The donation of a Lake Forest residential mansion to Lake Forest College will move forward, but controversial plans to create a Renaissance center and hold classes there have been put on hold.
Anne and Robert Krebs have arranged to will to the college their Walden Road home and the Renaissance art collection housed inside Robert Krebs said. Krebs has served on the board, on and off, since the 1980s.
“I’ve always felt the small, liberal arts schools are the backbone of American education,” said Krebs, 72, a retired Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad CEO. “You learn about the world you live in. You learn how to write, you learn how to think.”
The Krebses’ home is a replica of an Italian villa. The planned donation first was announced in 2013, but met resistance from neighbors who balked at the idea of turning the home in their quiet, upscale neighborhood into a college Renaissance center for scholarship, classes and lectures.
The Walden Road home sits about a mile from the Lake Forest College campus. At the time, the city required the college to seek a special-use permit for the project.
But Lake Forest College president Stephen D. Schutt said the college later determined that the controversial special use permit would be necessary only if classes were planned for the site.
The Krebs plan to spend the rest of their lives in the home, Schutt said, and it is uncertain whether the college would host classes there after the couples’ death. As a result, the Krebs and the college asked the city last year to postpone the special-use permit application “indefinitely,” Schutt said.
“It won’t actually pass to the college until well in the future,” Schutt said. “It’s hard to say specifically what will happen because this is some years down the line.”
Lake Forest officials agreed to that request to postpone the application, confirmed city spokeswoman Susan Banks.
Along with the home and its three-acre property, the school will receive all of the art and furnishings inside, as well as an endowment fund with which to maintain the property, Krebs said.
“This goes ahead and lets everyone know what’s going to happen to the house,” Krebs said.
The home was valued by the county at $5.8 million in 2013, according to Tribune reports. The art inside, officials said, is worth much more.
@GenevieveBook