Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1956 [PAGE 944]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

1956]

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

94I

PURCHASE OF PROPERTY AT 6 0 5 SOUTH GOODWIN A V E N U E , URBANA (8) The property at 605 South Goodwin Avenue, Urbana, has been offered to the University at a price of $18,000, the University to pay all real estate taxes not yet due. This property is in the area of the University's long-range land acquisition program, and is one of four remaining properties in the block bounded by Goodwin, California, and Mathews Avenues and Oregon Street not owned by the University. T h e property is a lot, 50 by 60 feet, and a house which is in good condition and which would make available ten rooms, two bathrooms, and attic storage space for University use. The Building Program Committee, the Director of the Physical Plant, and the Comptroller recommend the purchase of this property at $18,000, plus taxes. I concur and recommend that an appropriation of $18,500 be made from the General Reserve Fund to cover the purchase price, plus taxes and other expenses of closing. O n m o t i o n of M r . Bissell, t h e p u r c h a s e o f t h i s p r o p e r t y a t t h e p r i c e and under the conditions stated w a s authorized, and the recommended a p p r o p r i a t i o n of $ 1 8 , 5 0 0 w a s m a d e f r o m t h e G e n e r a l R e s e r v e F u n d b y the following v o t e : A y e , M r . Bissell, M r . H e r r i c k , M r . J o h n s t o n , M r . Livingston, M r . Swain, M r s . W a t k i n s , M r . Williamson; no, none; absent, M r s . Holt, M r . M e g r a n , M r . Nickell, M r . S t r a t t o n . NONDEVELOPMENT OIL AND GAS LEASE COVERING AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT FIELD IN SALINE COUNTY (9) The University owns a fifteen-acre tract in Saline County, near Raleigh, Illinois (the legal description is: The South IS acres of the N E %., N W ]/$, Sec. 22, T 8 S, R 6 E, Saline County, Illinois), which is being used for agricultural experiment purposes. It has been subdivided into a series of small plots, each receiving different treatment in connection with the experiments being conducted, and records have been maintained since these operations began in 1010. Mr. Amos S. Wood of the Delwood Oil Company and the latter now hold oil and gas leases covering considerable acreage in this area, including a lease covering a twenty-five-acre tract situated immediately north of the University's tract and leases to tracts situated adjacent to the University's to the east, south, and southwest, but not immediately to the west thereof. He desires to drill wells for oil and gas on the land covered by those leases and to begin such operations through the drilling of a test well on a forty-acre tract lying near the University's land in the immediate future, but hesitates to do this, of course, unless he can obtain an oil and gas lease from the University to its fifteen-acre tract, which he desires to obtain upon terms and conditions similar to those pertaining to the other leases. Because of the damaging effect which operations for the drilling of wells and the production of oil and gas upon the University's land would have upon the experiments which the Agricultural Experiment Station has been and is conducting thereon, and which it is believed will prove valuable and important, the Director of the Station objects to the giving at this time of a lease to the tract which will enable such operations to be conducted on it. However, it is agreeable to the Director that the University enter into a nondevelopment lease or agreement with Mr. Wood under which the University will agree that, for a period of two years, it will not drill or permit the drilling of any oil or gas well upon the University's tract except under and pursuant to an oil and gas lease given by it to him if the results of drilling operations conducted on adjacent land prompt the University to recede from its present unwillingness to permit any drilling operations upon its land. Since, in order to enable Mr. Wood or his assignees to meet certain drilling commitments with respect to adjacent land which he now has under lease, it will probably be necessary to enter into the nondevelopment lease or agreement with him before the March meeting of the Board of Trustees, the Director of the Agricultural Experiment Station and the Comptroller recommend that the Executive Committee of the Board be authorized to approve the entry by the University into such a nondevelopment lease or agreement with Mr. Wood as may be nego-