Boos for the Big House

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Opinions cover the critical gamut when it comes to North Quad, the 360,000-square-foot dorm-classroom-office building going up on the old Frieze Building–Ann Arbor High School site.

“It has all the negatives the Weill Building has along with the same monumental mind-set,” says Luckenbach, “which makes sense since it’s the same architect [Robert Stern].” But Beckley disagrees. “It’s turning out better than I thought,” he says. “It has some of the same problems as the Weill Building, true, but it solves them better, possibly because Stern was hired after the first architect left.”

Rueter also foresees that North Quad “will be far more successful than the Weill Building. It has a nice termination on Thayer with a nice tower at that end.”

“I’m hopeful it’ll be a success,” says Quinn. “The regents rightly rejected the first design as a bad design, but the second design is better.”

And John Mouat practically raves about the project. “It’s going to be great,” he predicts of North Quad. “It’s a major, important site in town, and this is a good use of the site.”