NMU’s new Jamrich Hall is about 90% complete

Construction season is in full swing at Northern Michigan University as crews are putting the finishing touches on the new Jamrich Hall.

The new building is about 90% complete and is on schedule to open when the fall semester begins in late August. Like the facility it’s replacing, the new Jamrich Hall will be NMU’s primary classroom building. It’ll also be much more energy-efficient than the current hall.

“Outside of the building, we’ve started to work on reconstructing the parking lot,” NMU associate director of engineering and planning Jim Thams said. “Heavy construction on that started last week. We’re partway through it. The anticipation is we’ll have asphalt down within the next month.”

But crews will begin demolition of the old Jamrich Hall while construction of the new building is still in progress. The walls of the old hall will come down starting on June 16th.

“Last week, Northern employees went in and salvaged all the furniture that we had in the building,” Thams said. “This week, we started hazardous material abatement and physical demolition will start in the middle of June.”

The demolition of the old Jamrich Hall should be complete sometime in early August. Once that happens, the land it occupies will become a parking lot.