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The U.S. General Services Administration has $3.2 billion in "green building" stimulus funds to distribute, and some of that money will have a ripple effect throughout the Twin Cities' ailing construction and commercial real estate industries.

With the funds, designed to create jobs and bring aging, wasteful federal buildings into a new era of energy efficiency, the GSA is spending $146 million to modernize the massive Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building at Fort Snelling.

The project is a double-barreled benefit to the sputtering local industries. In addition to the construction jobs it will produce, the near-moribund office market in the Twin Cities' south metro will get a significant boost as the GSA seeks to temporarily house the hundreds of federal employees displaced by the renovation work.

"It's certainly going to help the office market," said John McCarthy, a senior vice president and southwest metro office broker for NorthMarq Commercial Real Estate Services. "It does have a ripple effect on rates."

The Bishop Whipple Building is an isolated, seven-story, 617,600-square-foot behemoth highly visible from Hwy. 55 as the road skirts the Fort Snelling federal reservation. Begun in 1966 and dedicated three years later, it houses 1,100 federal employees from such agencies as the Bureau of Veterans Affairs, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and various components of the departments of Defense and Homeland Security.

According to a request for proposals issued by the GSA last year, the emphasis in the renovation will center on updating heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems and replacing plumbing infrastructure, much of which dates to the building's original construction.

"There have been significant changes toward energy efficiency and better performance since those days," said David Wilkinson, public affairs officer for the GSA's regional office in Chicago, which is overseeing the project. "Most of the new HVAC systems today are digital, or have digital components."

He said it's probable that many of the Bishop Whipple Building's HVAC systems are pneumatic rather than digital and so are ripe for significant upgrades.

The Fort Snelling effort is one of the biggest projects on the GSA's national green building renovation list, eclipsed in dollar amount only by the upgrades of the Herbert Hoover and 1800 F Street buildings in Washington, the Byron Rogers Federal Building in Denver and the Peter Rodino Building in Newark, N.J.

Minneapolis-based Ryan Cos. was tapped by the GSA in November to lead the Whipple renovation project. Company officials say they don't want to discuss the project publicly at this point, but a statement issued by Ryan at the time indicated the firm was chosen partly because of its success in managing a complex renovation of the Warren E. Burger Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in St. Paul -- another building of 1960s vintage.

Part of the new project, the statement said, is to look into the possibility of using solar panels to provide at least 30 percent of the energy needed to heat the building's water and to strive for silver-level Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification.

That will be a major challenge with the Bishop Whipple Building. Designed by the celebrated Minnesota firm Cerny Associates, it is a prime example of the austere modernism prevalent in the 1960s, with its blocky exterior, relentless repetition of façade features and ultra-clean lines. Other familiar local buildings designed by the firm bear the same characteristics, including Wilson Library and the Social Sciences Building on the University of Minnesota's West Bank, the Minnesota Centennial Building in St. Paul and the Sheraton Bloomington Hotel.

The extensive upgrades to be tackled by Ryan and myriad subcontractors include the extensive removal of asbestos and other hazardous materials throughout the building and replacing air handlers, fan coil units, boilers and chillers, ductwork, piping systems, restrooms and HVAC control systems. The upgrades represent one of the biggest environmental retrofit projects in state history.

Finding place for workers

The GSA will soon sign a three- to five-year lease for 250,000 square feet of office space for the hundreds of federal workers displaced by the renovation, as well as a longer term lease for about the same amount of space for general government expansion.

The government search is confined to Eden Prairie, Bloomington, Eagan and points in between.

The GSA's Wilkinson said the shorter term lease will probably be awarded next month, with the longer term deal coming in early fall.

That 500,000 square feet of demand represents a huge surge in a local office market mired in the doldrums, NorthMarq's McCarthy said. Anything positive, he said, will be welcome in an area that has a 17.5 percent office vacancy rate.

The government's space requirements are so huge, the universe of possible candidates isn't so big, McCarthy said. Some of the possibilities include the Norman Pointe Office Park in Bloomington; space available at Best Buy Corp.'s headquarters in Richfield; and the vacant former Northwest Airlines headquarters in Eagan, which Delta Airlines put up for sale last fall.

Don Jacobson is a freelance writer in St. Paul.