JUNEAU — The Capitol will be ready for legislators' Saturday special session, even with construction on a massive, three-year renovation and seismic retrofit project winding down, said Pam Varni, director of the Legislative Affairs Agency.
"Every day there's more and more done," she said.
As Varni spoke, a construction crane lifted a massive piece of cast concrete parapet to the top of the six-story building.
The original parapet for what was then the Federal and Territorial Building was made of terra cotta and removed in the late 1950s or early 1960s because it was degrading. A recent architect report said the terra cotta material, an oven fired clay, was an "ill-advised design." Now it has been replaced and securely attached to the strengthened building.
"It will be nice to have that back on the building," Varni said. While decorative, it also helps protect the building from rain, and its removal is thought to have played a role in the deterioration of the building's sandstone walls.
Some scaffolding outside the building will begin coming down even before legislators arrive, and the remaining work is expected to be completed by mid-November, partway through the scheduled 30-day special session term.
Inside, the House and Senate chambers are ready to go, with microphones, electronic voting boards and Gavel Alaska connections all ready, Varni said.
It had earlier been feared those wouldn't be ready, but Sen. Dennis Egan, D-Juneau, said the special session at the Anchorage Legislative Information Office showed their importance.
"It was horrible, you couldn't hear anything," he said.
Still not available are some committee meeting rooms, and some legislator offices.
"The state of my office is: I don't have one," said Rep. Dan Ortiz, I-Ketchikan, one of a dozen legislators who will be in temporary offices in the Capitol or neighboring buildings.
Much of the work on the Capitol was to the building's outer walls, with the focus of the work rotating around the building in stages. The heating system, which underwent extensive renovations, will be turned on prior to the session beginning, Varni said.
Displaced legislators are from the wing that contains the Senate Finance Committee's top-floor room, a former territorial courtroom and the most prominent of the meeting rooms, which will be unavailable. That committee's meetings have been moved to the Butrovich Room on the second floor.
The two Senate Finance Committee co-chairs, Sens. Pete Kelly, R-Fairbanks, and Anna Fairclough, R-Eagle River, will have their offices relocated to the building's third floor, typically part of the Executive Branch and home of the Office of the Governor.
The two senators, and Reps. Liz Vazquez, R-Anchorage; Jim Colver, R-Palmer; Gabreille LeDoux, R-Anchorage; and Neal Foster, D-Nome, will be located near Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott's offices.
Four House Minority legislators will double up in offices in the Thomas Stewart Building, connected by a sky bridge to the main Capitol building. Reps. Ortiz and Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, D-Sitka, will share one office, while Reps. Andy Josephson and Harriett Drummond, both Anchorage Democrats, will share another.
Two legislators will move to the Terry Miller Building's gym, where offices have been set up. That building, which houses the Legislative Affairs Agency, will be the temporary offices of Reps. Lora Reinbold, R-Eagle River, and Sam Kito, D-Juneau. Kito and Reinbold have known each other since their days at Anchorage's East High School, where they were on cross country and skiing teams together.
During the summer construction season the governor's staff has been working out of a nearby building, but for the special session Walker and Mallott will be back in the Capitol, on the third floor, said Press Secretary Katie Marquette.
Some staff, such as legislative liaison Darwin Peterson, who worked on the Capitol's first floor in his previous job as legislative aide, will join them there as well.
Varni said that while construction workers will be on site well into next month, the noisiest work, such as the jackhammering that made much of the building unusable, has been completed.
But a construction crane towering over the job site will not come down until mid-November, she said.
That means the legislative parking structure is unavailable, but alternative parking has been arranged in a nearby parking building owned by the City and Borough of Juneau.
The city has provided 62 spaces in its structure for the session, Varni said.
Once the crane is down and Dawson Construction clears its staging area, legislator parking will resume at the Capitol itself, she said.
The Legislative Lounge has been ordering food and was to begin providing meals as soon as Thursday for early-arriving legislators.
Correction: An earlier version of this story listed Rep. Dan Ortiz, I-Ketchikan, among Democratic legislators. He is an Independent.