“We’re very excited about the award,” said Karen Zelt, spokeswoman for the MSU Physical Plant. “It’s representative of the teamwork that did take place. It was team MSU at its best.”

The two-year, $42.5 million project is complete, except for some landscaping and planned one-lane closures this fall for pavement, she said. The project has accomplished all the partners set out to do, Zelt said.

“It really is a great benefit to MSU’s safety (and) mobility,” she said. “It looks great, in my opinion.”

Michigan is the first state to receive three NPHQ awards in one year. The other awards were given for a reconstruction and streetscape project in Houghton, Mich., and Michigan’s Construction Quality Partnership, a workforce training organization.

“No other state has won three gold awards in one year,” Templeton said in a press release.

By creating the underpass, traffic in the area no longer is plagued by delays and there is better access to campus
from the commuter lot, Kari Arend, a spokeswoman for MDOT, said.

“By removing that crossing and raising it, it eliminated that conflict point between train traffic and car and pedestrian traffic,” she said.

The partnership of organizations working on the construction, planning and design was essential to the success of the project, Arend said. The patience of motorists trying to access campus during the construction also is appreciated by all involved, she said.

“It was over a year where this part of the road was shut down and people had to find different routes,” she said.
Now that the project is over, all parties are happy with the outcome, Arend said.
“It’s a nice entry and gateway to campus,” she said.