Criticizing a proposal in a draft on campus planning issued last week, the president of Garrett-Evangelical Thelogical Seminary said Monday that the seminary is uninterested in changing the terms governing its use of NU’s land.
Garrett — a separate institute from NU — has a 100-year lease with the university that guarantees its use of NU land to 2037, and potentially another 100 years after that, said Ted Campbell, the seminary’s president. There is no desire to renegotiate the lease or relinquish its hold on NU-owned property, Campbell said. “We’re celebrating our sesquicentennial this year,” Campbell said. “At this point we have a very long-term lease at a very desirable location, and we have very little desire to leave that.”
The University Space Planning Report issued Thursday, mentioned renegotiating the land deal as a way of capturing more space for NU.
An advisory committee of faculty, staff and students released the report in draft form seeking to overhaul campus planning and appearance. Civil and Environmental Engineering Prof. Charles Dowding, the committee’s chairman, said the purpose of releasing an early report is to solicit reactions from the university community to the report’s ideas for campus planning.
One of the biggest priorities is finding ways to maximize the use of campus land. Also included among the draft’s suggestions is phasing out Garrett’s parking lot, reclaiming NU-owned land used by the Roycemore School and renegotiating a lease agreement with Seabury-Western Theological Seminary.
The draft suggests tearing out the Garrett lot, built in 2003, along with the Allen Center lot in order to ease conflict between pedestrians along Sheridan Road and the cars leaving the lots.
Campbell called the intersection between the Garrett lot and Sheridan Road a “dreadful, dreadful intersection,” but said that scrapping the lot would force Garrett’s staff and faculty to park farther away — an alternative that would raise a lot of questions, he said.
“I guess the question would be: ‘Where the heck would our faculty park?'” Campbell said.
University parking is an issue of growing importance, Dowding said. One of the few reactions that Dowding has received to date concerned “parking philosophy,” he said.
“There are many options that are available for parking,” Dowding said, including making better use of parking facilities at Ryan Field and in Evanston.
The report also suggested that NU reclaim land leased to the Roycemore School, a K-12 college preparatory school that, like Garrett, resides on NU property.
The university will likely take up the report’s suggestion in this case, according to Eugene Sunshine, NU’s vice president for business and finance. Once Roycemore’s lease expires in 2014, NU will follow through with a decision made several years ago not to renew Roycemore’s lease, forcing the school to relocate elsewhere, Sunshine said.
“There is not an intention to renew that lease,” he said.
Roycemore has hired a consultant to scout for a new location for the school once its lease runs out, said Joseph Becker, the Roycemore’s headmaster. Two new spots have already been considered, he said.
“We have looked at an number of options that have come our attention so far,” Becker said. “None of them prove to be the sort of thing that we’re looking for.”
The report also suggested renegotiating NU’s lease to Seabury, an episcopal institution that also occupies NU land. Seabury administrators could not be reached for comment Monday because the school in on break for Easter.
Dowding encouraged members of the university community to provide feedback to the draft’s suggestions. A public hearing is scheduled for May 17 at noon in Norris University Center to discuss the draft.
