The General Assembly finishes its business today, but the new $28 million wing of the House of Delegates building that was supposed to be done before the session started in January is on track to be completed sometime this summer.
“We?re in pretty good shape,” said House Administrator Barbara Oakes. “I expect it?ll take a couple of months” to finish.
“There?s a lot of prettying up to do,” she said, including exterior landscaping, more furniture and final touches on a sophisticated audiovisual system.
There was considerable grumbling from delegates and staff about the incomplete work when the building opened, including central staircases that couldn?t be used until mid-March. “A lot of that really had to do with change,” Oakes said.
Much of the work on the building stopped once the legislative session began so that construction noise wouldn?t disrupt hearings, Oakes said. Even so, a recent session was disturbed by the constant pounding of a machine smoothing asphalt for the installation of paving stones in the shape of the Maryland flag.
“I can barely hear myself,” said Economic Matters Committee Vice Chair Anne Marie Doory.
The unfinished building can be disorienting, even to longtime visitors like Montgomery County Executives Doug Duncan. “It?s very confusing. I asked where Room 170 was and [the guards] couldn?t tell me,” he said.
The 95,000-square-foot addition was designed to provide the House committees more space for staff members, who had been crowded into cramped offices or even forced to work at desks in the public
hearing rooms.
But citizens have gained only a little more space in the new hearing rooms, each of which has 65 chairs, compared with 50 to 55 chairs in previous rooms, Oakes said.
The new AV system was supposed to make up for the lack of space by displaying the names of bills being heard on plasma screens in large waiting areas. But it will be next year?s newly elected General Assembly that will get the full benefit of all the improvements.
