Environmental Progress - Fall 1998

The Illinois EPA Finds New Home at a Brownfields Site

Practicing what it preaches, Illinois EPA recycles a headquarters

On a drizzly day last April, Director Mary A. Gade officially accepted the newly completed, striking brick and glass building that houses the entrance to the Agency's headquarters on Springfield's north side. When she cut the ribbon, the Illinois EPA was officially at home in its old/new facility, completing a move that took more than a decade to complete and incorporated its own "brownfields" project. Centerpiece of the new complex is the atrium entrance, the structure where the dedication was held. Though newly built, it was designed to merge with the much older renovated buildings it ties together, reflecting the past in its architectural details and its worn-looking red brick while incorporating new-as-tomorrow features like an impressive glass wall that soars the height of the structure, and an atrium where the former outer building walls now make an indoor backdrop for live trees and flourishing plants. The move to the Agency's second headquarters in its 28 year history wasn't undertaken, or completed, quickly.

Adequate space was a problem from the start

After looking at, and rejecting, the concept of a downtown Springfield storefront headquarters or a location in a former supermarket on the city's far east side, the new Illinois EPA in 1970 moved into offices on Churchill Road. Located on the northwest side of town, the two rental buildings had been used by a business college that failed. Over the years, as the Agency grew, additional buildings were added until the complex and its parking lots spilled down the hill and ended at a creek, effectively ending further growth. By the early 1980s, chronic overcrowding made it clear that some Illinois EPA workers would have to be relocated. The challenge was finding affordable space to initially accommodate a couple hundred people, and yet have the potential to house more than a thousand a decade or so later. Jeff Johnston, manager of the Agency's Division of Administration, found a site a mile south of the Illinois State Fairgrounds. Bordered by North Grand and Converse Avenues and Ninth and 11th Streets, were remnants of a light industrial complex slumbering in a state of disrepair. Not perfect, but promising. The 14 acre, four square block area was formerly home to two of Springfield's venerable manufacturers -- the Illinois Watch Co. and Sangamo Electric Co.

Once a neighborhood's pride, now an eyesore

The oldest remaining structure on the site, a north end landmark known as the Clock Tower, was completed in 1918. Other buildings, erected in subsequent decades by Sangamo Electric, appeared habitable but would require extensive renovation and a cleanup of chemical contamination associated with electrical component fabrication. The site, which in Agency-speak became known simply as "Sangamo" or "Ninth and North Grand," was one of only two or three Springfield locations that could eventually contain the entire Agency and handle future growth. Most important, the rents approximated those of the Churchill Road facilities. In the mid-1980s the Bureau of Air became the first major component of the Illinois EPA to move from Churchill Road to Sangamo, followed by that bureau's Division of Vehicle Inspection and Maintenance, the Bureau of Water's Division of Public Water Supplies, the print shop and the managers' offices for the Agency's laboratories. They were later joined by the Bureau of Land's Permit Section, which soon filled to capacity the only portions of the facility in usable condition. These areas were limited to the single story building in front of the Clock Tower, occupying most of Ninth St. between North Grand and Converse Avenues. Renovations resumed in the early 1990s, making suitable for occupancy the two story building facing North Grand between Ninth and 11th Streets. The first floor in 1995 and 1996 was occupied by Bureau of Water personnel who had remained on Churchill Road and various sections within the Bureau of Land. On the east side of the complex are two adjoining structures that look onto 11th Street and the campus of Lanphier High School; the three story building at 11th and Converse Avenue houses the Agency's senior leaders, their staffs, offices and conference rooms. Coincident with these moves came the completion of the three story, glass walled atrium. Across the way stand a brace of flag poles, their banners reflecting in the glass wall.

Sign of the times: an old face gets new hands

Alongside the north side of the Clock Tower is a new 57,000 square foot office building housing the Divisions of Administration and Legal Counsel, and the library and its 100,000 volumes of books and periodicals. The third floor is largely vacant, its expanse reserved for future Agency needs. With construction finished, the Agency has a total of 347,000 square feet at its disposal, including storage for supplies and equipment, a year's inventory of paper stock consumed by the Agency's in-house print shop, and parking for nearly 1,200 vehicles. Jeff Johnston estimates that the approximately1,000 people working at Sangamo by the end of 1998 will grow to 1,200 to 1,400 by the middle of the next decade, depending on program requirements and funding.

This is the ultimate in recycling...It is real brownfields restoration.

"This is the ultimate in recycling," said Johnston. "We have taken a near derelict set of buildings and turned them into a useful facility. "It is certainly an effort appropriate of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. It also exemplifies much of what has become known as 'brownfields restoration,' which is that process of returning abandoned and deteriorated industrial properties to productive use, and by so doing preserving neighborhood integrity and property values," Johnston said. Among the final tasks of completing the new facility was the restoration of the Clock Tower's long idle clock. New hands now move past old numerals returned to the historic octogenarian's face, illustrating that what goes around, does indeed come around, given time.