For Immediate Release: June 1, 2007
State of Minnesota Collocates Two Critical Agencies - Departments of Agriculture and Health Share New Orville L. Freeman Building
HGASaint Paul, MN - Two dynamic state agencies at the forefront of maintaining the health of Minnesota's residents and the state's thriving agricultural industry have been collocated into one specially designed, highly secure and energy-efficient building near the Minnesota State Capitol.
The 325,000-square-foot Orville L. Freeman Building, named for the former Minnesota Governor who also served as the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture from 1961-69, is the new home of the Minnesota Department of Agriculture and the Minnesota Department of Health. The co-location of the two agencies into one office building, further enhanced by the addition of an adjacent laboratory building shared by the departments, puts Minnesota at the national forefront of public health and food safety.
Pickard Chilton of New Haven, Connecticut, designed the building with HGA Architects and Engineers, as architect-of-record and engineer-of-record. HGA has extensive experience in the Minnesota State Capitol Area where the Freeman Building is located. Additional HGA projects in the district include the Minnesota Department of Revenue, Minnesota Retirement Systems Building and Minnesota History Center. HGA has also completed strategic planning and predesign work for a number of state agencies, including the Department of Health. Pickard Chilton Principal Jon Pickard formerly worked with Cesar Pelli and Associates, New Haven, on Minneapolis' Wells Fargo Building and the Petronas Towers in Malaysia.
Backed by this architectural pedigree, HGA implemented Pickard Chilton's design for the Freeman Building, which sensitively and aesthetically reflects the enduring architectural character of the Capitol Area, as mandated by the Capitol Area Planning Board.
"The Capitol Planning Guidelines allows architects design flexibility, while clearly preserving a sense of civic coherence," says Jon Pickard. "The Orville L. Freeman Building endeavors to respect the classical traditions of this important precinct."
The Freeman Building, confirms Rebecca Greco, principal, HGA, "is timeless and enduring in its architectural qualities, while presenting a warmth and openness to the public."
Clad in Winona limestone, the building projects a timeless quality and responds to its context through its windows, proportion and scale. The building's grand civic loggia along Robert Street, constructed of stone, steel and high-performance glass, also promotes active pedestrian use as it invites passersby to look inside.
Vertical circulation inside the loggia animates the glass wall as employees walk up and down, and meet and talk on the stairs. A modern stone rotunda, located at the south end of the loggia, demarcates the building's single lobby entrance. Between the entrances to the office and laboratory buildings, Columbus Street was closed to create an urban plaza linking the two structures.
The five-story building is connected via skyway to the new HGA-designed laboratory building, bringing a heightened level of security and immediacy to everyday policy decision-making and crisis management which become of vital importance during catastrophic events.
"Where previously the Agriculture people had to drive across town to meet with the Health people, and vice versa, we can now walk across the hall to share information," says Doug Spanier, policy analyst, Minnesota Department of Agriculture, and project manager for the Department of Agriculture on the Freeman Building. "In addition, the new lab provides us with a quicker response time. So the possibilities for collaboration between our two departments will only get better as time goes on."
The Freeman Building also integrates sustainable-design strategies that significantly reduce energy costs, provides an innovative daylight-filled open-office environment for the two departments' 700 employees and streamlines the public's access to administration and services. At the same time, the building securely protects the sensitive and critical work that occurs inside, with some areas requiring two to three levels of card access.
Supporting Co-location through Design. The idea to collocate, not merge, the Health and Agriculture departments originated several years ago, "as a way of sharing intellectual resources and expertise, while cutting costs and increasing efficiency," says Glenn Metz, architect, Minnesota State Architect's Office, Department of Administration. As the State's project manager for the building, Metz was charged with ensuring the Freeman Building adhered to State standards and the agencies' requirements. The two agencies were in need of administrative offices that met their individual space and technology needs.
"The Agricultural agency was in a rental building; Health was in several different buildings scattered around the Twin Cities," Metz explains. "Part of the reason to construct a new office building was to consolidate these agencies and get them into new buildings that support today's technology."
The St. Paul Port Authority owns the Freeman Building and leases it to the State of Minnesota under a lease-to-own arrangement. "By putting the agencies side by side, we would also create important synergy, as agriculture works with health of animals and plants, and Health works with health of humans," Metz adds. "As we see with avian flu, they often cross."
In other words, before the onset of such critical, international diseases such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad-cow disease) and avian influenza (bird flu), the State of Minnesota was already planning to collocate its Agriculture and Health departments to better facilitate collaboration between the two agencies. "The plan to put them together and link them to the laboratory building was a great increase in efficiency," Metz says.
