Hi, I’m Deborah Holdship, editor of Michigan Today.

Next time you’re in Ann Arbor, you have to come visit the Michigan Union. It re-opened in January after an 18-month renovation, restoration, rehabilitation and all-around makeover. It’s not the first facelift for the building, but this has been the most extensive, well-planned and complete rework of the campus gem, since it opened in 1919. The price came in at $85.2 million. Half of that budget focused on invisible upgrades to energy efficiency and sustainability. With an estimated 37% energy savings, the rest of the budget went toward dazzling visuals that surely would have pleased original architects and alumni, Irving and Allen Pond. The Union actually rests on the site of the Ponds’ childhood home. The multicolored, leaded glass windows, signature arches, and decorative details are just some features that define the brothers’ design aesthetic. I spoke to the architects at Hartman-Cox in Washington, D.C. And as you’ll hear later, I met some welders from Detroit who installed the ironwork in the newly enclosed courtyard. Most of the workers are gone now, but for a few random electricians who it seems are never finished.

Deborah Holdship: Oh my god, do you guys feel like the last men standing?

Electrician: Oh, every single day! Everybody’s almost done.

Holdship: The main floor’s footprint now matches the original 1919 floor plan, including a huge fireplace near the main entrance. Your hostess with the mostest, Susan Pyle, senior director of university unions and auxiliary services, is eager for you to see it. Here’s Susan.

Susan Pile: The fireplace naturally will draw people in. So I think about alumni coming back for homecoming or football weekends, like, I think it communicates, come in and have a seat. And be welcomed here at Michigan, be welcomed at the Michigan Union that we didn’t have that space before down there. It felt like, “Am I allowed to go in there?” Or we had a couple couches and they were always full and there was no place to sit and this new space is really inviting in a way that says welcome, come in and have a seat. And I think the historic detail and historic character of the building has been refreshed in a way that I think is really special to this building, that will enable that to carry forward for another hundred years. So and the study lounge, of course, is still on the first floor where it was. And again, we heard from students “don’t mess with the study lounge”. I’ll never forget a student said “I feel like a Michigan student when I study in there.”

Holdship: Yep!

Pile: So you’ve got this great study space, and you have this great social connection vibrancy happening on that floor, too. So I think it all just sort of speaks to the role of the union on campus and really fostering both of those things.

Holdship: Yeah.

Pile: I think it takes a special skill set, and why I value the architecture team that we had, because we were able to sort of meld those ideas that history and historical architecture can be current and future, and how do we continue to evolve the building so that it does meet those needs in the future? This is Michigan, and our students are worthy of a beautiful space like this.

Nate Fialkoff: It looks beautiful. It’s massive and looks very modern. Also comfy, and it’s for student orgs too, and I’m like deep-in to start Career Fair, which is an event that I’ll be hosting in February, February 7th. And so, a space that says, “Hey, work on student stuff!” I wanted to be here for it.

Hana Yu: It just allows for a lot of open communication and sharing of ideas, which is helpful for the university in general.

Madi Kent: So we are two of the directors of Dance Marathon and we’re here just to kind of get some stuff done, answer some e-mails, make sure that we’re working together and getting everything set for our biggest event in March. But we think this is a really awesome area to have these little cubicles.

Lauren Raich: I haven’t really sat down on the courtyard, but I think this is like a beautiful addition. It really like, I think it modernizes the Union and kind of sets it apart. Like I’ve seen Ohio State’s Union, and it’s gorgeous and I think kind of puts us in that bar. We go up with them too like in respectable area. And even just the conference rooms here, too, is just like a new bar, which we’ve needed for a really long time. And now we can utilize space that we just haven’t been able to before. And it’s just very aesthetically pleasing.

