CHEYENNE – The nearly $300 million Wyoming Capitol Square Project is wrapping up and government agencies are making their way into their new digs after years in temporary office space around Cheyenne.
Consultants and project managers met with the Legislature’s Capitol Building Restoration Oversight Group on Wednesday to give their final reports on the four-year construction project.
The Oversight Group itself was meeting for the last time before the opening of the Capitol on Wyoming Statehood Day, July 10. Gov. Mark Gordon, who chaired the meeting, said he was pleased the project was nearly done and there had been no major cost overruns.
Work on the project involved the restoration of the Capitol, the adjacent Herschler Building and the space between the two buildings.
Mike O’Donnell, project coordinator, said the Capitol will be much more open and accessible by the public than it has been in the past.
“We have returned large spaces inside the Capitol back to the public,” he said. “There are fewer offices in the Capitol and there’s also a lot more what’s called ‘core,’ which is restrooms, electrical, mechanical, elevators … that was office space or meeting space previously.”
House Speaker Steve Harshman, R-Casper, said there is much to the project that visitor’s won’t notice on first glance.
“They’ll be walking on top of it when they’re on the garden level,” he said. “It’s really all the new foundation and utilities.”
The new working environment may improve the work of the Legislature, said Rep. Cathy Connolly, D-Laramie.
“Doing the public’s work and doing it as well as possible is motivated in part by the physical space that we’re in,” she said.
The Capitol Building Restoration Oversight Group met for a final time Wednesday to tie a bow on the project ahead of the grand reopening of the State Capitol on Wyoming’s Statehood Day, July 10th.
