The project entails renovating 106,700 square feet of the building’s first two floors, and includes expanded student dining facilities, updated bathrooms, refurbished student lounges, music practice rooms, group study spaces, and infrastructure upgrades. South Quad, built in 1951, houses about 1,180 students as well as the university’s honors program.

SmithGroupJJR is the project’s architect, and a representative from the firm was on hand to give a brief presentation. The major change will be a dramatically expanded dining facility. When completed, it will serve as a central dining hall for other dormitories on central campus, including West Quad, Helen Newberry Residence and Betsy Barbour Residence.

According to a staff memo, the renovation is expected to provide an average of 131 on-site construction jobs, with work to be completed by the summer of 2014.

This brief was filed from the Anderson Room at the Michigan Union, where this month’s regents meeting was held.

The dormitory, built in 1951 and located at 600 E. Madison, houses about 1,180 students as well as the university’s honors program. The project would entail renovating 106,700 square feet of the building’s first two floors, and includes expanded student dining facilities, community spaces, updated bathrooms and other infrastructure upgrades.

In brief remarks to the board, Royster Harper – UM’s vice president for student affairs – described the work that would be done, saying it would begin in May of 2013 and take about a year. She also alluded to comments in the media that had referred to UM student housing as luxurious, and she assured the board that this was not the case. The comments make her “quite angry,” she said, adding that renovations include things like putting in shower doors rather than “plastic curtains that sort of stick to your rear.” The changes are simply trying to improve the student experience, Harper concluded.

This brief was filed from the Michigan Union’s Anderson Room on the Ann Arbor campus, where regents held their September meeting.