Bridging Divides: The Origins of the Beckman Institute at Illinois

3. Building the Institute

................. 26 . . . . . Bridging Divides 3 Building the institute T he groundbreaking ceremony took place in October 1986 during the University of Illinois Foundation’s annual meeting (figure 3), one year after the announcement of the gift.The Beckmans were of course present, as was Stan Ikenberry, Tom Everhart, and other notables,including Governor James Thompson,who arrived late but made up for it by telling of his role in courting the Beckmans. The ceremony was symbolic; preparation of some contract documents was still in progress, and the earliest construction contracts would not be awarded for another month. The fences surrounding the site were soon up, however, and digging began before the end of the year. All this activity brought back to the fore the issue of land acquisition. The university needed to acquire all the property that lay between Mathews Avenue and Romine Street, which lay a short block to the Bill Greenough on the Groundbreaking Ceremony At the groundbreaking ceremony I was seated next to Mort Weir. It was a beautiful fall day, and despite the rather drab physical setting —the former Illini baseball field—there was a shared feeling of a moment of great importance to the future of the university. There were speeches from the university president, the governor, and others, but the press really wanted to hear from Arnold Beckman. After much encouragement, Arnold got up in response to the question of what the institute was all about. His reply quelled any doubts about whether he had carefully read and understood the proposal. In somewhere between three and five minutes Arnold described interdisciplinary research, gave some examples about what sorts of interdisciplinary research would characterize the Beckman Institute, and made several rather grand predictions about the kind of work that might emerge. (Understandably, they were a bit more chemistry -oriented than what came to be the institute’s actual work.) As he finished, Mort, my former department head, said to me, “Amazing. He’s in his eighties and can give a speech like that. I’d love to be able to do that at his age. . . . Of course I can’t now, so I really have to work on it!” Figure 3. President Stanley Ikenberry, Nina Shepherd, and Arnold and Mabel Beckman at the groundbreaking ceremony, October 10, 1986. (The Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette, October 11, 1986, page A1.) [An accompanying story by J. Philip Bloomer appears on the same page.] Photo courtesy of John Foreman. 28 . . . . . Bridging Divides west of Mathews. It also needed the land east of Mathews for parking and future growth. When negotiations with property owners reached an impasse, the university asked for and received “quick take” powers from the legislature. The bill, signed into law by Governor Thompson on July 29, 1986, provided that the university could take possession of land before, not after, a court determination of a just sale price, in those cases where landowners were unable to come to agreement with the university on a sale price.The justification for the measure was that any significant delays in acquiring the needed land would mean costly delays in the Beckman Institute construction and a failure to adhere to the construction schedule promised the Beckmans. It turned out that most property negotiations were settled,but four went to court.The owner of a gas station situated along University Avenue was awarded $400,000, the owners of the Strawberry Fields health food store received $175,000. The other two settlements involved small houses. The university spent about $3 million in acquiring property needed for the Beckman Institute project. One of the more piquant stories that arose during property acquisition concerned Frances Moreland, then sixty-three, whose home was at 402 North Romine, directly in the path of the Beckman Institute. Ms. Moreland did not wish to move, but if she had to move, she wanted to take her house with her.The university went to considerable lengths to help owners do just that; after all, it had no use for the private houses. The university also helped find suitable lots in the nearby neighborhoods north of University Avenue for those homeowners who wished to move their houses. A suitable lot was identified for Ms. Moreland’s house on North Coler Avenue, but the residents there complained about the prospect of having an older two-story house in their neighborhood of relatively new one-story ranch-style houses. After a further...