NIU to purchase Monsanto property

University to establish 'health campus' on busy Route 23 corridor

by Melanie Magara

NIU's Board of Trustees approved Wednesday, Feb. 16, the purchase for $6 million of the Monsanto property at Route 23 and Bethany Road in unincorporated DeKalb County for the establishment of a new family health and learning center.

Board members agreed to a contract including $4 million for the purchase of the buildings and land, and $2 million for existing furnishings and equipments in the facility. In addition to approving the purchase, trustees heard about plans to establish the NIU Family Health, Wellness and Literacy Center at the Monsanto site.

NIU President John Peters told the board that NIU has received some $8.4 million in federal appropriations to fund remodeling of the building, as well as the purchase of existing furnishings and equipment and specialized, health-related equipment for the new center. NIU will fund the $4 million property purchase through a combination of bank financing and funds generated through revenue bonds and debt restructuring.

Anchoring the new center will be three well-known university programs: The NIU Speech, Language and Hearing Clinic, The NIU Reading Clinic, and the NIU Physical Therapy Clinic. All three centers serve children and families from the DeKalb/Sycamore area and beyond, and all three are struggling to meet increasing demand in very limited on-campus spaces. In addition to expanded program space, the three clinics will also be able to strengthen supervised experiential learning opportunities for NIU students in each of the three academic programs.

“This is a great day for NIU and for the whole DeKalb-Sycamore community,” Peters told the board. “With help from House Speaker Dennis Hastert in Washington and from our Monsanto partners in DeKalb and St. Louis, this historic property will continue its legacy of service to our community.”

Monsanto Director of Corporate Services Jerry Carter agreed. “It was really important to us at Monsanto to preserve not only the building, but also the very public purpose of this property,” Carter said. “We recognize that this property has a lot of history and significance for the DeKalb community, and we’re happy to know that NIU will maintain that legacy in the future.”

Family health and wellness issues have long attracted the attention of district congressman and House Speaker Dennis Hastert. Hastert has been instrumental in obtaining funding for numerous NIU health initiatives, including the Center for the Study of Family Violence and Sexual Assault on NIU’s far west campus and the NIU Institute for Neutron Therapy at Fermilab.

"This project will allow NIU to expand its health and wellness offerings, and ultimately to better meet the needs of students and residents throughout the DeKalb-Sycamore region," Hastert said. "The initiative becomes even more meaningful when you consider that it will be housed in a building with such a long history of contributing to good health."

NIU planners saw another major advantage with the Monsanto property: it is located in the heart of what has become the DeKalb-Sycamore “health corridor.” Within blocks of the facility are dozens of doctors’ offices, clinics and surgicenters, as well as Kishwaukee Hospital, Ben Gordon Mental Health Center, several diagnostic facilities and numerous rehabilitation centers.

“We have many longstanding partnerships with medical providers in this community, and we see the Family Health, Wellness and Literacy Center as an important resource for those partners,” Peters said. “Enhanced program space will provide opportunities for more NIU referrals to community health providers, and greater capacity for working with area schools and other agencies who deal with children and families.”

The Monsanto property also offers significant advantages in terms of available parking and access from interstates and area highways. Officials say the three clinics that will anchor the new center provide interrelated services that currently require many separate trips for patients with multiple needs.

The Monsanto property consists of a large office building with about 65,000 square feet of useable space, a separate “wet lab” building with another 29,000 gross square feet, and 23 acres of land. Closing on the property is scheduled for summer. NIU will spend the following year assessing space needs, remodeling and installing specialized equipment, with a targeted opening date for the new center of fall 2006.

2-28-05