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Alton and Janice Granger Grace Ferris With Million-Dollar Gift
At the northeast corner of the Ferris State campus,
construction nears completion on a new facility to house and Management,
and Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration programs.
Until recently, the $18 million project has progressed
steadily but anonymously forward, enjoying financial support from
the state of Michigan, the construction and HVACR industries and
the University. Now it has support from a man who is no stranger
to a job site—and now it shares a name with that man.
The Granger Center for Construction and HVACR
is nearing completion, thanks in large part to a gift of $1 million
from Alton and Janice Granger. Alton Granger is chairman of the
Granger Construction Company and has had
a long relationship with Ferris.
“I have a granddaughter who graduated from
the Construction Management program at Ferris and a number of employees
from Ferris, as well,” Granger says. “We
have an outstanding relationship with the University—we’ve
worked with Ferris on a number of projects and have never had a
better relationship with a client.”
Granger says he decided to make the gift in recognition of the strength
of that professional relationship and in support of an industry
that has given him so much.
“Ferris provides great employees to the
construction industry, and we need to support those efforts,”
he says.
Granger graduated from Michigan State University
in 1954 and founded Granger Construction in 1959 with his father
and two brothers. His company has done a wide range of construction
work across the state, but is perhaps best known for its work on
educational facilities.
“We’ve done a lot of work in education—in
K-12 school systems and at Michigan State and Ferris,” he
says. “But we just enjoy building buildings. We’ve done
corporate headquarters, industrial work … it’s not just
the education sector, and the best part is that we never do the
same thing twice.”
He pauses a moment, reflecting on decades spent
doing what he loves.
“God’s been awful good to me,”
he says, smiling. “Maybe He wants me to give a little back.”
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