A Capitol Choice

From Great Lakes Wiki

Choosing between history and efficiency

By Amanda Peterka

The lights usually dim at 6 p.m. in Michigan’s Capitol. The schedule is meant to reduce energy use in Lansing’s historic centerpiece. But when lawmakers are trying to pinch the state's pennies late into the night during budget crises, the lights can cast their glow long into the night, wasting energy and the very dollars that they are trying to save.

"The last budget crunch – for a week straight the lighting wasn't reduced at all until 1 a.m.," said Steve Benkovsky, the Capitol’s operations manager who oversees the building’s energy production

While the budget outlook doesn’t brighten, spotlights and incandescent bulbs keep the chambers glowing warmly through the night — to mimic the Capitol’s original gas-lit rooms.

But maintaining appearances is costly. In 1879, when the Capitol was built, the state only had to pay electricity bills for a handful of newly invented light bulbs. Michigan now pays up to $30,000 a month in electric bills for lights to replicate that authentic image.

Michigan's need to preserve the statehouse as a historical veneer makes the building a “unique animal” that can't follow the same energy regulations that other state buildings do, Benkovsky said. Even though the governor has charged that all state buildings follow certain rules to curb rising energy costs, the Capitol is treated differently because of its landmark status.

“This challenge is one we share with all historic buildings, and even a lot of museums,” said Kerry Chartkoss, the Capitol historian. “Because we are the state Capitol, it’s always assumed we take the lead on everything, and we believe that. But at the same time, we must weigh that against the preservation of the qualities of the building as a historical national landmark.”

The chief task for the Capitol’s architects is to find the character-defining elements of the building, and then find technology that can be “incorporated into the building without having to destroy what makes that building very special,” said Gene Hopkins, the preservation architect for the Capitol.

And for the 129-year-old structure, it’s the mood created when hanging incandescent bulbs faintly illuminate the nine acres of walls in the building that are painted and then decorated with gold leaf.

“The decorative paint is a hallmark. It’s very specific and beautiful, and lighting affects the way colors look in this building,” Chartkoss said. “Compact fluorescent lights change color balance, and not for the better,” she added, referring to the spiral-like lights that use less energy.

“I think that when people come in and look at the Capitol and see it looking essentially the same [as it did in 1879], I think they feel a sense of history of the state of Michigan connected to the building a way that it’s hard for any of us to articulate,” said state Rep. Mark Meadows, D-Ingham.

But although there’s a delicate balance between energy and history, not everything happening in the Capitol is wasteful.

The ground floor and loading dock area, where no tourists are allowed, have more efficient lighting, and older windows everywhere have been replaced with thermally-efficient double-paned windows with weather stripping to decrease drafts.

“What we’re doing is changing what we can and things that are not part of the historic fabric of the building,” said Chartkoss, the historian.

Many of these things were changed, or at least considered, during a major restoration that from 1989 to 1992 that won a national preservation award. The goal of the renovation was simply to make the building more flexible for new technology.

The restoration worked in vertical spaces between floors so that utilities, wires and cables could be put in and accessed without tearing the walls apart. The job made “modern utilities that are necessary to running the state government as invisible and harmless to the historic fabric of the building as possible,” Chartkoss said.

One way the Capitol has adapted is its lighting schedule. Because lawmakers and visitors are in the building and police never stop patrolling its corridors, lights remain on all the time. However, at 6 p.m. the building’s lighting is cut by 20 percent. By 1 a.m. it is cut by 70 percent. This is done by both dimming some individual lights and shutting off others completely.

Of course, this all depends on how late House and Senate members are in the building.

“Mondays and Fridays are easy, but Tuesday through Thursday is hard because they’re in session,” said Benkovsky, the operations manager. “If they’re going to be late, we put the lights down to 80 percent, but not more until they’re completely out.”

This doesn’t account for the lighting that’s kept on inside the chambers for extended sessions. Aside from the skylight panels and the chandeliers, the chambers also have spotlights shining on lawmakers, and high-wattage lighting for the many cameras taping the sessions.

Not only does this require more, but it also means rooms heat up pretty quickly. In the tiny Senate Approach room, where the budget is hashed out, huge lights are mounted on either side, and chairs are packed in rows in front of lawmakers for the bystanders.

“It uses really high-wattage bulbs that also heat the space up. You can have 19 people in the panel plus bystanders,” Benkovsky said. And in the chambers, “lobbyists fill up the areas and increase the body count, so the temperature changes.”

Although workers cool chambers before meetings, the cooling system only extends to those chambers and to offices. “In the summer, we’re at the mercy of whatever’s coming out of the offices,” Benkovsky said.

But the cooling system in the basement, surrounded by old, crumbling brick walls, is designed for efficiency. Because the basement rooms aren’t big enough for a large system, the building crew got creative. They brought in smaller units and stacked them up.

“It’s staged so that when they come on for cooling, maybe we’re only using three units,” Benkovsky said. “We very rarely go above nine units on and we get the right temperature.”

Older buildings, though, have built-in efficiency because of their designs and materials available when they were built.

A cooling system is inherent in the Capitol’s design. Because it’s made of solid masonry walls, and because there are no large glassy areas exposed to the sun, the building is more able to have a controlled temperature.

“In many ways it has its own climate,” Chartkoss said. “It keeps its humidity and comfort level more than modern buildings, with such a thick skin.”

Meadows, who has worked as an assistant attorney general and now state representative in the Capitol for 29 years, said that that climate can be felt at the end of the day.

“In the chamber itself there’s a natural air-flow built into it,” he said. “I’ve been there all night a number of times, and at a certain time it kind of gets cold in there because the heat goes off.”

All of the units in the basement – heating, cooling, water and electricity – have been replaced within the past 18 years. As parts break down, the most energy efficient ones are bought to replace them. Maintenance workers check the systems periodically and record changes.

Everything is controlled centrally, from hallway lighting to cooling. Employees can’t manually change the air conditioning in their offices – they must request a change. Benkovsky said air-conditioning temperatures in the summer remain between 70 and 76 degrees Fahrenheit.

Lawmakers are responsible for turning off their office lights. Not all of them do.

“A lot will leave their lights on when they leave, but janitors go through and turn them off,” Benkovsky said. “But the majority of people do [turn them off]. It’s how we can tell they’re gone for the day.”

And if lights are left on after the janitors, there are night staffers who can double check.

Government workers are also responsible for turning off their computers when they leave, which took some time to get them to cooperate, Benkovsky said.

Another development that took some time was getting the public to come to terms with the reduced lighting on the outside dome. Two years ago, dome lighting was cut in half. People complained at first, but Benkovsky said he rarely hears any comments now.

Dome lights are further reduced at midnight, along with the lights facing the Blair statue on the Capitol’s front lawn. But there are still four 500-watters that shine up, illuminating the building.

Light bulbs were originally put on the outside of the building in 1905 and were replaced in the 1950s by flood lights – which were actually those used in battleships – shining from the buildings across the street. The building’s current light pattern came during the 1989-1992 restoration.

To Chartkoss, dimming the dome isn’t about the energy savings. “It’s a kind of symbolic thing to show that we understand and are conserving everything that we can,” she said. “Us dimming the lights on the dome at night doesn’t save us hardly anything.”

Meadows said he thinks it’s worth it to keep the dome lit.

“I know it’s an expense, and we may get to the point where we have to pinch pennies so badly that we’re back to oil lamps on the desks,” Meadows said, “but it’s a symbol of no matter how tough the times are, as a people we still have this symbol of our statewide community.”

Go back to the State of Michigan's Energy Efficiency