Holdship: All right. Well, there’s some early endorsements from your typical overachieving Wolverines. We had Nate Falcoff, the entrepreneur, freshman Hannah Yu and dance marathons, Maddie Kent and Lauren Rich. And, speaking of aesthetically pleasing, the most visually stunning element of the Union is the newly enclosed courtyard. Remember that open air patio outside Starbucks, which is now SweetWaters, alumni? Today, the courtyard is inside the building covered by a glass roof supported by these huge steel columns. They’re almost curved like palm trees to echo the Ponds’ signature arches. I actually gasped when I saw it the first time.

Pile: I always feel like I need to come in here and let people just sort of take it in for a moment, because it is so different than what we had prior to this. This was exterior space, open air. Certainly Michigan weather makes it challenging, made it challenging for us to really use this space with any kind of regularity or sense of community. And we didn’t have the budget nor really the square footage around the building to expand the building. But this was a way for us to really capture space that would be meaningful to the building, would add the sense of vibrancy and connection and create really a nice connection between the first and second levels of the building. What we heard again from students is they were helping us in the design process was that they wanted this to feel like an indoor diag, but they wanted it to feel like a place of serendipitous interaction and connection with lots of things happening at any given time, needed the block “M” in the middle of the courtyard to replicate the diag, and that block M was actually located on the fourth floor of the building and has now been moved down here to the courtyard, where it will be much more visible and enjoyed.

Holdship: Does it come with the same, you know, rules?

Pile: You know, we’ve been asked that question what the what the campus lore is going to be about that, and it’s not up to me to make these decisions. So I think I think our students will certainly come up with something pretty great for that, if I had to guess.

Holdship: During a recent walk about in the building, I came upon three of the craftsmen who transported, installed, and welded those giant columns. They, too, were marveling at the finished product. First you’ll hear Jesus Molinar, project manager for Detroit’s Ideal Contracting, followed by ironworker Bill Kinzinger. Bill’s daughter is a student at U of M. Here’s Jesus.

Jesus Molinar: Talking about, you know, all the sweat and tears that we put into this building. It’s been amazing. The final product, it looks awesome.

Holdship: I can’t imagine.

Molinar: Yes. And if you would’ve seen before. But boy, when we tore apart everything and opened up everything to install the steel, it was way different.

Holdship: So you guys are the ones who installed the steel?

Molinar: These two guys right here.

Holdship: Oh, you guys, it’s so beautiful!

Bill Kingsinger: I really didn’t know was that important to the university, until I saw it on the news. You know, but yeah, it’s it’s a nice building. It’s an old building. It’s very nice.

Molinar: This all changed from what it was just outside, right?

Kingsinger: Yeah. There was windows right here. This was all this was all exterior.

Holdship: Yeah, so…

Molinar: People, they see it, they don’t understand what it took to get it here. I mean, he… He’s my welder. He welded all this together. These people these came out in four pieces, these trees, they call them trees. And I had him weld them together and make it look like one piece. It was never, you know, it took some time and we did it in a cold winter. But I mean, it looks good. We come on here now. Go, man. Remember that? That was hard, you know?

Holdship: Yeah. It’s like big dreams, you know?

Molinar: They flew them in blind from the street, from State Street.

Holdship: I saw the pictures, yeah!

Molinar: And then these guys were directing it. Bill was outside coordinating these guys we’re receiving down here.

Holdship: Pressure!

Kingsinger: When they told us we were going to do it. I’m was like, “oh boy!” Trucking it here, was a hard thing to because it’s big. Yeah. You know, when it came up the street and they were going to bring it up, State Street, the tops in one piece. And I said we can’t! We’ll wipe out every parked car on State Street. I said, “no!”

Holdship: Haha thank you for caring!

Kingsinger: You know, I said, we have to we have to bring it out pieces. It was a challenge! In the upper dome actually, are fabricated which is our company. We built it underground in the shop, put it together a hundred percent. He was there and we welded a lot of it up and then we took it apart in big chunks and shipped it here. And where did that happen? In Downtown Detroit, off of Clark Street, at Ideal Contracting.

Holdship: Okay…

Kingsinger: I said I want to make sure this fits when we get up in the air. You know? So, my daughter’s in school here. And I said, man, these kids really want this space.

