Firm: Wight & Company

Associated firm: South Campus Development Team

Design team: Wight & Company, Master Planners and Site Engineering; Wolff Clements, Landscape Design; Tera Byte, Technology Infrastructure

Client: University of Illinois at Chicago; Larry Justice, Project Executive

Area: 60 acres

Total cost: $550 million (includes overall facilities development, site infrastructure, environmental cleanup, adaptive reuse of existing facilities and demolition)

The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) envisioned a campus expansion that encompassed more than just academic facility growth. The creation of an “around-the-clock” university village was conceived as a functioning Chicago neighborhood consisting of for-sale housing, student apartments, urban parks, retail, academic facilities and historic sites.

Situated immediately south of the existing campus, the new development seeks to resuscitate the historic, yet blighted, Maxwell Street Market area. The city of Chicago, UIC and neighborhood residents worked together to allow for the purchase and development of property along with the preservation and relocation of many historic buildings.

Through this alignment of economic and cultural interests, a new Chicago neighborhood will be built where people can live, work, shop, entertain and attend school. The university's investment in Chicago's vitality is a brilliant investment in the college's own future and may become a model for cooperative public and private development at other urban institutions across the nation.