Buildings don’t last forever, but the state seems to be facing a particular challenge right now with the number of expensive capital improvement projects on its docket.

The cost of renovating the state capitol building in Topeka continues to grow both because the plans have expanded and because construction costs have risen over the term of the project. At the same time, legislators are looking at options for the deteriorating Docking State Office Building across the street – and all of the options are expensive.

The Department of Administration has recommended that the state spend $77 million to gut the Docking building and rebuild it from the inside. Add to that the unknown cost of finding other office space for about 1,500 employees who would be forced to move out of the building during the renovation.

However, trying to renovate the building while it was occupied would cost an estimated $147 million. The other option is to implode the building – while maintaining its basement heating system, which serves at least six buildings in the capitol complex – and build a new building somewhere else. That would cost from $86 million to $91 million.

This cost will come on top of the capitol renovation price tag, which had crept up to $172.5 million by September and is expected to go higher. The amount the state is faced with spending on the capitol grounds makes the $87 million the Kansas Board of Regents plans to seek this year for deferred maintenance on all of its campuses look pretty reasonable by comparison.

It continues to be troubling that state buildings, whether they are in Topeka or elsewhere, have been allowed to deteriorate to the point that such large injections of money are needed. The Docking building was constructed in 1956 and it seems unreasonable that state officials already are looking at completely gutting the building as the only alternative to tearing it down and starting over. As bad as the maintenance situation is on some state university campuses, most are not dealing with buildings that have deteriorated to that point.

It’s also a valid time to consider whether some of the jobs being done in state office buildings in Topeka might be transferred to facilities in other parts of the state. With the amount of state business and documents handled by computer, could some of those jobs be spread across the state where other cities could benefit from a state payroll?

There are no easy answers to this dilemma, but the magnitude of the capital improvement issues now facing the state makes it important for officials to at least consider some nontraditional approaches to providing needed space for state operations and employees.