Baker Demonstration School has agreed to purchase part of the former Evanston campus of National-Louis University, 2840 Sheridan Road, school officials said Monday.
National-Louis officials announced in April 2004 they planned to sell the 6.5-acre campus on the Evanston-Wilmette border and move to a new North Shore location with newer facilities.
Some of the campus will be sold to a developer to build single-family housing, according to a press release from Baker, an elementary school. Officials from both schools could not comment on the proposed development and declined to say how much Baker will pay for the property.
Baker is used to demonstrate teaching techniques for National-Louis’ National College of Education. The university provides management oversight and financial support to Baker. The schools will end this relationship but maintain an academic relationship, said Chris Anderson, spokesman for National-Louis.
“What (the relationship) means these days is student teachers doing clinical rotations through the school, some work by the faculty in terms of putting together research projects with the students there, and then a certain collaborative role with the Baker faculty doing teaching workshops, things like that,” Anderson said.
Baker elected its own board of directors and a funding board in November. The boards will officially take charge July 1, when the school assumes financial and managerial independence, Baker director Bill Melsheimer said.
Anderson said National-Louis officials are glad Baker decided to purchase the property, partly because the Sheridan Road location is the university’s oldest site. The university has four other campuses in the Chicago area and five more in Wisconsin, Virginia, Florida and Washington, D.C.
“(Baker officials have) proven themselves to be very resourceful and innovative in putting a deal together, and I think it’s great that they can stay at that location,” he said. “The university not only maintains our relationship with the school but also our historic link to the site.”
Baker officials considered other sites on the North Shore, Melsheimer said.
“We also scoured the countryside looking at other suitable locations, but we always kept coming back to the Evanston site,” Melsheimer said. “The facilities out there weren’t compatible.”
National-Louis officials will announce a new location for the school’s North Shore campus in the next several weeks, according to the press release. The new site will be within a five-mile radius of the current site.
