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Labs Unify Health, Ag Work: New State Buildings in St. Paul Designed to Fight Threats Efficiently

Posted on: Friday, 17 March 2006, 06:00 CST

By Tom Webb, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.

Mar. 17--At first glance, it seems like a bureaucrat's joke: locating the new Agriculture Department headquarters near the downtown heart of Minnesota's most urban county.

But now that two gleaming state buildings have arisen in downtown St. Paul, the logic behind the $134 million project seems clearer. In an age of food-borne threats, terrorism alerts and emerging diseases like avian flu, officials believe that the health of 5 million Minnesotans depends on the state-of-the-art laboratories inside, jointly used by health and agriculture departments.

The new labs are designed to battle such threats more safely, efficiently and effectively than anything state officials had before. Inside are walls encased in steel, 10-foot-wide ventilation ducts and sterilization of all exchanged air. In the event of an anthrax panic, a mad cow outbreak or a bioterrorism attack, Minnesota officials want its facilities ready and its scientists and decision-makers close by.

The driving force behind the new buildings was the desire to consolidate health, agriculture and animal-health scientists in a shared state-of-the-art laboratory. Many human health issues have animal and food ties, including avian flu, E. coli and bovine tuberculosis.

"It illustrates why it's important to have the ag building closer in, when you think of how we work with the University of Minnesota, all the hospitals, and with other state agencies," said Mike Schommer, spokesman for the Agriculture Department.

Last fall, for example, when 23 Minnesota residents became ill from E. coli 0157:H7 that turned up in bags of Dole lettuce, "We found it in the food products, and the health folks found it in the patients, and we found it was the exact same organism," Schommer said.

But the specter of terrorism, from both Sept. 11 and the anthrax attacks, only added urgency.

"The need for (a new building) was already established" before Sept. 11, 2001, said Doug Bakker, assistant director of the laboratory services division. But without that, "It may not have been as big a building, or built as quickly."

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has taken notice of the state's new capabilities, and has awarded it several big security grants. The feds want the ability to battle germs in more than one location, in case their big national centers are overwhelmed or knocked out.

Of course, the laboratories typically are used for less-intense activity. They routinely test soil, water quality, and seed germination rates. They monitor the safety of milk and dairy products, so products can be shipped interstate. They monitor for trace metals, pesticide residue, and "if there's a spill, we want to know how far it has gotten, and if it has gotten into groundwater," Bakker said.

The new state complex consists of two buildings with different roles. Together they consolidate about 1,000 state workers downtown that had been scattered in a half-dozen facilities around the Twin Cities. The $60 million state lab building houses about 300 researchers, and was financed directly by Minnesota taxpayers.

Next door is the Orville L. Freeman Office Building, a $74 million structure that houses both the state Agriculture and Health departments, as well as the Minnesota Board of Animal Health -- about 700 state workers in all. That building, at 625 Robert St. N., is actually owned by the St. Paul Port Authority, and the state leases it on a rent-to-own basis.

For the state Health Department, "One of the big advantages is our lab is now a short walk away from the rest of the department," said Doug Schultz, a department spokesman. That means administrators don't need to drive to Minneapolis to meet with scientists tracking infectious diseases like HIV, or if they're trying to contain an epidemic.

"This is a facility that meets the needs of doing disease investigation work, and we hope it will also meet our needs for decades to come," Schultz added.

Some rural legislators did mount an effort to move the agriculture headquarters out of St. Paul (the previous building had been across the river from downtown), but the convenience of a central location eventually won out. Even so, the site on the edge of downtown near I-94 seems to generate a desire to add some rural touches, especially in the open atrium areas.

State Agriculture Commissioner Gene Hugoson "originally wanted to have corn and soybeans growing in the middle, but they decided they couldn't do that because of the allergies, and it wouldn't grow well," Schommer said. They settled for big plants instead.

Tom Webb can be reached at twebb@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5428.

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Copyright (c) 2006, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.

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Source: Saint Paul Pioneer Press (St. Paul, Minn.)

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