LANSING – In an era dominated by cost-friendly, steel-framed and glass-walled tower construction, the Accident Fund’s headquarters building, currently under renovation, will continue to stand out as a beautiful architectural throwback gracing the city’s skyline – and will surely be among the most substantial office buildings in the nation.

Formerly the Lansing Board of Water and Light’s Ottawa Street Power Station, the powerhouse was constructed in 1939 along the Grand River to provide electricity and heat to businesses in downtown Lansing. It’s still a landmark, but its industrial days are over. When we last visited the building 18 months ago, the building trades were in the process of completely shelling out the cavernous building. Since that time, the trades fit and finished nine steel and concrete floors, and are in the process of creating office space for the Accident Fund, which is moving its headquarters into the building.

“After we tore everything out, we found we had a very plumb building, and it was in surprisingly good shape,” said Chad Teeples, senior project manager for Christman Co., which is acting as general contractor on the project. Walls on the lower part of the building consist of 14 inches of masonry. The massive thickness of the concrete floor of the building provided a solid anchorage for the power plant’s turbines. “The iron workers found the entire building was only three-quarters of an inch, to an inch out of plumb in nine stories, and that’s not too bad for its age,” he added. “This is a very, very solid building.”

Luring the Accident Fund Insurance Company of America headquarters to the former powerhouse is a triumph for the City of Lansing. The city had tried for nearly a decade to find a use for the building. The plant went dead in the late 1980s, when steam and power production were transferred to nearby Eckert Station. Then in 2001, a looped chilled water system was installed in part of the building to provide cooling to buildings in the downtown business district. That production system has been torn out and placed elsewhere.

In 2008, the Accident Fund announced it would move its employees from its current headquarters building a few blocks away and fund a $182 million renovation of the former power plant. The work will yield 333,000 square feet of office space, including the renovated building and a four-story North Annex. A six-level, 1,000-spot parking deck was also constructed as part of the project. Today, the Christman Co. and about 210 Hardhats are getting the building ready for a mid-April, 2011 move-in by the Accident Fund.

“We’ve worked over 600,000 total man-hours, and have gone 700 days without a lost-time accident,” Teeples said. “Everybody here has done a good job.”

Now that the work of the trades has progressed to the point where the building’s interior has the look and feel of an office building, the main challenge coming up is meeting the schedule. But Teeples said perhaps the most difficult part of the job took place in the beginning, when structural steel to build-out the interior of the building had to be lowered in via crane through the ceiling, and then carted into place by Douglas Steel iron workers.  More than 8,900 pieces of steel were set in that fashion. “We called in ship-in-a-bottle construction,” Teeples said. “It was quite a feat.”

Another challenge is making the building energy efficient. Insulation was added to the walls where it was possible. From boilers and chillers in the basement, heating and cooling will be distributed through under-floor plenums on each level of the building. The main concern was heat loss through the building’s massive window area – some 38,000 square-feet of old single pane glass was replaced with double-paned insulated glass.

Besides the glass and a good cleaning, little had changed about the exterior of the Ottawa Street Station, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2009.

Its description reads: “The Ottawa Street Power Station, located at 217 E. Ottawa St. along the Grand River, has been one of the downtown skyline’s most distinguishing features since it was built in 1939 by the Lansing Board of Water and Light. The power station was designed in the distinctive Art Deco style, and is significant for both its grandeur and its role in providing electricity and steam heat to downtown Lansing from 1939 until the late 1980s. Besides the Michigan Capitol dome itself, the power station – with its broad base, stepped arch windows and metal doors, blocky tower form and graded-hue masonry – is one of the capital city’s most visually dominating structures.”

Founded in 1912, the Accident Fund and is one of the nation’s leading workers compensation insurers with more than $3 billion in assets. Its parent company is Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan. When the move was announced, Elizabeth R. Haar, Accident Fund president and CEO, said the firm was committing long-term to the City of Lansing, the State of Michigan and the people of mid-Michigan. “We are here in Michigan to stay, we are growing jobs here and we are stating to the nation that Michigan is a great place to do business,” she said.

The Accident Fund said the redevelopment would be “the largest adaptive reuse of a historic power plant in the state.” Christman Co.’s information on the project pointed out that the exterior of the building has a number of distinctive features incorporated by Bowd-Munson, who were renowned architects of the period. These features include a stepped roofline, building and windows shaped to represent a stylized plume of fire, and exterior building colors symbolizing the combustion of coal, starting with black granite at the base, giving way to purple grey in the lower masonry, and continuing to red and yellow bricks that lighten in hue as the “flame” rises.

“This is great economic news for Lansing and Michigan, and another demonstration of our corporate commitment to Michigan,” said Daniel J. Loepp, president and CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan. “Accident Fund has grown significantly since becoming a national carrier of workers’ compensation. We believe the company will continue to grow and expand here in Michigan if given more opportunities to do so in the future.”

COMPLETED IN 1939, the former Lansing Board of Water and Light’s Ottawa Street Station powerhouse has never looked better. Its cleaned up Art Deco exterior masonry reflects the burning of coal – dark at the bottom and lighter at the top. The building and its North Annex, at left, will serve as the Accident Fund’s new headquarters.

SEALING INSULATION on the building’s heating and chilled water system is Karl Remus of Heat and Frost Insulators Local 47. He’s working for Mid-Michigan Mechanical.

INSTALLING DUCT WORK at the new Accident Fund’s data center are Dan Wyman and Jeff Fowler of Sheet Metal Workers Local 7, working for Dee Cramer.