Interlochen to Raze Epstein Lodge as Michigan Launches Probe

The prestigious Interlochen Center for the Arts in northern Michigan has voted to demolish a campus lodge donated by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, as state lawmakers push for a bipartisan investigation into how the disgraced financier used the elite arts school to gain access to underage victims.

A Symbol Comes Down

The Interlochen Board of Trustees approved a plan to raze Green Lake Lodge — originally named “The Epstein Lodge” after Epstein donated $200,000 for its construction in 1994. The building was renamed in 2009 after Epstein’s first criminal conviction, but the board determined that even the renamed structure had become an untenable symbol.

“Green Lake Lodge has, over time, come to carry associations that are not reflective of who we are as an institution or the values we strive to uphold,” the board said in a statement. “After careful consideration, the Board determined that removing this structure in a safe and timely manner is the right step for Interlochen at this time.”

Epstein’s Decades-Long Ties to Interlochen

Epstein’s connection to Interlochen began in 1967 when he attended the summer camp as a 14-year-old bassoon player. He re-established ties in 1990 and became a major donor, contributing over $400,000 over 13 years. His donation agreement allowed him to use the lodge for up to two weeks each year, and he and Ghislaine Maxwell stayed there during multiple visits to campus in the 1990s, according to NPR.

Epstein was admitted into Interlochen’s President’s Club for high-level donors, whose role included “attending concerts, events and special meetings, identifying prospective students and providing counsel to the president.” He also established a scholarship fund that provided a mechanism for direct contact with recipients.

Victims Speak Out

Court documents and Department of Justice records indicate that Epstein met his first known victim at Interlochen in 1994 when she was 13 years old. A second victim was a 14-year-old student he met in the late 1990s. Both described a similar pattern: Epstein and Maxwell would walk a small Yorkie dog to break the ice with young students, express interest in their artistic aspirations, and dangle financial support for their education.

“Every kindness, every conversation, every moment you thought someone believed in you was calculated,” one anonymous victim told NPR. “When you were no longer useful, you learned that none of it was real.”

Another victim, who testified at Maxwell’s 2021 trial as “Jane Doe,” said she was approached by Maxwell while sitting on a bench eating ice cream with classmates. The pair arranged a meeting with her mother and eventually began a relationship that spanned years of grooming and sexual abuse.

Despite these accounts, Interlochen conducted internal reviews in 2009 and 2019 and found “no reports of misconduct at Interlochen involving Epstein.” The school has invited impacted individuals to speak with an independent investigator as part of an external investigation into historical misconduct.

Michigan Lawmakers Demand Answers

In April 2026, Michigan State Rep. Penelope Tsernoglou (D-East Lansing) introduced House Resolution 284 with bipartisan support to create a select committee to investigate Interlochen’s relationship with Epstein. The committee would have subpoena power and the ability to examine records of any state department or agency.

“To be honest, I was completely shocked when I found out how deeply rooted the apparent connections between Epstein and Interlochen were,” Tsernoglou said. “One cannot help but wonder: did he donate a cabin so that he would have more unfettered, unsupervised access to children?”

Former administrators acknowledged that Interlochen’s open campus culture in the 1990s made it difficult to enforce rules against unsupervised contact between donors and students. Russ McMahon, a former director of major gifts, told NPR: “In hindsight, mistakes may have been made, but it was just out of naivete.”

Institutional Reckoning

The Interlochen story is part of a broader reckoning with Epstein’s network, which included connections to Harvard, MIT, and other prestigious institutions. The Trump administration has released approximately 3.5 million pages of documents, 180,000 photographs, and 2,000 videos related to the Epstein investigation since December 2025, as reported by CBS Detroit.

Current Interlochen President Trey Devey said the school has learned from the experience. “It’s a shame that there are people like Jeffrey Epstein that are manipulating systems and did it on such a pervasive basis and at so many institutions,” he told NPR. “We’ll learn from that — we’ll get better.”

Interlochen has since implemented front gates, 24/7 safety patrols, surveillance cameras, anonymous reporting forms, and policies prohibiting unsupervised contact between donors and students.

What’s Next

The demolition of Green Lake Lodge represents a concrete step by Interlochen to physically remove a symbol of its association with Epstein. But questions remain: What will the Michigan select committee investigation uncover? Are there additional victims who have not yet come forward? And how will the ongoing release of Epstein files affect the investigation?

For the victims, the legacy is complicated. As one anonymous survivor told NPR: “I still love Interlochen. It’s still this magical place where amazing things happen. There are lots of people in this world. There are not that many Jeffreys and Ghislaines.”