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The couple who won national plaudits and big business with their conversion of a historic bank in Houghton into a luxury hotel is moving forward on a second, even more ambitious project in another major Upper Peninsula city.
The Vault Marquette, the second luxury hotel in the Upper Peninsula to bear the “Vault” brand, is moving closer to reality now that Houghton-based Braveworks Inc. has closed on financing to bring the historic but long-vacant Savings Bank Building in downtown Marquette back to life.
Jon and Jen Julien, the husband-and-wife owners of Braveworks and its subsidiary construction company, LJJ Construction LLC, plan to break ground before the end of the year and open the 46-room hotel 16 to 18 months later.
LJJ will do the construction work, with the Juliens saying they will rely largely on Marquette-area laborers and subcontractors.
The cost is estimated at $18 million, with $4.6 million of that coming from a revitalization and placemaking grant from the Michigan Economic Development Corp. The project includes rehabbing the building and constructing an addition that will house elevators, make the building accessible to people with disabilities, and contain more hotel rooms.
Jen Julien guesses the least-expensive room in the Vault Marquette will go for $260 a night, with many topping $300.
The Juliens have ambitious plans for the rest of the one-acre site on Front Street overlooking Lake Superior. Phase two will involve the building of a 212-vehicle parking deck, retail space and 25 apartments.
A longer-range vision for a phase three would add another new hotel. Polzin will be the architect there, too, but details such as number of floors and rooms, price range and whether it will be affiliated with another chain are yet to be decided.
The Juliens estimate the cost of those phases over three to five years would be $40 million to $50 million.
Progress on the Vault Marquette wasn’t the only milestone Braveworks recently hit.
Just in time for students to return to class at Michigan Technological University in Houghton this fall, Braveworks opened and fully leased out the third apartment building in a large three-building complex just west of campus known as The Elements.
The three buildings have a total of 416 student residents. The newest building has 95 apartments and 155 students. Rents range from $1,450 a month for a studio to $1,750 for one bedroom to $825 a month per person for four-bedroom, four-bathroom apartments.
The first of the three adjacent buildings in the complex on 2.7 acres opened in 2015 when the Juliens were 25. The second opened in 2018.
The three are on the site of a notorious orphanage that housed children of miners killed in mine accidents whose mothers were then expelled from company housing.
The orphanage was founded by the Rev. F.A. Holtzhausen in 1899 and known for most of its history as the Goodwill Farm orphanage, generally housing about 50 children. Its name was changed to U.P. Kids in 2012, and it moved to a different site in 2013.
That year, the Juliens bought the building and tore it down.
The Juliens, themselves Michigan Tech grads, thought they would meet with resistance from former residents when they announced plans to tear the building down, but they said former orphans they met with told them to take it down as soon as possible, that it had been for most of them a cruel and punishing place.
Eric Waara, Houghton’s city manager, said The Elements’ scale has helped more than just students.
“Their student housing has helped ease the pressure on single-family housing,” he said. “We have a lot of pressure on family housing here, but the supply of single-family homes doesn’t feel as much pressure, now.
“That energy, which they have in spades, that entrepreneurship, that spirit, we’re very happy to have that here,” he said.
The Juliens rent to about 100 additional Tech students in other housing around town.
The Juliens have embarked on another residential project on downtown’s main street of Sheldon, where a former transit station has been vacant since COVID.
They will turn the ground floor into commercial space, then build four stories, containing 16 apartments, above the ground floor. Polzin will be the architect.They are lining up funding and hope to be open in 2026.
The Vault Marquette project follows on the heels of the Juliens’ highly successful remodeling of the Houghton National Bank Building, built in 1887 as a symbol of the new Houghton.
It was made of sandstone and was the first masonry building downtown. Until then, the boom-and-bust cycle of the copper-mining industry, with big swings in the local population, had lent itself to impermanence.
“Nothing equal to their brownstone arched and plate glass front, their massive antique oak counter, doors and wood finish, their long line of side windows, and their great floor space and height of ceiling can be found in any other banking establishment north of Milwaukee,” raved the Portage Lake Mining Gazette newspaper of the grand opening.
By 2016, it had become a Wells Fargo bank. With another Wells Fargo branch a little to the east by campus, the company decided to shut down the downtown bank and put it on the market.
The Juliens put in an offer of $200,000. They said Wells Fargo’s broker in Chicago laughed at the offer, but two years later called them back and accepted it.
That was followed by a total gut job lasting 16 months and costing $4 million.
Before the Vault opened in September 2019, the Juliens let it be known that the former bank building would once again be a symbol of a booming regional economy. They would, they said, charge $200 or more a night for each of the 17 rooms. Many locals thought they were delusional.
Covid hit in March 2020, shutting everything down. But on June 1, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer lifted restrictions and reopened the U.P. Visitors who couldn’t vacation in Europe or Hawaii or elsewhere by plane because of COVID restrictions got in their cars and took the UP off their bucket list.
The Vault was at or near full capacity that summer and for each summer since.
On Oct. 1, Conde Nast Traveler released results of its annual readers’ poll of the top 15 hotels in the Midwest. Three were in Michigan — the J.W. Marriott in Grand Rapids was No. 2, with the Shinola in Detroit No. 4 and the Vault Houghton No. 14.
In June 2023, the northern Michigan tourist web site MyNorth.com named The Vault as the second-best hotel in the Upper Peninsula, ranking behind Mission Point Resort and ahead of the Hotel Iroquois, both on Mackinac Island.
“There were a lot of naysayers. Everyone thought this would fail,” said Waara. Everyone, he says, but him. He says he thought the Juliens had a track record that showed they could pull it off.
Now, he jokes that when he sees a Bentley parked downtown, he assumes the owner is staying at the Vault.
Jen Julien said that the hotel had an occupancy rate of more than 80 percent this past summer season, with rates per room ranging from $280 to $420 a night.
In January 2020, the Juliens announced they had bought the past-its-prime Magnusson Hotel, a few block east on the main downtown street of Sheldon from the Vault, and after a total renovation, it opened in December 2021 as a 117-room Hampton Inn & Suites, an affiliate of Hilton Worldwide.
This past May, Braveworks, which employs more than 100, was honored in East Lansing at the annual 50 Michigan Companies to Watch awards program.
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