The tower is going up at 425 S. Wabash in the South Loop, right next to the university's Auditorium building. There will be four connecting points between the two structures. "This is the single most important development in the university's history since the Auditorium building was acquired in 1946," Middleton said in a statement. School officials claim this will be the second tallest educational facility in the nation.

VOA Architects designed the tower, a project being managed by the John Buck Co.Joe Caprile with Jones Lang LaSalle, the owner's representative in the development, said the project is truly a vertical campus. "It's a very creative approach to meeting the demands of an urban school," Caprile tells GlobeSt.com. "You see more often in city setting, like Chicago, where universities have multiple buildings in a cluster-type setting. They were able to put a tower adjacent to their existing building."

The university was started in 1945 when the founding President Edward Sparling walked out of the Central YMCA College with faculty members, administrators and students in protest against a plan to limit admissions based on race, gender and religion. Since its founding, the university has grown to 7,300 students, the majority of them full-time students.