” when the real estate market collapsed that year and several key organizations pulled out of the project, Kysiak said.
The corporation NU/Evanston Research Park, Inc., initially formed to develop the 22 acres, now consists of just Kysiak and will probably close by the end of the year, he said.
“There’s no purpose in having the corporation anymore,” he said. “It’s job was to develop 22 acres of land – it’s done that.”
