Northwestern University's fight with Evanston is headed for court

Mediation talks have fallen through between the City of Evanston in Illinois and Northwestern University in a last-ditch effort to quietly resolve a federal lawsuit over a historic preservation district.\nU.S. District Judge Marvin Aspen had offered mediation as an alternative to his ruling in the dispute, which, he warned, would not make either side happy in this latest chapter of their strained relationship.\nNorthwestern sued the city after more than 40 of its buildings were included in the Northeast Evanston Historic District.\nAlthough the city and university have worked through rocky moments before, this time some leaders have reached an impasse -- even among themselves.\n"If there wasn't such an animosity among some people on the council, we could have sat down with Northwestern," said Evanston Mayor Lorraine Morton, who sides with the university. "But now the lines are drawn in the sand."\nEvanston is far from alone in its history of town-gown disputes, most of which stem from financial problems or land issues. Few have been resolved in any uniform way. And in some cases, it took court action or the threat of it to move forward.\n"Sometimes the deep frustration and antipathy that develops makes it difficult to see a peaceful resolution," said Sheldon Steinbach, chief lawyer for the American Council on Education who has informally tracked such cases.\nEvanston officials are quick to say that little has changed in their daily cooperative efforts, such as dovetailing their police patrols and partnering on a new natural gas facility.\nBut where they clash quickly becomes evident, especially since November 2000, when Northwestern filed suit over the historic district. Now that mediation has flopped, the matter returns before Aspen for a status hearing Wednesday. The lawsuit accuses city leaders of retaliating against the university for its refusal to make payments in lieu of taxes.\nThe university, exempt from property taxes under its charter from the state, also frustrates residents who fear it will expand into their neighborhoods.\nSix of the city's nine aldermen have come to view Northwestern as a freeloader that should pay more for services such as fire protection. Meanwhile, the city has spent more than $400,000 in legal fees to defend itself in the Northwestern case.\nAld. Arthur Newman, one of the most outspoken critics of Northwestern, said that its leaders "lack a basic understanding of municipal issues."\nAt Northwestern, Eugene Sunshine, senior vice president for business and finance, described the university's current relationship with the City Council as "cold war."\nHe believes some aldermen are not interested in resolving issues but "for some reason see it in their interest to bash and not find common ground."\nHe points to more than $3.4 million that the university pays the city for water, services, permits and athletic event taxes. And he argues that the university has retained only 240 acres of its original 580 acres, selling land rather than buying it and returning most of it to the property tax rolls.\nNorthwestern's growth is restricted by the amount of land it owns, zoning regulations and now, the historic district, Sunshine said.\nElsewhere, colleges and their hometowns are working to resolve problems in different ways. Some schools have agreed to invest in decaying neighborhoods, such as Yale University in New Haven, Conn., and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Both recognized that a safe, vibrant community would help draw quality students and faculty.\nOthers, such as Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., agreed to make yearly payments in lieu of taxes only after the city stopped giving it building permits. That 13-year agreement ends in 2007, when the annual payment reaches $1 million.\nFormer Ithaca Mayor Ben Nichols was invited to Evanston to describe his hard-line strategy in March 1999, a year before Evanston created the historic district.