West Quad and Cambridge House, built in 1937 and located at 541 Thompson St., house about 1,100 students. The renovations will cover 370,000 square feet and include infrastructure upgrades as well as creation of new community spaces. In describing the project, Royster Harper – UM’s vice president for student affairs – noted that West Quad was dubbed “The Ship” by U.S. Navy troops that were housed there during World War II. “Well, The Ship is in need of renovations,” Harper said. Among other things, she said that students would rather not have to open their windows in the winter in order to regulate heat.

Also on Feb. 21, regents authorized hiring Integrated Design Solutions LLC as the project’s architect. The renovation work is expected to provide an average of 138 on-site construction jobs, according to a staff memo.

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

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 project will add more offices and cubicles to the basement and first floor, and create a small lobby entrance. It will cover about 12,000-square-feet in the building, located at 428 Church St. in Ann Arbor. The design work is being handled by the architectural firm SHW Group. Jim Luckey of SHW made a brief presentation to the board about the project, which is estimated to provide about nine on-site construction jobs during the work. The renovations are expected to be finished by this fall.

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

The items often involve technology licensing agreements or leases. This month, all items were approved unanimously and without discussion. They related to the following businesses and organizations: ResolveAble Inc. (option agreement); Optimal Process Technologies LLC (license agreement); HiperNap LLC (option agreement); H3D Inc. (license agreement); Ektapharm Inc. (option agreement); Cardiavent Inc. (amendment to option agreement); Biocrede Inc. (option agreement); Armune BioScience Inc. (research agreement); Ambiq Micro Inc. (amendment to license agreement); Ascentage Pharma Group Corporation Ltd. (amendment to license agreement); Talley Photo+graphics (establishing a contract); A2 Laboratory (purchase agreement); Avicenna Medical Systems Inc. (authorization to transact for programming services); Exo Dynamics LLC and OncoFusion Therapeutics (lease agreements for Venture Accelerator firms at the North Campus Research Complex).

As an example of these items, disclosure of the lease agreements with Exo Dynamics and OncoFusion Therapeutics were triggered because university employees have ownership stakes in those firms. [.pdf of lease agreement spreadsheet] UM’s Venture Accelerator is a business incubator that opened in January 2011 at the North Campus Research Complex (NCRC), the former Pfizer site.

There was no discussion on any of these items, which were authorized with one unanimous vote.

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

The new location will be at the university’s Varsity Drive building (3600 Varsity Drive, off of Ellsworth Road), where about 71,000 square feet of space will be renovated to accommodate these departments and collections of bones and other objects. The project will be designed by SmithGroupJJR, and is expected to create an average of 63 on-site construction jobs, according to a staff memo.

In presenting the project for approval, Tim Slottow – UM’s chief financial officer – noted that the changes will improve access to the collection, and will include better parking.

This is the second relatively recent relocation to the former University Stores warehouse on Varsity Drive. In late 2008, regents approved a $17.6 million project that included renovating about 46,000 square feet at the Varsity Drive building. That space became home for about 6 million specimens – the majority of the “wet” collection, or specimens stored in glass jars filled with highly combustible ethyl alcohol – from UM’s Museum of Zoology. That collection also was previously housed at the Ruthven Museums building. The Varsity Drive building already houses the UM Herbarium.

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