From Donor Lodge to Demolition Site: Interlochen’s Epstein Problem (5/28/26)

Interlochen Center for the Arts is moving to demolish Green Lake Lodge, a building originally funded by Jeffrey Epstein and once named for him before the school stripped his name from campus after learning of his 2009 criminal conviction. Epstein had attended Interlochen’s summer camp in 1967 and later donated to the institution from 1990 to 2003. The lodge, built along Green Lake, was used to house donors and, at times, Epstein himself. Interlochen says it previously investigated his activities on campus after his first conviction and again after his 2019 arrest, claiming it found no evidence that Epstein committed crimes at the school. Still, the building has become impossible for the institution to separate from Epstein’s legacy, and Interlochen’s board says demolishing it is now the appropriate step.The renewed scrutiny comes after recently released Justice Department files and prior reporting showed Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell met alone with at least one student at the lodge, an encounter the woman later described as the beginning of grooming behavior. Interlochen says it does not allow unsupervised donor-student visits, but that claim only raises more questions about how Epstein and Maxwell ended up alone with a student in the first place. Michigan lawmakers have signaled plans to investigate Epstein’s activities at Interlochen, while the school says it has cooperated with investigators and will respond to oversight bodies as needed. The demolition may remove the physical structure, but it does not erase the larger issue: Epstein was embedded deeply enough in elite institutions that even a children’s arts camp in northern Michigan became part of the long, ugly paper trail.to contact me:[email protected]:Interlochen to demolish lodge tied to Jeffrey Epstein | News | abc12.com