NIU’s new Board of Trustees wasted no time making its presence felt in Springfield as well as DeKalb.

One of the board’s first major actions was a move recommended by President John La Tourette and Senior Vice President for Finance Eddie Williams: get permission to do public-private land deals, and expand the campus in the only possible direction – to the west.

The first move allowed NIU to designate what we now call the North Forty (where Engineering and Business now stand) and some 289 acres to the west of campus as special zones in which the university could enter into partnerships with private business. That was approved by the legislature in March of 1997.

Then, in June of 1997, the Board approved the purchase of around 200 acres contiguous to the West Campus – formerly agricultural land – for $2.95 million.

“I cannot overstate the importance of the location, nor how attractive the price was to our board,” Williams said. “They strongly believed that it was prudent to acquire the property now, rather than wait five or six years when rates would be substantially higher.”

“Northern has been landlocked for many years, and remains so to the north, south and east,” said La Tourette. “This purchase is very important to the future of the university because it allowed us to expand our campus borders on land that is directly contiguous to our campus.”

A few months later, the board added another 32 acres that had been an odd-shaped cut-out to the first parcel at a price of $414,000.

Seven years later, when U.S. House Speaker (and NIU alumnus) Denny Hastert was in power, NIU received $8.32 million out of a nearly $300 billion federal transportation bill to plan, design and build new roads and infrastructure on the Far West Campus so that development could begin on the 230 acres.

The first building constructed on what became known as the Far West Campus was the Center for the Study of Family Violence and Sexual Assault, located just north and west of the Convocation Center and completed in 2003.   Next was the Northern View Community, an apartment complex to replace Married Student Housing and provide facilities for students with children.

Currently in the works is the Northern Illinois Center for Community Sustainability, with a 30,000 square-foot building as well as experimental gardens and other possible facilities such as a solar energy “garden.”

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