To the Editor:
The NIU Foundation purchased property on Annie Glidden Road for $200,000 in 1977 to secure a strategic parcel of land adjacent to the Northern Illinois University campus with frontage on the major road leading from the tollway.
It included two structures known as the Oderkirk House and the Carriage House. There were no conditions to this sale. We were not required to keep the buildings and never planned to do so.
The donors who made the purchase possible understood that the foundation was securing the land for future development. The foundation board discussed demolition of the buildings immediately after completing the purchase.
The NIU Foundation is a sole-purpose 501(c)3 organization – we exist only to support NIU, its students and faculty. We are not a community foundation, a historical society or an architectural foundation.
The best interests of the university and the students we serve require us to hold the land ready for development when needed, and that is what the foundation intends to do. This is in accordance with the original gift discussions with donors and our mission.
We do not feel that we can in good faith ask anyone to invest in repairing or restoring the building as it stands on our property, as we cannot give any long-term guarantees as to when the land might be required for future development.
We appreciate that there are others who place a higher priority on preservation of the structure, and we stand ready to partner with them to relocate the building to another site in the DeKalb/Sycamore area, perhaps one that already has historical buildings. This is a fairly common practice, and one has to look no farther than Naper Settlement in Naperville to see a success story that involved relocating a number of the 19 buildings on their site.
To help make such a move possible, NIU and the NIU Foundation have put a new roof on the main house to ensure the structure’s integrity over the fall and winter while we gauge community interest in relocating the building.
The foundation also stands ready to contribute the expected cost of demolition (up to $50,000) toward the cost of moving the structure.
We have concluded discussions regarding the repair or restoration of the structure where it is located and look forward to joining others in the community who may wish to help find it a more fitting location.
Mike Malone
President & CEO
NIU Foundation