Capitol improvements: Giant 4-year project getting down to wire

Well, at least the fire alarms are ready.

The Utah State Capitol is scheduled to reopen in just over a month, but during a tour Wednesday there still seems to be an endless amount of work to do before government officials can return.

Hundreds of workers throughout the building are painting walls, laying carpet, fixing tiles, installing lights and doing countless other jobs as the fire alarm goes off midafternoon with a piercing sound that permeates the building's granite walls.

David Hart, head of the Capitol Preservation Board that's overseeing the more than $200 million project that began in 2004, just smiles. It's a successful test of one of the many systems that need to be up and running soon.

"We're all pretty nervous about everything right now," Hart said.

It's not the dusty tarps, rolls of carpet yet to be laid, or rooms empty of furnishings that worry him, however. It's whether everything from old-fashioned, glass-walled elevators to high-tech televisions will work after a massive renovation.

"A lot of what you see now is just debris," Hart said, promising cleanup crews are already at work in parts of the building first opened to the public some six decades ago. "It's what you can't see that's the problem."

Electrical and other updates — including that fire alarm system — are hidden behind resurfaced walls and the centerpiece of the project, a series of "shock-absorbers" designed to protect the Capitol in an earthquake, are beneath the multi-ton structure.

But despite his jitters as the Jan. 4 date for the Capitol's re-dedication ceremony nears, Hart said the building will be ready to welcome back Utahns after being closed to the public for nearly four years.

"Parts of it probably won't be complete," Hart said. "For instance, with the snow the landscaping will be tough." And the two pairs of lions that used to grace the east and west entrances won't be replaced with new marble versions until sometime next year.

State workers begin moving in even sooner, on Dec. 4. The real test, Hart said, will be three days later, when the House and Senate are scheduled to move from the west building of the Capitol Complex.

The 2008 Legislature will meet in the Capitol. For the past three years, lawmakers have met in cramped quarters in the west building. Some of their offices in the Capitol, though, now are located in former bathrooms.

By the end of the month, all government officials should be back in the Capitol. Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and his staff will be the last to leave, departing from the east building of the complex on Dec. 28.