Joint committee recommends multiple agencies' five‑year capital plans; KBI projects and state hospital expansion highlighted

The Joint Committee on State Building Construction on an interim agenda reviewed five‑year capital improvement plans from multiple state agencies and recommended approval of those plans, while members pressed for more details on specific projects and costs.

Committee members heard details about a new Kansas Bureau of Investigation office lease in Wichita, change orders for the University of Kansas Medical Center, Department of Administration building priorities and repairs, a multi‑agency Pittsburgh regional crime center funded by bonds and federal grant designations, and capital requests and priorities from the departments of Transportation, Commerce, Labor, the judicial branch, the Department for Aging and Disability Services and others.

The committee recommended approval — by voice vote, recorded as unanimous in the meeting record — of the agencies' five‑year plans and related routine items that day. Many presentations were updates; several items were requests for future appropriations or enhancements that will return to budget and finance processes.

The most prominent operational items presented:

Kansas Bureau of Investigation lease (Wichita) Paul Fernkopf, Lease Administrator, Department of Administration, told the committee the KBI is relocating from space it sublets from the Kansas Highway Patrol to a privately leased building at 8300 Thorne Drive in Wichita. The negotiated lease terms reported to the committee were 22,174 square feet of office space at $15.78 per square foot for 15 years, plus the landlord providing 9,960 square feet of storage space at no charge. The KBI will contribute a one‑time $850,000 tenant‑improvement payment, including converting basement space to secure parking. The department said utilities are included in the base rate and the lease rate was within local market averages; staff agreed to follow up with the landlord for building energy and meter details when Energy Star benchmarking is not available.

KU Medical Center change order (Westco Hall) Barbara Schilling, Deputy Director, Office of Facilities and Property Management, told the committee a change order to add the north windows back into a Westco Hall B and C project at the University of Kansas Medical Center came in under budget. The change order added $145,867.68 to bring the contract total to $723,217 and will extend the contract schedule by 90 days. Staff said funding is available in the original allocation and no additional appropriation is required; legal staff advised the committee that formal approval by the committee was not required for this change order, though some members asked for a legal citation to confirm.

Department of Administration: rehab and repair priorities Frank Burnham, Department of Administration, presented the agency's five‑year capital plan and its recurring request for $5,000,000 in annual rehab and repair funds for state office buildings. He identified specific FY27 priorities that include a roughly $1.3 million major switchgear replacement at the Landon Building and about $1.2 million to replace two large chillers at the Judicial Center to restore redundancy and capacity. Burnham said recent work includes completion of the Docking Building and the KDHE laboratory, and described ongoing work to renovate vacated space (for example, moving the Division of Commerce and Tourism into Docking and then repurposing other state office space). Committee members pressed for specifics about energy benchmarking and the condition of curtain‑wall window systems in older buildings such as Curtis and Memorial Hall; staff said some campus buildings are part of multiproperty metering and cannot currently be individually benchmarked with Energy Star.

KBI regional crime center and headquarters projects Robert (Bob) Stewart, Executive Officer, KBI, briefed the committee on two capital projects that are financed outside the agency's routine rehab budget: the Pittsburgh Regional Crime Center (Pittsburgh State campus) and the downtown Topeka KBI headquarters that received bonding approval in the prior legislative session. The Pittsburgh facility is a planned 53,000‑square‑foot, multi‑partner regional facility currently bonded at about $40 million; Stewart said the project was on time and on budget with a scheduled groundbreaking and expected occupancy in 2027. He also said Senator Moran had designated $8 million in congressional discretionary funding for equipment and training, but that funding had not yet been received into state accounts. Stewart described continuing site selection, need assessments and consultant work related to the $80 million downtown Topeka headquarters bond; a timeline for occupancy was not finalized, and staff said they will return with additional scoping information.

Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services (state hospitals) and new Wichita facility Scott Bruner, deputy secretary, presented consolidated capital requests for the four state hospitals (Parsons, Larned, Osawatomie and the Kansas Neurological Institute). The department reported recent work including multiple roof replacements, water and electrical system upgrades and continuing demolition (raising) of obsolete structures. For FY27, the department's consolidated priority list included about $6.2 million in prioritized rehab and repair projects and separate enhancement requests (approximately $2.9 million) for additional projects; a notable project is a multi‑million‑dollar remodel to convert existing space (the Adair A building at Osawatomie) to single‑occupancy rooms and add up to 30 usable acute beds at that site if staffing funding is available.

Bruner also outlined the new South Wichita state psychiatric hospital under construction: a roughly 104‑bed facility (52 beds intended for defendants awaiting competency restoration and 52 for civil inpatient psychiatric care), with construction scheduled for completion in calendar 2026 and planned opening in early 2027. He told the committee the average waiting time for defendants ordered to the secure competency program was on the order of 240–250 days and that roughly 150–160 defendants were waiting in jails for admission. Bruner described a nationwide nursing and direct‑care recruitment challenge that has left many positions vacant at state hospitals; the department is using contract nursing to maintain bed capacity while working with education partners to expand local workforce pipelines.

Other notable presentations - KDOT presented a multi‑year plan that emphasized building preservation, reroofs, subarea modernization (replacing older highway subarea buildings to fit modern equipment), salt storage, wash bays and safety rest area repairs. The agency said the average age of primary buildings is about 49 years and that subarea replacement has been an ongoing multi‑year program. - The Judicial Branch sought a phased approach to a planned Judicial Branch Learning Center in the Judicial Center: planning funds had been approved previously; this session the branch requested $300,000 in FY27 to build one or two “cornerstone” exhibits and to keep the project moving while pursuing private, foundation and grant support for the full build‑out. The branch said a larger $7.8 million construction request had been pared back to a phased proposal. - The Adjutant General, Department of Children and Families, the Department of Commerce and the Department of Labor presented routine five‑year plans and specific construction or renovation projects; the committee recorded recommendations to approve those plans. - Kansas State Fair staff described ongoing Bison Arena exterior work (phase 1) and a phase 2 interior renovation that is bid and in preconstruction; the fairboard reported a three‑year promoter agreement for racing through 2027 and described planned security and access upgrades for the upcoming fair.

Votes at a glance The committee recorded recommendation votes (committee motions to recommend agency five‑year plans or to accept the updates) that were announced in the meeting record and entered as unanimous approvals. Those items included the Department of Administration five‑year plan (committee recommendation approved; motion made on the floor and seconded in the record), the Department of Labor plan, Department of Commerce plan, Kansas Bureau of Investigation plan submissions, Kansas Department of Transportation plan, Judicial Branch learning‑center request (the committee recorded a recommendation to adopt the five‑year submission), Department for Aging and Disability Services five‑year plan, the Adjutant General plan, DCF Topeka service center items and the Kansas State Fair plan. Committee staff noted the votes were unanimous on the record; formal appropriation or bond approvals for specific projects remain subject to the governor’s and legislature’s budget and finance processes.

Why this matters Committee members repeatedly emphasized that routine rehab and repair funding preserves state assets and reduces higher‑cost emergency repairs. Several members highlighted public‑safety‑related systems — in particular fire‑alarm and sprinkler work at state hospitals — and the workforce constraints that limit how quickly new or refurbished facilities can be brought into full service. Projects such as the Pittsburgh regional crime center, the planned KBI headquarters, and the new South Wichita psychiatric hospital represent multi‑year capital commitments that will require follow‑up in budget and bonding processes and additional detailed scopes for committee review.

Next steps and follow‑up Staff and agency presenters agreed to provide additional detail where requested (for example, building‑level energy data for campus‑metered properties and legal citations about change‑order approval thresholds). Committee staff announced planned site visits, including a proposed tour of Hutchinson Correctional Facility and additional tours of Docking and other recently renovated buildings.

The committee’s recommendations do not by themselves appropriate funds; they are advisory steps that inform the Legislature’s and administration’s capital and operating budget decisions in the coming months. The committee record shows unanimous committee recommendations on the presented five‑year plans.