Graduate student housing 85-percent complete, east building to open in May
The graduate student housing is set to be completed and open for tenants by the beginning of July.
However, the opening of the east building of the student housing will come at an earlier time, said Steve Lawrence, Vice President for Facilities Management.
“We’re supposed to have the east building open for tenants by May,” Lawrence said. “The west building tenants are scheduled to move in for July.”
The west building has all the utilities leading to the building and includes a basement, so it took longer to build, Lawrence said.
With a $28.5 million budget, the university is set to add a parking lot this summer and redo one that was damaged during construction.
“The angled parking lot in front of the west building was obliterated during construction, so it has to be redone,” Lawrence said. “There will also be parking lot work during the summer, which should be done by mid-August.”
Lawrence said there will be an expansion of Parking Lot 8 just off of Chippewa Trail, which is connected to Parking Lot 11.
The graduate student apartment housing project is now 85-percent complete, not including the expansion of 123 additional parking spaces, Lawrence said.
“We waited to see how the budget held up to make sure we had enough money to add on to the parking lots,” Lawrence said.
Director of Residence Life Joan Schmidt said there are no plans for a grand opening ceremony at this time.
“At this point, no," Schmidt said. "I asked the president’s office and haven’t gotten an answer."
According to a previous Central Michigan Life article, the last beam placed on the graduate student housing complex was celebrated with a Topping Out Ceremony.
The ceremony is a Scandinavian tradition where placing a tree atop a new building represents growth and is used to bring good luck to the structure.
“It’s ceremonial and was also put on to thank (everybody) for all their hard work,” Schmidt said in October.
After the last beam was put into place, a live tree, as well as flags from residence life, Central Michigan University, the state of Michigan and the United States were placed on top of the building.
