Director is in charge of maintenance of 135-year-old statehouse
By Justin A. Hinkley
Lansing State Journal
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — For Dan Brocklehurst, the best and worst parts of his new job are the same thing.
Running the Capitol requires many balancing acts — modernize while maintaining historic charm, secure while maintaining public access, get some work done in a place visited by as many as 150,000 people a year — and that constant balancing act sets up a host of challenges.
Brocklehurst, the 58-year-old Charlotte man who last week was announced as the new Capitol facilities director, teeters between loving and loathing those challenges.
“It’s almost anywhere you look in this building, there’s work to be done,” he told the Lansing State Journal from his office in the Capitol’s north annex. “We always have something to look forward to.”
As Capitol facilities director, Brocklehurst is in charge of operations, maintenance and restoration of the 135-year-old statehouse. He’s been the interim facilities director since mid-July, and before that spent 22 years working for the state Senate as physical properties manager.
In his new role, Brocklehurst oversees 25 employees and — thanks to a recent law dedicating a portion of the state’s tobacco tax revenue to Capitol upkeep — a $3 million annual budget. Before that law, money for Capitol upkeep was set yearly by lawmakers. Brocklehurst said his priority in his new role will be to translate the long-term funding into a long-term upkeep plan.
Brocklehurst will tackle the job with another balancing act — blending his ability to listen and respond to employees’ ideas with “his own intelligence and experience,” said Carol Viventi, secretary of the state Senate and co-chair of the Michigan State Capitol Commission, the board in charge of the building and hiring its facilities director.
“I think Dan is a very straightforward, trustworthy, decent man and does excellent work at his job,” said Viventi, who’s known Brocklehurst for 20 years. “He was a great employee. I think he’s a good leader.”
“He’s extremely competent, very methodical, and just really knows the business,” said John Truscott, president of the Lansing-based public relations firm Truscott Rossman and a member of the Capitol Commission. “He’s a person who has a true respect and reverence for the Capitol building.”
Brocklehurst, married 33 years and with three grown children, hails from Sault Ste. Marie. He graduated from Lake Superior State University in 1982 with a bachelor’s degree in industrial technology and headed south the following year because, he said, “there was no work in the U.P. when I graduated.”
Brocklehurst landed in Lansing with a job as an engineer at Christman Co. A decade later, that company worked on a multimillion-dollar renovation to the Capitol. About that time, Brocklehurst saw an ad in the paper for a job with the Senate and changed careers.
After more than two decades supervising operations at the Senate’s Farnum Building, Brocklehurst is now in charge of Lansing’s most prized facility.
There’s plenty on which to spend that $3 million a year, from routine wear-and-tear caused by tens of thousands of schoolchildren to fading finishes and corrosion at a building that hasn’t been overhauled since Brocklehurst and Christman worked on it a quarter-century ago.
And Brocklehurst said he plans to stick around to do that work, loving every loathsome problem.
“I may be ready to look at retirement,” he said with a smile, “when we can get some of the challenges in hand.”
