There are two ways to look at the just-completed four years of renovations at the Alaska State Capitol: Inside and out.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think you\u2019ll notice anything different,\u201d said Pam Varni, executive director of the Legislative Affairs Agency, which oversaw the effort.<\/p>\n
Since 2013, almost $36 million has been spent on renovations to the 85-year-old building. The effort was intended to reinforce the building against earthquakes, make its heating system efficient, and restore it to the way it looked in 1931.<\/p>\n
When the Capitol opens for business at the end of December and the start of January, people walking its halls will be hard-pressed to tell what was done.<\/p>\n
Jeff Goodell has been the building manager of the Alaska Capitol since 2014, and he\u2019s been the renovation\u2019s project manager.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust recently, I had the House Rules chair (Rep. Gabrielle LeDoux, R-Anchorage), and I had taken her into one of the suites, and she said, \u2018Well, what was it you did in here? It all looks the same,\u2019\u201d Goodell remembered.<\/p>\n
He had to explain to her that a few months before, the entire floor was gutted. There were no rooms, fittings or walls, just open air marred by concrete columns.<\/p>\n
The walls might be a few inches thicker now than they were before \u2014 thank insulation for that \u2014 but few people will notice the difference. More are likely to notice the change in the exterior.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt looks entirely different from the outside,\u201d Goodell said. <\/p>\n
The renovation removed the building\u2019s old red-yellow brick and replaced it with darker masonry more resistant to rain and moisture. There\u2019s fresh copper cladding and clean stonework throughout its facade. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf you look at the building from the outside, you should notice quite a bit of difference,\u201d Goodell said.<\/p>\n
If you haven\u2019t noticed, don\u2019t worry \u2014 the windows, stonework and brick were deliberately chosen to match patterns and colors from the existing building as closely as possible. <\/p>\n
Wayne Jensen is the architect behind the renovation, and he says most of the big changes in the past four years have been to the building\u2019s concrete skeleton. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s quite a bit of work you can\u2019t see,\u201d Jensen said. \u201cYou can\u2019t see any of the structural work; it\u2019s all buried in the walls.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the Federal and Territorial Building opened in 1931, it included federal offices, a post office, the territorial governor\u2019s offices and the state museum. By the time Alaska became a state, the 90,000 square-foot building had been consumed by government offices.<\/p>\n
It cost $1 million and took 18 months to construct, and when built, it consisted of a concrete skeleton covered by a skin of brick, limestone and terra cotta.<\/p>\n
By the turn of the 21st century, the building was showing its age, and there were extensive talks about replacing the Capitol with a new building on Telegraph Hill.<\/p>\n
After a final design was selected \u2014 and loudly rejected by the state\u2019s residents \u2014 the existing capitol\u2019s problems became a critical issue. Moisture had seeped into its walls, and its masonry was decaying.<\/p>\n
The Alaska Legislature started setting aside renovation money in 2006, and the first contract was awarded to Jensen, Yorba, Lott (Jensen\u2019s firm). The first construction contract came in 2013.<\/p>\n
From the summer of 2013 through the end of December 2016, work progressed in a regular pattern: Contractors would set up shop once the Legislature adjourned for the summer, then take down their equipment each December and January.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe hardest part, really, was the fact that it was a three-year deal,\u201d Goodell said. \u201cMobilization and demobilization is very expensive, and it\u2019s just problematic from a management standpoint.\u201d<\/p>\n
Goodell has worked in Juneau\u2019s construction industry since 1988, and he\u2019s never had a project like this one.<\/p>\n
The building\u2019s original skeleton consisted of concrete columns. In an earthquake, those columns might buckle, collapsing the Capitol. During the renovation, workers installed concrete walls to join the columns, stiffening the building\u2019s structure. They also braced the building\u2019s foundation.<\/p>\n
To do that, they had to crawl into the muck beneath the building. In 2013, they exavated 66 dump-truck loads of glacial till, allowing space for future work. It was nasty, mucky work \u2014 and hot, since the building\u2019s steam heat wasn\u2019t replaced with a more efficient system until 2014.<\/p>\n
In addition to the structural work, the renovation added six new rooms to the capitol \u2014 two each on the third, fourth and fifth floors \u2014 and even reinforced the marble columns on the building\u2019s portico.<\/p>\n
Some work remains to be done, Jensen said, but the unfinished items aren\u2019t significant and should be cleared off the checklist without too much trouble next summer.<\/p>\n
The state of Alaska paid for most of the project \u2014 the Juneau Community Foundation added about $1 million \u2014 and Goodell thinks the state\u2019s residents have gotten the worth of their money.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think so, yes, and I hope the residents of the state feel the same way,\u201d he said. \u201cThis building was in disrepair, things were falling off, and now it\u2019s a thing of real beauty.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There are two ways to look at the just-completed four years of renovations at the Alaska State Capitol: Inside and out. \u201cI don\u2019t think you\u2019ll notice anything different,\u201d said Pam Varni, executive director of the Legislative Affairs Agency, which oversaw the effort. Since 2013, almost $36 million has been spent on renovations to the 85-year-old […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":426,"featured_media":16932,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[34,75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-16931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-alaska-legislature","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/426"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16931"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=16931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}