Will Capitol site add a $70M building?

Valentine, R-Orem, stressed that the ideas for the State Office Building were only in preliminary discussions. His opinion was echoed by House Speaker Greg Curtis, R-Sandy, who added that replacing the office building would complete the "Capitol Complex" plan as originally drawn nearly a century ago.

But where Capitol buildings are concerned, sometimes Huntsman and GOP legislative leaders can move quickly — as when they decided last summer to build a new $15 million parking structure east of the Capitol with only a few weeks of public discussion and with only with a college engineering class making the recommendation.

Private offices

When the latest Capitol Hill remodeling is finished, each of the part-time 104 legislators for the first time will have a private office — either in the Capitol itself or in the House and Senate office buildings. The offices won't be large, about 12-by-18 feet is the average, Hart said.

Each office will have a desk, a bookcase, a credenza and a small table with a few chairs around it.

"The offices will be private — not cubicles — where the legislator can have a closed-door meeting with a constituent," said Hart. All of the 29 senators should have private offices by the 2008 Legislature, but 32 of the 75 House members won't have offices until remodeling of the House Office Building is finished sometime late next year.

It's difficult to estimate the cost, through construction and furnishings, of giving each of the 104 legislators their own offices, Hart said.

Remodeling the House and Senate office buildings after the Legislature and executive-branch bosses move back into the Capitol will cost between $5.5 million and $6 million, he said. The temporary House Chamber on the first floor of the West/House building will become an auditorium, while the second-floor Senate chamber will become a large hearing room.

The governor's offices in the East/Senate building and his board room will be turned into three new legislative hearing rooms, Hart said.

All of the new furnishings, both within the Capitol itself and in the soon-to-be-remodeled Senate and House office buildings, will cost just over $3.5 million.

That includes $120,000 to "refurbish" the 28 desks for the senators in the Senate chamber and $225,000 to build 74 new desks for the House floor. The Senate president and House speaker sit at the dais. The old House desks were built a decade ago, and they need to be replaced to better fit the remodeled House Chamber and accommodate new telephones and laptop computers, Hart said.

So it will cost about $10 million to move back into the Capitol and remodel space in the House and Senate office buildings — about $3.5 million more than originally believed.