Shop Talk: Construction Death in Michigan, Big Plans in Arizona, Wright in Minnesota

Construction employee killed: A mechanic working for an elevator company was killed Monday morning when he fell five stories down an empty elevator shaft in a new building at the University of Michigan. According to the Ann Arbor News, the man stepped into the shaft in the seven-story addition to the university’s business-school building about 6:30 a.m. The construction site was subsequently closed while officials investigated the death, the second at a construction site on the campus this year.

Making plans in Tempe: Renovations for some of Arizona State University’s older buildings are in the offing, thanks to a $200-million construction fund that is part of a new $1-billion spending plan for Arizona’s three public universities. According to the East Valley Tribune, 17 buildings on the university’s main campus, in Tempe, need major work, with the most costly project being a $23-million overhaul of the 1964 Durham Language & Literature Building.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s only gas station, in Cloquet, Minn., turns 50 this year. (Image from Cloquet, Minn., Chamber of Commerce and Tourism)

Gas-station scholarship: A symposium Thursday at Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College, in Cloquet, Minn., will be devoted to the town’s famous R.W. Lindholm Service Station, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The station, which is still selling gas, turns 50 this year. The station’s owners have recently spent $150,000 sprucing the place up, according to an article in Sunday’s Dululth News Tribune.