photo by: Mike Yoder

The Robert B. Docking State Office building, 915 SW Harrison St., Topeka.

Topeka — Earlier this week, the state agency known as Alcoholic Beverage Control packed up its furniture and files from the Docking State Office Building in Topeka and relocated to another building a few blocks away.

It was only the most recent state agency to do so, leaving most of the 12-story, 500,000-square-foot office building just west of the Statehouse virtually vacant.

For years, Gov. Sam Brownback’s administration has said the building should be demolished, arguing that it is too old and obsolete, and that the cost of renovating it to modern standards would be too high.

But so far, Kansas lawmakers haven’t been willing to go along with that, citing the high cost of demolition, which would involve relocating a system known as the “power plant” that controls heating and air conditioning for all of the buildings in the Capitol Area Complex, including the Statehouse itself.

photo by: Peter Hancock

Many floors of the Docking State Office Building in Topeka are now vacant as state agencies that once occupied the building have relocated, many into rented space in privately owned office buildings. The Brownback administration says it wants to demolish the building, but legislators have blocked that plan because of the heavy cost.

That means that as the giant office building that was once considered a shining example of the new “Modern Movement” architecture when it was built in the 1950s now sits nearly vacant, threatening to become a piece of state-owned urban blight in downtown Topeka, with no specific plan for what to do with it.

“We put forward a plan this last year and the Legislature didn’t want to do that, so we don’t have a plan that we’ve laid out,” Brownback said during a news conference Friday. “We don’t have one at this point in time.”

The clash between the administration and Legislature over what to do with the Docking Building became so sharp that it led to a legal showdown and a near override of a veto during the 2016 session.

The previous year, lawmakers balked at authorizing funding for the demolition after bids for relocating the power plant came in higher than expected. But the administration went forward anyway, signing a “lease-purchase” agreement for a new power plant site that included the cost of moving it.

When lawmakers returned, they passed a bill in February to cut off funding for that contract.

Brownback vetoed that bill, arguing among other things that it could damage the state’s credit rating by sending a signal to the bond markets that Kansas was willing to cut off funding for previously approved contracts. But the administration then cancelled the contract on its own, resulting in the payment of more than $2 million in penalties.

An effort to override his veto failed in the Legislature, but lawmakers later inserted a proviso in this year’s budget barring the administration from contracting for the demolition without full legislative approval, a proviso that Brownback accepted.

The question of what to do now with the Docking Building likely will be a topic of discussion next week when the Legislature’s Joint Committee on State Buildings and Construction meets for two days to review five-year capital improvement plans for a number of state agencies.

“Demolition of Docking is in our five-year plan, but that doesn’t mean it will happen unless we receive some direction from the Legislature or the administration to either tear down or find another use for it,” said Department of Administration spokesman John Milburn.

But Sen. Marci Francisco, D-Lawrence, who serves on that committee, said she would prefer to find another use for the Docking Building, or at least part of it.

“I would like to see some number of floors renovated, maybe three or five, and the building repurposed for state use,” she said.

The question of what to do with Docking raises another issue that often confounds policy makers: whether it is better to own or rent the space that public agencies need.

According to the leases that have been signed for the agencies moving out of Docking, the state is paying about $15.75 per square foot for the space it rents elsewhere. That’s somewhat less than the $19.40 rate that the Department of Administration charges back to other agencies to account for the cost of occupying state-owned buildings.

But one reason the state’s cost is higher, officials have said, is because there are now fewer agencies paying rent to Administration, primarily because so many have moved out of Docking.

For the last several years, the Docking Building was occupied mainly by two of the largest state agencies: the Department of Revenue and the Department for Children and Families, formerly known as Social and Rehabilitation Services.

Currently, though, Milburn said the only tenants left in Docking today include a small unit of the Kansas Highway Patrol, which operates security for the building, some maintenance staff that operates and maintains the power plant, and a few smaller divisions of the Department of Revenue, including the Secretary’s office.

“Mainly, the mechanical (systems) of the building are the main reasons,” Milburn said. “There are concerns about need for replacement of some exterior walls, the whole glass curtain that goes around the building. Many of the systems have exceeded their normal life expectancy, and chief among them are the electrical systems.”

Officials say the remaining Revenue Department offices will vacate in the coming months, which means only the basement and first floor of the building will be occupied, possibly by the first of next year.