Though the Evanston City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to settle the federal lawsuit between Northwestern and the city, some aldermen say both parties need to re-evaluate their approaches for a productive city-university relationship to persist.

The settlement, which will be signed early next week by U.S. District Judge Marvin Aspen, includes a $700,000 university payment to the city in return for removing 14 NU properties from the Northeast Evanston Historic District. NU filed the lawsuit in November 2000 after City Council approved the historic district, which placed 56 university buildings under the city’s preservation laws.

University officials have said the district was an attempt to coax the university, which is exempt from paying property taxes, into contributing money to the city. City officials said the goal of the district was to protect single-family homes in the area from being demolished by NU.

But after more than three years of litigation and one previous attempt to settle the case, Ald. Gene Feldman (9th) said Evanston and NU need to understand each other’s motivations — and respect them.

Feldman said all parties must acknowledge that NU has “a need to grow,” but “they can’t grow at the expense of the best interests of the city.

“And the community has to understand that Northwestern needs to grow to be a first-class, world-class institution,” Feldman said. “We must find a way to meet both of those needs.”

The city took the case as far as it should have, Feldman said, adding that NU’s $700,000 contribution made the settlement more realistic for the city.

“The council went all the way to the end of this thing,” he said. “Even at the possibility of an appeal, we certainly wouldn’t have gotten the money. We would have ended up spending a great deal more.”

Alds. Arthur Newman (1st) and Melissa Wynne (3rd), along with Feldman, negotiated a proposed settlement with NU over the summer that did not include a university contribution. But after further review, both Newman and Feldman voted against the settlement they helped negotiate.

Although the $700,000 payment to the city was a “significant factor” in Newman’s decision to support the most recent settlement, Newman said he also sensed more support from the council than in August.

“The people who supported the historic district originally were in agreement that the settlement on the table was something that preserved (the district) for the most part,” Newman said.

In terms of far-reaching effects of the settlement, he said much of the future will be determined by the actions of NU administrators.

“I don’t really see much significance in the settlement of the lawsuit,” Newman said. “The lawsuit was more of a headache to the city than anything else.”

Ald. Steven Bernstein (4th), who also voted against the settlement proposal in August, said a compromise with the university was the most realistic option for the city in terms of a rebate for Evanston’s legal fees.

“As a lawyer, in my heart I feel if you get sued, you defend yourself,” he said. “This became kind of a bottom-line decision. There’s something to be said about closure.”

Bernstein also said that Aspen, the judge who presided over the suit, had advocated a settlement in the case early on. He said if the case were to go to trial March 1, Aspen would only allow testimony by affidavit. That meant no witnesses for either side would have been allowed to testify in court.

But now with the lawsuit behind them, both Bernstein and Newman said the city had no aim to extract money from the university through the historic district.

“Our interest in preservation was so clear and well-documented that there was no reason why Northwestern had any chance of winning the suit,” Newman said. “If the university felt so strongly that things were different, they wouldn’t have made such a huge huge effort to settle the case.”

Ald. Edmund Moran (6th) said he hopes the end of the lawsuit will mark the beginning of a new friendship between the city and NU — but he had his doubts.

“I’d love to feel that it’ll be a new day, ” he said. “I’m skeptical about it with the makeup of this council.”