This should be interesting: in Cook County court today Judge Neil Cohen said he’ll hear oral arguments January 11 on the city’s motion to dismiss a suit filed last month by preservationists trying to keep Northwestern University from destroying the former Prentice Women’s Hospital building, which it owns.
The plaintiffs in that suit, Landmarks Illinois and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, maintain that a vote last month by the Commission on Chicago Landmarks to take back protective designation it had just granted the Bertrand Goldberg building was illegal.
Meanwhile, as Reader columnist Ben Joravsky reported this week, the Northwestern University student paper revealed that Mayor Emanuel was privately advising the university to mount a public-relations campaign to bolster its position, even as he was claiming to be objectively weighing the arguments of both the university and the preservationists.