Minnesota legislators to vote on State Office Building overhaul

A massive renovation of the 90-year-old building that is home to House members' offices is poised to get the final sign-off this week.

The State Office Building has inadequate security. Its plumbing, lighting and air distribution systems are outdated. Hearing rooms get overcrowded, old pipes have led to flooding and accessibility is a problem.

"An unwillingness to address this building has lead us to the point where it's not a safe, functional building as it stands today," said outgoing House Majority Leader Ryan Winkler, DFL-Golden Valley.

Fixing it will be expensive, though the exact dollar figure has not yet been released. And for Democrats, who step into full control of state government in January, spending big to renovate their workplace is politically complicated.

Nonetheless, if the DFL-led House Rules and Legislative Administration Committee votes Wednesday to approve plans, then project construction can move forward, Winkler said. First, the committee will meet Monday to walk through the building's security and infrastructure woes.

Apart from a "rushed and botched renovation" in the mid-1980s, little has been done to the building, Winkler said. State administrators have been pitching a State Office Building renovation for the past decade.

But the vote last year that jumpstarted the work largely flew under the radar, and has Republicans raising concerns about project transparency.

In 2021, lawmakers passed a law creating a Capitol Area building account. It directed the Management and Budget commissioner to deposit certain proceeds into it, without specifying an amount.

The Department of Administration commissioner can use the account to address "critical health, life safety, and security needs of buildings located on the State Capitol complex that were constructed before 1940." It can be used for rehabilitation, renovation and expansion but not for an entire building demolition.

"There's very little vetting and very little transparency on how this is going down," said Deputy Minority Leader Anne Neu Brindley, R-North Branch. "The reality is it authorizes a blank check for the state to issue hundreds of millions of dollars in bonds for the redesign."

She said the process seems to be happening backwards, because the state already granted authority to issue bonds but lawmakers are not finding out about the needs and planned renovations until this week.

"We all agree and recognize that there are problems that need to be fixed," she said. "However, the process for this is really concerning."

After the Legislature created the Capitol Area building account, the Department of Administration contracted with a team of consultants to identify the scope, estimated cost and timeline for a State Office Building renovation. Consultants did a series of workshops with building tenants and facility staff over the summer, Department of Administration spokesman Curtis Yoakum said.

Those workshops led to the creation of preliminary predesign and schematic design documents, which still are drafts pending feedback from building tenants, Yoakum said. The budget for the design scoping phase of the project was $3.65 million, he said.

The last publicly available cost estimate of the full design, construction and other renovation expenses was $288 million, according to a 2020 bonding request from the state Department of Administration. Winkler said he is not sure what the scope of the project was for that figure.

The latest cost estimate could be available Wednesday, he said. He noted the state has a historic $17.6 billion projected budget surplus to help tackle the project.

Major spending could come with political challenges for Democrats. When construction was starting on the $90 million Senate Office Building in 2014, Republicans distributed campaign literature calling it a luxury building. Democrats lost control of the state House to Republicans that year.

Nonetheless, the renovation appears likely to happen.

A series of testifiers will walk through the building's issues at Monday's committee meeting, including former House Sergeant-at-Arms Bob Meyerson.

"It's clearly evident that this building is old and there have been failures," Meyerson said. He pointed to flooding in 2016 from a burst valve, which happened when lawmakers were not in session.

"The failures can have catastrophic impact for the Legislature, House of Representatives and frankly for the other tenants of the building as well, the Secretary of State, the commissions, the revisor [of statutes]," he said. "We have been lucky. And relying on luck is really a poor risk management method."

Meyerson said he's been aware of safety issues at the State Office Building since the mid-1990s when he was a state trooper.

With increased political violence and threats to lawmakers, the need for improved security at the building is critical, Winkler said. "This is not left versus right. This is just a reality."

The State Office Building also is home to public hearing rooms, and there are numerous accessibility issues for the public and employees with disabilities, Minnesota Council on Disability Executive Director David Dively said.

"It was never designed to be a public access facility. It was designed to be an office building, literally," Dively said. "We have a rare opportunity going forward to really make it a place where all people are welcome."

Staff writer Rochelle Olson contributed to this report.