Officials say that by late February/early March, the house, built in 1895, will be sitting on its new foundation around the block at the northeast corner of Forest and Second avenues on a former Wayne State parking lot. Plans to move the structure sparked some backlash from the community last spring, especially after its tenants were told to pack up and leave.

For such a delicate, high-profile undertaking, Wayne State called in the heavyweights: Buffalo, N.Y.-based International Chimney Corp. — the lighthouse-lugging, Guinness World Record-setting subcontractor in charge of the move.

"We hired the A team," said Harry Wyatt, associated vice president of facilities planning and management for Wayne State. "This structure is very important to the university."

The gist of the job is simple: literally lifting a house and moving it. The logistics, though, could make a local preservationist faint. It involves precise excavation, 80 tons of steel and oak cribbing, 18 hydraulic jacks and a lot of complicated calculations to make sure the house stays intact.

The crew at International Chimney isn't nervous, though, said Tyler Finkle, project manager heading up the move. This isn't their first house-hauling rodeo. Teaming with Maryland-based Expert House Movers Inc., the company has executed 14 historic structure relocations, including the Gem Theatre in Detroit, which was moved five blocks in 1997 to make way for Comerica Park. International Chimney might be most well-known for its North Carolina lighthouse move that wrapped up in 1999 days before a major hurricane struck. Its largest move, though, was the $6 million, 7,400-ton haul of an airport terminal in New Jersey in 2001.

"To put it into perspective, this is just a baby," Finkle said, referring to the Mackenzie House.

International Chimney estimates the house to weigh about 500 tons, plus the 80 tons of steel on which it will be moved. The company made that calculation after assessing the materials used to build the house.

Construction of the Queen Anne Revival-style home was completed in 1895. It was built by W.H. Hollands and Sons and designed by architects William Malcomson and William Higginbotham. The original owner was local banker Frank H. Blackman before David Mackenzie, who founded what is now Wayne State, moved there in 1906, according to Preservation Detroit, the nonprofit forced to vacate the house last summer.