Holdship: She’ll say oh my god, my dad did this!

Kingsinger: Yes. She would wander through every once in a while. I said, when she needs money.

Holdship: (Laughs) Yeah! Haha that’s so great!

Kingsinger: Yeah. I’m happy for her. She kept asking me. I said, I can’t take you in there. You can’t see this until it’s done. I can’t show you pictures, you know. Because they kept asking all her friends, is it gonna be done? I said oh, it’ll be done on time.

Holdship: Though you’ll be tempted to look up, up into the open air of the courtyard. Ironworker to Toujean Lozier wants to draw your attention to the floor as well. Listen in. Here’s Toujean with Bill Kinzinger and Jesus Molenaar.

Tijean Losier: One thing, you probably don’t see these things, I was just telling Bill this morning. You see that hardwood floor?

Holdship: Uh huh!

Losier: Well, they look like little pieces of square? These were installed piece by piece.

Holdship: No!

Losier: That long. And then telling the stories about it.

Kingsinger: That’s Mosquick Hardwood from Texas. Okay? So they it’s engrain. It’s only about a half inch thick. Each block is individually laid one at a time. And they worked around the clock. I want to say about three and a half weeks.

Losier: You only see one floor. You know, you don’t see all the pieces like a puzzle. You know?

Holdship: Like twenty five thousand pieces! (Laughs)

Losier: Oh, my God!

Molinar: And the floor base too, because after the wood floor got installed, the base had to be cut piece by piece because the floor has waves. So you don’t want, when you install that metal you can’t have gaps up and down.

Holdship: Oh, yeah.

Molinar: So these guys were measuring each piece.

Kingsinger: That black steel base was a lot of labor putting that in

Holdship: I love that craftsmanship.

Molinar: It looks like crown molding. But in the floor, all that tall steel.

Kingsinger: That’s steel we had to cut it to fit.

Holdship: Wow. Beautiful. You guys are amazing!

Kingsinger: They would always ask me “how long is this gonna take?” Hah! I was like, it’s never been done before. I don’t know.

Holdship: Well, here’s a question, what’s it like to work on a building that you have to kind of match or marry the old with the new?

Kingsinger: With this building, it was very, it was difficult because we would open up that old part form 1950 and you go, huh? That’s not what the drawings. It’s all different. We were just talking about over here where this steel is tied into this building over here. They had a drawing that was from 1953 that told us what we were going to be tying into, what it looked like if we cut the wall open. I said we got a huge problem. It doesn’t look like this at all. So we had to go re-engineer everything and redesign it and how we’re going to make the connections. There’s a lot of unforseens here when we opened it up.

Holdship: I was chatting with those guys outside the Idea Hub, formerly the Union’s Billiard’s room. I know, I know. Everyone loved the billiards room, but so few people used it. There are 1600 student organizations on today’s campus who now have space to do business. Some of the tables actually are repurposed from the Union’s long-gone bowling alley. When I told Cognitive Science junior Nate Fialkov he was sitting in the former billiards room, beloved to so many nostalgic alumni devastated by its demise. He looked at me like, “OK, boomer.”

Fialkoff: Like the day that the Union Opened there were some food trucks and this guy, like all the student’s were waiting for the food trucks. And this guy comes out. He’s like, “you know, the Union used to be the best place to play billiards. (Sigh) Look what they did to it. Left. Oh, OK… this is way cooler!

Holdship: So you get the idea, students are loving the new building and you probably will, too – even without the billiard’s. You’ve just got to come back to sit by the fire, wander around, and notice all the details those colored panes of glass that caught our floor, the wrought iron, the throwback light fixtures and some newly revealed limestone arches that lead straight into the future. OK. That’s it for now. Find “Listen in, Michigan” and subscribe at Google Play Music, iTunes, TuneIn, and Stitcher. We’ll be back for more next month. Until then, as always, Go Blue!