Talk:Hennepin County Government Center

Notable Legal actions - really?

The one about ex-Sen. Larry Craig: all that took place in the building was that his mailed-in citation & fine payment was received in the mailroom in the basement. Is that sufficient to include it here? Maybe include mention of his appeal to change his guilty plea after it became public -- at least that was a hearing held in the building, and a lawyer for him (but not himself) did appear in the building. T-bonham (talk) 07:59, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

much missing

Having worked in this building for many years, there's a whole lot missing from this article: There were significant mistakes by the architect:

• Being from California, the architect apparently thought single-pane, non-thermal glass was sufficient for Minnesota winters. It wasn't. The heating/AC bill for this huge 24-story expanse of windows was horrendous for the first few years, until all these windows were replaced. In the winter, frost built up on the inside of the window walls. Early on, there were reports of repeated layers of this frost building up into ice patches on the inside -- in warm spells, this would melt enough to come off the window and crash down onto the PSL floor many stories below. Minnesotans are used to sleet falling in winter -- but not indoors! They had to add special equipment to adjust the humidity to counteract this. All this on top of big cost overruns from the architects construction budget.

• The elevators don't go all the way to the bottom, so everyone has to climb 2 flights of stairs to get to the main floor level. In a county building used by many elderly & disabled people. Had to install escalators to correct this. Then another set of short elevators to accommodate people in wheelchairs and walkers.

• The elevators all open into a narrow hallway, which becomes a very congested chokepoint. And there aren't enough of them, which makes congestion (and wait times) worse.

• Insufficient restrooms on the floors. Specifically, the same small restroom area on each floor, whether that floor houses hundreds of clerks or lonely banks of computer mainframes. And the design makes it very hard to change this.

• Stairways are hidden away in the corners, narrow & dark. May not have mattered 40 years ago, but now when people are concerned about energy use (& exercise), it's hard to make use of them -- the building seems designed to make you use elevators for all movement, even just a floor or two.

• Parking is insufficient. Not even enough for the higher levels of workers in the building. They've had to limit that to keep some parking spaces open for the public, and those are high priced. Should have put underground parking on both sides of the building. Again, a California architect probably doesn't understand the value of underground parking in a Minnesota winter.

One good thing about the building -- the design included an automated vertical delivery system to all floors. You put your items into a bin, adjusted the tabs on the bin to the floor you wanted, and just put it into the outgoing space. At the next open spot on the vertical lift, the bin was picked up, carried on, and dropped off at the designated floor. Pretty innovative for 40 years ago. I'm not sure if it's still in use (email & electronic forms took away much of the paperwork of past years), but it worked well for years. Though I heard it took a lot of maintenance. People really complained when it was down, so it must have been used heavily.

There was also a whole lot of newspaper/TV publicity when it was built, about the high cost. And some silly picking out of tiny items (showers in the County Commissioners' offices) to show that taxpayers money was building a luxury building. (Now employees who commute by bike are clamoring for showers to be added to the building.) From 40 years later, it clearly was a wise investment -- and a bargain -- they should have made it 50% larger and reduced the size of the south plaza! T-bonham (talk) 07:59, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

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