Gundlach Champion Inc. announced the company won an award for the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community’s Marquette Casino remodel and expansion. (Photo courtesy of GCI)

IRON MOUNTAIN — Gundlach Champion Inc. announced the company won the 2021 AGC Michigan Build Michigan Award in the Design Build Category for the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community’s Marquette Casino remodel and expansion project.

The Build Michigan Award “recognizes outstanding Michigan construction projects that best represent what the AGC membership has to offer,” officials said in the announcement. “Winning projects present good management skills, imagination, perseverance under unusual and challenging circumstances, and innovative construction techniques.”

The Keweenaw Bay Indian Community contracted Gundlach Champion to build the expansion of the casino’s gaming operations. Together KBIC and GCI worked through multiple design considerations, major site utility challenges, and budget constraints to develop a strategy to construct this modern facility, officials said.

The addition, at 67,000 square feet, includes:

≤ A 1,200-seat event center

≤ A gaming floor with 750 slot machines and game tables

≤ A restaurant, lounge, and quick service grill

≤ Utility upgrades

Gundlach Champion Inc. is the “marriage of two of the nation’s most storied and inventive” firms: Herman Gundlach, Inc. founded in 1898, and Champion, Inc. founded in 1921, according to the announcement. For over a century, GCI has been providing preconstruction and project delivery systems to the commercial, educational, health care, industrial, and public facilities markets throughout the Upper Peninsula and the Midwest.