A new kind of chaos takes hold at the Capitol

The usual touring troops of grade-school children won't be on hand for the 2015 session of the Minnesota Legislature. They've been advised to stay away — not because they would see too much rough-and-tumble politics, but because they would see too little of the Capitol itself.

"It would be a good year for shop classes to come, though," the state Senate's Vic Thorstenson quipped last week as he guided me through the hard hat zone.

The Minnesota Legislature is headed for two years that will be like no other biennial cycle in state history. That's not because of the laws that will be made or who will make them. It's because the place where they will be made is also a major construction zone.

Thorstenson, the Senate's project manager, warned me that if I had not been inside the Capitol for a few months, I wouldn't recognize the place. He wasn't kidding.

Lobbyists who work elsewhere between sessions are in for surprises when they return on Jan. 6. They'll find that not only are their favorite rotunda benches unavailable, but the rotunda is, too. It's been sealed shut to the public. If they finagle a peek, as I did, they'll see the statues of Civil War generals eerily shrouded in plastic and blue tape, and L'Étoile du Nord on the rotunda floor buried beneath Masonite panels, tools and blueprint-laden tables.

The spiral staircase to the third-floor room where lobbyists used to stash coats and charge cellphones is closed. So is the room itself. Those who habitually head to Room 123, headquarters of the Senate Finance Committee, will find it inaccessible. It's on the Capitol's east side, which will be off limits all year.

Visitors who think they know where to find their state senators will need to think again. Office assignments have been scrambled. Rooms that previously weren't used as offices now accommodate two or more senators and at least as many staffers. Space for private conversations will be scarce. Committees may still have interns, but no desks at which to seat them.

Capitol comers of all kinds will still be able to retreat to the Rathskeller for refreshment and conversation. But that's all that will be open in the basement, and the lack of space in the rest of the building ensures that the small cafeteria will stay full and impossibly noisy. (There will be no popping in after a Rathskeller stop to say hello to a favorite Capitol journalist. We're all a long hike away in the Centennial Building.)

The governor's office is down Capitol Hill, in the Veterans' Services Building. The attorney general's office is even farther down the hill, in Bremer Tower at 445 Minnesota St.

And bathrooms, including handicapped accessible ones? And space for nursing mothers? Most of the building's public toilets were in the now-gutted east wing. Here's a tip: Check the porte-cochère off Room 15 on the ground floor. Thorstenson said that as of now, the plan is to fill it with portable potties.

I hope that space is enclosed first. It could be drafty if it is not.

It adds up to a test of individual and institutional coping capabilities whose nearest equal in state history occurred on March 1, 1881, when the state's first Capitol burned down four days before the scheduled end of that year's legislative session. Then, the entire operation decamped to a newly built, still unoccupied retail building in downtown St. Paul to complete the session. Thanks in part to a personal donation by Gov. John S. Pillsbury, a new Capitol was ready for use the following year. But it was shortly deemed inadequate, leading to the construction of the 1905 model that's being renovated today.

As late as the 1950s, key bills were hidden in the breast pockets of committee chairmen (they were all men then) and committee meetings were huddles in conference rooms too small to accommodate a crowd. The doors opened a bit in the 1960s, then were flung wide in 1973 by new DFL majorities who had campaigned on more openness in government.

A commitment to functioning in the public's eye is now hard-wired into the Legislature's institutional psyche. It has had far-reaching consequences for facilities. The decision to expand public accommodations in the renovated Capitol and build a new Senate office building are only the latest in a long line of building expenses that can be traced to the vow to be accessible and transparent.

That commitment explains why, in the middle of all the office moves, project planners like Thorstenson took time to assess and beef up the Legislature's broadcast and webcast capabilities. He's looking into stationing more video monitors throughout the Capitol complex, the better to serve displaced Capitol corridor denizens. Care has been taken to keep viewing galleries unimpeded. Arrangements are in the works for the noontime rallies that usually fill the rotunda to assemble on the Capitol's front steps instead — though "Day on the Hill" regulars are also being advised to find assembly space off campus.

It's why the porte-cochère could be temporarily "repurposed."

Thorstenson said a guiding principle not only for the Capitol's new interior design, but also for the temporary arrangements of the next two years, is that "the Capitol should be a place where business occurs, not a museum. We want people to still be able to come and demonstrate and get in the faces of their legislators."