To provide a cost-effective and productive workplace for the Agriculture and Health employees, the design is an open, flexible building that meets the agencies' specific needs. In addition to Capitol Area Planning Board aesthetic guidelines and building setbacks for new structures, there are height restrictions to avoid interference with the historic Cass Gilbert-designed State Capitol. In adherence to those restrictions, the Freeman Building has only five stories and large floor plates.
The challenge became how to modulate that volume of space so employees didn-t feel like they were working in a vast warehouse. The architectural solution was to introduce a more human scale to each floor by dividing the massive space into three "neighborhoods," and separating them with two, five-story atria that ensure every workstation is within 45 feet of natural daylight. The design brings in natural light, creating an attractive interior environment. By introducing the light wells, the space has the planning efficiency and flexibility of a large floor plate though it feels smaller by dividing it into communities.
The Department of Health is located in the north and center pods, while the Department of Agriculture is located in the south pod; both share space in the middle. The departments share server rooms, software and telecom/mechanical closets; the lobby and security badge operations; a cafe, storage, library and video conferencing, and conference, training, break and mail rooms.
"One of our intentions was to figure out where the two departments could work together and share costs," Spanier says. "But the main thing, since the Department of Agriculture is the smaller of the two entities, was to maintain our separate identity."
User Friendly and Sustainable. The two departments also wanted a building that was "employee friendly," Spanier continues. The abundance of natural light available to cubicle workstations, the grouping of enclosed offices in the center of each floor, light-filled stairwells that encourage interaction, and the ready availability of such amenity spaces as huddle rooms, conference rooms and copy areas meet employee needs while creating a cost-effective open-office environment.
"Any new corporate office environment is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for an organization to have their facilities come into alignment with business strategies," Greco says. "For this government client, the opportunities for co-location were intriguing. But they were also interested in the same things a corporate user would be, such as using space efficiently through an open-office environment. That meant bringing closed offices off the exterior walls and putting them at the center of each pod, providing amenity spaces that encourage interaction, and lots of natural light throughout the building."
Spanier adds that, at the same time "we wanted the building to be more secure for the employees, while more efficient for the public." In the Department of Agriculture's old building, customers had to travel throughout four different floors to take tests, or deliver, pick up and pay for lab materials. "After 9/11, having people wandering around the building was no longer advisable," Spanier says. In the Freeman Building, the departments' administrative functions that deal directly with the public are grouped on the first floor near the lobby, to keep the public away from the building's more secure areas.
Because the Minnesota State Legislature also now mandates that all new state buildings be constructed as "long-life buildings," the Freeman Building is designed with 100 years in mind. The building's uses may change, but the design allows for changes long into the future.
In addition, the Legislature mandates that all new buildings perform at a level 30 percent better than energy code. The Freeman Building incorporates multiple, interlocking sustainable-design strategies that will allow it to perform at 40 percent better than code.
The Weidt Group, Minnetonka, Minnesota, advised the design team on the incorporation of the green strategies in compliance with the State's new Buildings, Benchmarks %26 Beyond (B3) Project, the State of
Minnesota Sustainable Building Guidelines (MSBG), and the national LEED green-building rating system, administered by the U.S. Green Building Council. The Weidt Group also conducted energy modeling for the building, which was funded by Xcel Energy.
The Freeman Building actually served as a pilot project for the new B3 program. HGA and the design team and owner selected Bundle 3 in the B3 program, which has 27 sustainable-design strategies. After further refinement and evaluation, the team implemented 22 of the strategies, thus reducing the building's atmospheric pollution by 3.5 million pounds per year of CO2 and other particulates.
The 22 strategies included low-e clear glazing; R-30 roof insulation and R-16 wall insulation; occupancy sensor light controls in private offices, conference and break rooms, restrooms and storage areas; central EMS light sweeps in circulation and open offices after hours; indirect lighting in open offices; premium-efficiency supply and return fan motors and pump motors; and variable frequency drives on supply and return fans, and heating and cooling pumps.
In addition, the building exceeds the B3 and LEED guidelines for providing employees with daylight and views. "The architects were actually in a unique bind with this building due to the height restrictions and thus the larger floor plates," says David A. Eijadi, principal, The Weidt Group. "But because of the building's light slots to the west and the glazed walls of the atriums, people can look through their glass-ended cubicles through the building and to the outside. That was really heavy lifting on the part of the architects, and the result is terrific."
:: View Minnesota Departments of Agriculture and Health Orville L. Freeman Office Building
:: View Minnesota Departments of Agriculture and Health Laboratory Building
HGA Contact: Julie Luers (612) 758-4000 e-mail JLuers@hga.com
Media Contact: Susan Evans, Evans Larson (612) 338-6999 e-mail susan@evanslarson.com