Majestic, ornate and showing its age

01/16/2006

BY BILL SALISBURY
Pioneer Press

Plaster walls are cracking, the paint is peeling and visitors are sometimes warned to watch where they walk. But bringing Minnesota’s 101-year-old Capitol up to snuff will be an expensive proposition.

“The Capitol is the finest public building in Minnesota and, in my opinion, the most beautiful state capitol in the nation, and THE CEILING IS FALLING DOWN!” says Rep. Matt Dean, a first-term Republican from Dellwood.

Dean, the only architect in the Legislature, recalled last week that he was astounded when he arrived at the Capitol in 2005 to discover large cracks in the plaster in the third-floor ceiling, peeling paint in the rotunda, sections of hallways roped off to the public and “watch your step” warning signs.

He concluded that architect Cass Gilbert’s masterwork wasn’t getting the attention it deserves. After spending his first year in the House learning the legislative ropes, he has decided to take the lead this year in trying to persuade his colleagues to cough up the money needed to renovate the massive marble and granite Renaissance palace overlooking downtown St. Paul.

“It’s 100 years old, and it’s showing its age,” Dean said.

When the Capitol first opened Jan. 2, 1905, thousands of Minnesotans swarmed through the building to view the soaring rotunda, colossal stone columns, historic paintings and murals, and ornate ironwork.

“They must have had a great feeling of pride that Minnesota could produce a building equal to any in the United States,” said Carolyn Kompelien, the Minnesota Historical Society’s Capitol site manager. The lavishly decorated structure symbolized the transformation of a frontier outpost into a civilized state.

A century later, the deterioration of the Capitol raises the question of whether Minnesotans still value their most famous public building as much as they once did.

“I think the pride is still there, but nobody has the time to think about it,” Kompelien said. “We’ve taken it for granted.”
Fixing up the Statehouse will not be cheap. The Capitol Area Architectural and Planning Board estimates it would cost $79 million over six to eight years to restore the building’s interior. Its plan calls for repairing or replacing its aging heating and cooling systems; upgrading its electrical service; meeting fire, safety and accessibility standards; increasing security; and restoring deteriorating plaster, paint and ornamental work to its original appearance.

The board recommended doing the work in three phases. It has asked Gov. Tim Pawlenty and the 2006 Legislature for $26.4 million for the first 18-month phase to renovate the Capitol’s east wing. It is seeking to put the proposal in this year’s bonding bill, the measure that authorizes borrowing money through the sale of state-backed bonds to investors to finance construction projects.

If the first phase is approved this year, the planning board intends to request money to restore the west wing in 2008-09 and the north corridor in 2010-11.

The planning board has been seeking the Capitol renovation money for five years, with little success.

But Paul Mandell, the board’s principal planner, is optimistic that lawmakers will fund the project this year. After last year’s Capitol centennial celebration, it has more public support than ever, he said. About 269,000 people visited the Capitol in 2005, and the historical society’s centennial events attracted 130,000. Many of them saw firsthand the peeling paint, cracked plaster and other signs of deterioration.

For the first time in memory, many Minnesotans were asking their legislators, “What are you going to do about the Capitol?” Mandell said. He’s counting on that public support to move the project forward.

“If it doesn’t happen this year, we don’t see it happening,” he said.

The project has something else unusual going for it: a legislative champion in Dean.

Not since former Sen. Don Moe of St. Paul led a crusade to restore the Capitol’s public spaces in the 1980s has a legislator assumed the role of chief advocate for the building. Over several years, Moe led the charge to restore the House and Senate chambers to their original appearances, create new hearing rooms and renovate old ones, fix the skylights, remove temporary offices from public corridors, and repair the dome.

In all, the Legislature spent about $40 million over 20 years for those projects plus stabilizing the building, repairing its exterior and plugging leaks in the roof.

“We thought it was a good investment,” Moe said last week.

As an architect, Dean said, it was natural for him to take on the task of leading the charge for the Capitol.
He offered three reasons lawmakers haven’t done more to maintain the building.

First, he said, they practically live in it during legislative sessions, and like homeowners, “you tend to put off maintaining your own home.”

Next, he said, legislators from outside the capital city see it as a local St. Paul project and not a statewide project.
Finally, he said, legislators don’t want to appear to be spending money on themselves.

But he called the building Minnesota’s most famous symbol and said he will try to persuade his colleagues that the “way we show stewardship in managing this state asset is an indicator of how we’re managing the state as a whole.”

The Capitol will compete for funding with hundreds of other construction projects. Legislative leaders expect to authorize borrowing between $700 million and $965 million for capital improvements. Those amounts would provide only about $1 for every $3 requested for building projects.

The chairmen of the House and Senate capital investment committees, which will draft the bonding bill, are not sold on the Capitol renovation plan.

“It could happen,” said the chairman of the House panel, Rep. Dan Dorman, R-Albert Lea. “I want to be careful about how we proceed, but we’ve got to take care of our Capitol building.”

His Senate counterpart, Keith Langseth, DFL-Glyndon, questioned whether the proposed repairs are critical at this time.
“We’re too early in the game,” he said. “I don’t think they can make the case that there’s a dire situation where things are falling down.”

The proposal will get an early test Tuesday, when Pawlenty announces his capital budget request. If the governor includes funding for the Capitol, it would have a much better chance of winning legislative approval. Governors traditionally get most of what they want in the bonding bill.

Nine years in the making, the Capitol was completed in 1905 at a cost of $4.5 million.

Asked if the $79 million price tag for its renovation seemed high, Dean said the replacement cost would exceed $900 million, “and we couldn’t completely replace it because the craftsmanship that went into it isn’t available now.”

Other states paid far more to renovate their capitols, Mandell said. For instance, Wisconsin spent $145 million, Utah $220 million and Texas $287 million to fix up their statehouses in recent years.

Dean is confident the public will support the project.

“People identify the Capitol as their building. It should be an easy sell,” he said.

Areas near a skylight on the Capitol’s third floor are being repaired. At left in the photo, the ceiling is plastered and primed for repainting. The squared-off patches on the right will be used to copy the pattern to the repaired area.

Rep. Matt Dean, an architect and legislator from Dellwood, says “the most beautiful state capitol in the nation” isn’t getting the preservation efforts it deserves. He is pushing his colleagues to support a renovation.