Interlochen Center for the Arts to tear down lodge once named for Jeffrey Epstein

FOX 2 - The elite northern Michigan summer arts camp and boarding school with connections to Jeffrey Epstein has announced it is tearing down a lodge once named after him.

The backstory:

The Interlochen Center of the Arts said this week that it will demolish the Green Lake Lodge - formerly known as the Jeffery E. Epstein Scholarship Lodge. The recently board of trustees approved the plan but the timeline has not been revealed yet.

He was accused of meeting at least two of his victims at Interlochen.

Epstein attended the Interlochen Arts Camp in 1967 as a teenager, and donated more than $400,000 to the school between 1990 to 2003, including $200,000 for the construction of the lodge.

"The 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," Interlochen 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."

In 2008 the school changed the name of the lodge once Epstein's crimes came to light. The lodge was built on the shores of Green Lake which was used by donors as well as Epstein himself, to stay.

After Epstein’s 2009 criminal conviction, Interlochen investigated Esptein's past at the school and said it found no evidence he committed crimes. In 2019 a second internal investigation was held where the school said no evidence was discovered.

According to NPR and documents held by the U.S. Department of Justice show Epstein and accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell met alone with one student at the lodge — something that as adult, she viewed as "the beginning of ‘grooming behavior.’"

Interlochen Public Radio reported that the school is also awaiting the results of an independent, external review of historical abuse allegations against faculty who were at Interlochen in the 1960s and 70s.