NU sees new link to downtown

Time may be running out for Northwestern University's clock tower. It's not included in the school's new 50-year planning framework which envisions a new connection between the campus and downtown Evanston.

The document calls for a new mixed-use residential district along the north side of Clark Street, with graduate student residences on the upper floors and a mix of conventional commercial and retail uses and artist and music studios on the ground floor.

A sketch looking west on Clark Street from Chicago Avenue showing a proposed new recreation center and mixed-use buildings.

The same view today, showing plantings obscuring a parking lot.

It says the studio spaces would be convenient for art and music students and "would engage the public in the life of the university."

Willard Hall, one of the oldest buildings on campus, would be preserved.

The plan would preserve the Victorian-era Willard Hall, now headquarters for the music school, the old campus Bursar's Office, the Lutkin Hall music recital building and some existing dormitories on the superblock bounded by Clark, Sherman Avenue, University Place and Chicago Avenue.

The Rebecca Crown administraction complex and the raised plaza that separates it from the surrounding neighborhood would be demolished.

But it calls for demolition of 1967-vintage Rebecca Crown Center, with its monumental clock tower and austere concrete facade that presents a fortress-like gateway to the campus now.

The plan would also replace the parking lot on the northwest corner of Clark and Chicago, now masked by plantings, with a new south-campus recreation facility -- "a glassy, lit building that would help define the Clark Street edge."