Governmental makeover
Arkansas ESD headquarters gutted, rebuilt

By George Waldon

The Two Capitol Mall Building in Little Rock, the 85,000-sq.-ft. home of the Arkansas Employment Security Division, is undergoing a long-overdue facelift after more than 50 years of service.

Bradley McLaurin, project architect with Steelman Connell Moseley Architects
of Little Rock, said the renovation effort on the State Capitol grounds is the governmental version of "This Old House."

"The building had not had any significant improvements made since it was
built 52 years ago," McLaurin said. Kinco Constructors LLC of Little Rock is the $7.8 million project's general contractor.

To facilitate the renovation work, the agency's 250-member staff relocated in March 2002 to temporary quarters in the vacant Baptist Memorial Hospital in North Little Rock.

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Bryan Hicks, ESD's assistant director for management of financial services, said the agency spent less than $100,000 for minor alterations and installation of computer wiring to prepare the temporary space.

Meanwhile, the Two Capitol Mall Building was gutted. Except for load-bearing columns and walls, the only things left inside the building are the elevator shaft and stairwell. All other partitions, acoustic ceiling tiles, plaster and ductwork are gone.

Jose Aldebot, project manager for Kinco, said workers hauled off about 2,000 cu. yds. of debris. Hazardous materials weren't much of a factor in Kinco's demolition work.

"The only concerns were about lead paint," Aldebot added. "But we had a
testing lab clear us before, during and after the demolition." The small amount of asbestos found in the building was removed under a separate $89,000 contract with Little Rock's Engineering Management Corp.

The renovation was then halted for two years as consideration was given to converting ESD's temporary quarters in the old Baptist Memorial Hospital into a permanent location.

"But the agency didn't need the full 220,000 sq. ft. available in the empty city-owned hospital," Aldbeot said. Efforts were unsuccessful to team up with other state agencies to make the radical makeover financially feasible.

With this alternative eliminated, the focus shifted back to the Two Capitol Mall Building. Kinco took over the site in mid-April on a 16-month contract scheduled for completion in September. Construction drawings were completed in May, but key materials for the value-engineered project had to be reworked because of the volatile pricing of metal goods.

"Everything metal had to be re-bid," Aldebot said.

Perhaps the biggest change to the building will be expanding the fifth floor by 14 ft. to the north and 15 ft. to the east and west. The move, requiring the addition of 12 steel columns, will match up the fifth-floor exterior walls with the floors below it.

Though costly, extending the fifth-floor walls was deemed necessary to regain 2,200 sq. ft of lost office space caused by reconfigurations on lower floors.

A new addition to the fifth floor will be a conference room equipped with full audio/video teleconferencing capability, enabling links with ESD's offices around the state.

Once the new fifth-floor shell is complete the building will get a new torch-applied modified bituminous roofing system.

Condensation has been a historical problem in Two Capitol Mall because of an unwanted moisture buildup caused by the building's original awning windows.

"Though stylish in its day as well as functional for helping natural air flow, the old system is an energy bleeder even when the panes are cranked shut," Aldebot said. Replacing this inefficient dinosaur will be a thermally broken, aluminum window frame system with tinted, fixed insulated glass.

Among the challenges in updating Two Capitol Mall is its relatively low floor-to-floor height of 11 ft. and the spacing between its interior load-bearing columns, which is often less than 20 ft.

In some areas, the ceilings will have to be dropped to as low as 7 ft. 8 in. to accommodate duct work never envisioned in the original design of the building. The low points, which will be in the same spot on every floor, will be used as storage space.

Existing columns will be incorporated into a more open floor plan devoid of the maze of individual offices and corridors that had been there before.

Aldebot said about 450 limestone panels were removed from the building's exterior and about 160 pieces, consisting mostly of cap panels, will be reinstalled.

The rest of the removed panels came from the fifth floor and will not be re-used.

"The idea of redoing the limestone on the fifth floor was deemed cost prohibitive as well as logistically troublesome in trying to match the coloring of new and old pieces," McLaurin said.

The new fifth-floor exterior will sport a lightweight insulated metal panel system with an eye toward matching the limestone hues, he added. The limestone exterior, quarried in northern Arkansas, will be cleaned and sealed with water repellent while the joints are re-caulked.

Work to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act includes construction of a handicap-accessible ramp and new stair configuration in both the interior and exterior entryways.

Larger doorways also will supplant the narrower originals. Other ADA issues
will be addressed in the rebuilt bathrooms and elevator systems. The building's dry fire protection system will be replaced with a wet system involving recessed sprinkler heads in the ceiling.

Anita Murrell, director of the Arkansas Building Authority, said the renovation job for ESD is one of nine capital improvement projects involving state-owned office space. The job list adds up to more than $9.8 million in construction work.

The items range as high as the ESD contract to as low as $93,350 to renovate 2,750 sq. ft. for an expansion of the Department of Finance & Administration's field audit office in Fort Smith.

Murrell said the Arkansas Building Authority has $44.8 million in the construction pipeline for eight other state-owned facilities with some office space. The largest of these is the new $18.5 million 81,941-sq.-ft. Public Health Laboratory in Little Rock for the state Department of Health.

A $12.6 million project undergoing plan review is a 58,677-sq.-ft. ammunition supply storage project at Fort Chaffee for the State Military Department.

Other sizable contracts include $5 million to renovate two floors covering 60,323 sq. ft. at the Veteran's Home in Fayetteville for the Department of Veteran's Affairs; $4.1 million to build a 20,438-sq.-ft. visitor's center at Hobbs State Park on Beaver Lake near Rogers for the Department of Parks and Tourism and $2.9 million to renovate the exterior and two floors covering 23,550 sq. ft. at the historic Mosaic Templars Cultural Center in downtown Little Rock for the Department of Heritage.

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For more info about current state-funded building projects in Arkansas, go to: http://www.asbs.com/construction/