By Dan FletcherThe Daily Northwestern
Tonight’s groundbreaking for the Richard and Barbara Silverman Hall for Molecular Therapeutics & Diagnostics will start the biggest construction project of the season on the Evanston campus.
Construction of the new $100 million building, which seeks to bring together chemists, engineers and biologists to work and research, will begin with a 5 p.m. ceremony.
Chemistry Prof. Richard Silverman helped to pay for the building’s costs out of his royalties for the prescription drug Lyrica, a chronic nerve pain treatment that earned more than $1 billion for Pfizer in 2006.
Chemistry Prof. Thomas Meade said the new building will help him in his research.
“The new institute will house a world-class biological molecular imaging facility designed to study specimens,” he said, adding that the building will allow collaboration between departments.
Part of this collaboration is the development of the Chemistry of Life Processes Institute, which will perform molecular research to treat diseases.
The four-story building will be located south of the Pancoe-Evanston Northwestern Healthcare Life Sciences Pavilion on North Campus.
When completed in 2009, it will house a number of laboratories along with offices for about 245 faculty, staff and research assistants.
Although it’s the largest addition to North Campus, Silverman Hall is not the only project underway this spring.
A new lacrosse and soccer field will be built on Northwestern’s Lakefill while the existing field is paved over for a new parking lot near Cook Hall. The project should be complete by Fall Quarter.
South Campus will also see a number of changes in upcoming months.
With the offices of student-run radio station WNUR out of Annie May Swift Hall as of Wednesday, construction began to improve the building’s utilities and to add some staff offices for the radio-TV-film department and the performance studies program.
Searle Student Health Service will be renovated and expanded.
A fifth story is planned to be added to Crowe Hall by 2008 in order to house additional faculty members.
The Alice Berline Kaplan Institute for the Humanities will move to Kresge Hall this year, after Technological Support Services leaves the building.
The move is in the planning phase, as some renovation of the space is still needed.
Absent from the plans are further renovations to Norris University Center and construction for a new music building.
University President Henry Bienen told The Daily the university is still in the process of looking for plans and donors, but the projects aren’t being forgotten.
“We’ve already been squirreling away some of the Lyrica money for the projects, and I’ve said that all along,” Bienen said, though he added that most of the drug revenues are already earmarked for endowment.
Communication freshman Liza Renzulli said she thought Norris renovations should be a higher priority for the university.
“I don’t think Northwestern cares a lot about the happiness of the students,” Renzulli said. “There’s a lot about academics and about research, but it seems all the student life stuff is done by the students themselves.”
Freshman Nora Moutrane said a better student center would improve student relations.
“It would do a lot to bring more unity to campus,” she said. “It would bridge the north and south gap, because Norris doesn’t do a lot to draw people in.”
Reach Dan Fletcher at [email protected].
