Vibrant Campus and Community Development

Summer 2007

The McCormick Tribune Campus Center

In the early 1990s, IIT Main Campus was hardly the image of a respected landmark. The landscape was uninspiring, and a sea of surface parking under the El created a barren, unfriendly zone between the academic and residential parts of campus. Keeping in step with the National Commission for IIT...

Summer 2007

Designing and Implementing the Main Campus Master Plan

There was a growing sentiment in the early 1990s that IIT’s Main Campus was struggling amidst the surrounding public housing projects. Some people on the Board of Trustees were saying that we should shut down the campus and move to the suburbs. Inspired by President Lew Collens, who has always...

Summer 2007

Financing and Building State Street Village

The State Street Village (SSV) student residence emerged as part of IIT’s effort to provide state-of-the-art housing for students while improving the appearance of Main Campus along the State Street corridor. Before SSV was built, undergraduates only had one option for living arrangements in McCormick Student Village, where two students...

Summer 2007

Smash Bash and the Renovation of S. R. Crown Hall

In 1997, Krueck and Sexton Architects first became professionally involved with President Lew Collens and IIT by doing a feasibility study for the renovation of S. R. Crown Hall. I can say that Lew has been literally a mover and a shaker who has taken as his own Daniel Burnham’s...

Summer 2007

Building Downtown Campus

My first significant experience with Lew Collens was during the construction of the new Downtown Campus for Chicago-Kent College of Law, which he initiated when he was dean of Chicago-Kent. The strategy was simple. Moving the school to a larger, state-of-the-art, computer-friendly building in the West Loop would allow Chicago-Kent...

Summer 2007

Building University Technology Park At IIT

IIT’s 1996 Main Campus Master Plan called for a “commercial zone” on the south end of campus. In 2000, as the City of Chicago decided to move its new police headquarters to near Main Campus and to take down public housing around IIT, President Lew Collens said, “Let’s do a...