In early December, Philip Hale, Loyola University’s director of community relations, sat for two hours at the front of the Wilmette village hall and listened to residents condemn his school and its plans. The crowd asked only a few questions, and he refused to answer any of them.
What Hale didn’t say was that current zoning allows a buyer to raze the former convent and fill the entire 17 acres with dozens of single-family homes. The buyer would owe the community nothing, something many people in the room understood.
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Some members of the audience asked Loyola to delay naming a bidder and give the village the opportunity to save one of the last open tracts in their suburb. Others asked Loyola to find a buyer who would preserve the massive Mallinckrodt building, preferably turning it into affordable housing for the elderly, something the village sorely lacks.
Later Hale was asked whether the way Loyola was conducting the sale contradicted the mission of its Jesuit code. He paused, then said, “Well, any action has a moral implication, and any inaction has a moral implication. We embrace that notion as a university.”
Hale insists the school has tried to maintain a good relationship with Wilmette too. He says that before Loyola went looking for a developer, it offered the land to the village. Mike Earl, Wilmette’s village manager, says Loyola did indeed offer the land last September, but that village officials couldn’t see a good reason to buy it, especially given that Wilmette residents would have to foot the bill. He says he asked Loyola for time to find an alternate method of saving the land and perhaps the former convent.
The group quickly decided to work around rather than with Loyola, and after the university closed the bidding at the end of November they asked the Wilmette Park Board to put the matter before voters as a ballot referendum in the March 19 election. If the referendum passed, the park district would become the buyer and Loyola would be paid “fair market value” for the property, as determined in negotiations or by an arbitrator. If Loyola resisted, the park district could use its power of eminent domain to acquire the land.
“The community didn’t think that was a fair compromise, nor did the board,” says Terry Porter, director of the park district. “They felt there were too many unknowns that all worked on the James side of the equation. They just didn’t want to take a chance with that.”
