While angry horn-honkers have circled Legislative Plaza, construction crews have been building a $600,000 gate that will keep public vehicles away from the nearby Capitol building.
The gate, located on the northwest side of Capitol Hill, will be functional by the end of the summer, according to Sundquist spokeswoman Elizabeth Phillips. It has been planned for over a year and was included in the budgets passed by the last two legislatures.
Phillips says that the decision to build the gate was “absolutely not” related to the mostly anti-tax demonstrators who have marked the end of the last two legislative sessions.
“This was proposed years ago by the Department of Safety and the TBI [Tennessee Bureau of Investigation] and was authorized by the Building Commission last year,” she says. “Security in the Capitol is constantly being reassessed, and this measure is being taken to make certain that people who work here and visit here are safe.”
The Tennessee Building Commission consists of representatives from the Sundquist administration and the Legislature. According to state architect Mike Fitts, the commission has approved every detail of the gate project.
The gate will be manned and contain a card-key device to activate a system of “bollards”—steel posts that rise up from the road to prevent passage of a vehicle. Fitts says that only officials who park in the immediate area around the Capitol will be allowed to pass through the gate during working hours.
It’s unclear whether the bollards will be left up during non-working hours, but if so, it would mean that, for the first time in Tennessee history, visiting vehicles would be unable to get to the Capitol building on nights and weekends.
The project also includes a group of limestone structures and iron works meant to make it “blend in” with the rest of the area.
“We wanted to balance the need to provide security with the dignity of the Capitol,” Fitts says. “We mimicked the gates at entrances on the other edges of the Capitol campus.”
The road leading to the state Capitol has had a guardhouse for at least 15 years that has theoretically kept unauthorized vehicles from reaching the building that houses the governor’s offices and other key state administration offices. However, that guardhouse usually has been left unmanned at nights and on weekends.
The state Capitol grounds contain numerous tourist attractions, including the grave of President James K. Polk and a statue of President Andrew Jackson.
