After three years of construction on Capitol Hill, the new North Capitol Building is complete just in time for the 2026 Legislative Session. Designed to complement the Capitol’s neoclassical architecture and house Utah’s first state history museum, the building serves as an expansion of the Capitol campus and a symbolic gateway through Utah’s history.
The project marks the completion of the master plan for Capitol Hill, written more than a century ago. The northern entrance flows through the building and out onto the lawn, creating a direct pathway that guides visitors beneath a one-of-a-kind stained glass skylight leading to the Capitol building.
“It was imperative in the master plan that the new North Capitol Building fit within the neoclassical design of the campus,” said Nathan Levitt, the project’s principal architect with VCBO Architecture.
The stained glass dome of the North Capitol Building is pictured on Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (Will Ruzanski/Utah News Dispatch)
Preservation extended beyond architectural style. During construction, crews altered the building’s underground footprint to protect historic sequoia trees on the north law. According to the Capitol Preservation Board’s Executive Director Dana Jones, a wall in the parking garage was shifted 18 inches during construction to avoid damaging the trees’ root systems.
“I think that that’s a really special fact, because to me, it speaks to the level of care that our team has as a whole,” Jones said. “This is us paying forward to many generations.”
After three years of construction on Capitol Hill, the new North Capitol Building is complete just in time for the 2026 Legislative Session. Designed to complement the Capitol’s neoclassical architecture and house Utah’s first state history museum, the building serves as an expansion of the Capitol campus and a symbolic gateway through Utah’s history.
The project marks the completion of the master plan for Capitol Hill, written more than a century ago. The northern entrance flows through the building and out onto the lawn, creating a direct pathway that guides visitors beneath a one-of-a-kind stained glass skylight leading to the Capitol building.
https://utahnewsdispatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/North-Capitol-Building-4-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://utahnewsdispatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/North-Capitol-Building-4-768x512.jpg 768w, https://utahnewsdispatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/North-Capitol-Building-4-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://utahnewsdispatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/North-Capitol-Building-4-2048x1365.jpg 2048w" alt="" width="400" height="267" style="height: autopx; max-width: 100%px; vertical-align: middle;" decoding="async" />The stained glass dome of the North Capitol Building is pictured on Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (Will Ruzanski/Utah News Dispatch)
“It was imperative in the master plan that the new North Capitol Building fit within the neoclassical design of the campus,” said Nathan Levitt, the project’s principal architect with VCBO Architecture.
Preservation extended beyond architectural style. During construction, crews altered the building’s underground footprint to protect historic sequoia trees on the north law. According to the Capitol Preservation Board’s Executive Director Dana Jones, a wall in the parking garage was shifted 18 inches during construction to avoid damaging the trees’ root systems.
“I think that that’s a really special fact, because to me, it speaks to the level of care that our team has as a whole,” Jones said. “This is us paying forward to many generations.”
At the center of the building is a $1.6 million stained glass laylight showcasing Utah’s natural wonders and cultural symbols. Made up of more than 14,700 individual pieces of glass with sand from all 29 Utah counties, the piece incorporates iconic Utah scenes like the Great Salt Lake and southern Utah’s red rock formations.
Inflation drove up project budget
The project cost $320 million, exceeding initial estimates of $165 million, according to Andy Marr, the director of Utah’s Division of Facilities Construction and Management.
“Over a number of years (the budget) grew through different amounts of appropriations that the legislature approved as the project scope started to evolve,” Marr said.
“We were talking about this building as just a replacement for parking,” he said. “That conversation quickly evolved into, ‘this is the opportunity to finish the master plan of Capitol Hill.’”
Marr also mentioned inflation as contributing to the rising budget.
“We went through a pretty rough period of construction escalation, peaking at 14% (inflation),” he said. “That was a part of the cost factoring here that’s pretty standard industry wide.”
Construction
The building was constructed by Oakland Construction, along with collaboration from various other groups. Michael Despain, the project director for Oakland, said the building is “intentionally a step down” in comparison to the Capitol.
“We wanted this building to not be as formal as the Capitol,” he said. “The Capitol is the highlight of the campus, and everything here is intentionally just a little bit more subdued.”
Michael Despain, Oakland Construction project director, speaks to reporters outside the North Capitol Building on Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (Will Ruzanski/Utah News Dispatch)
Despain also described the scale of the project. More than 450,000 cubic yards of concrete were poured during construction, enough to fill 4,500 trucks or lay a 4-foot-wide sidewalk stretching nearly 200 miles long.
Employing an average of 266 workers per day and 350 workers per day during peak construction, Despain said the project took 581,000 hours of labor to finish.
“For one person, that’s roughly 283 years for one guy to build this,” he said.
“Lots of collaboration between VCBO, the Capital Preservation Board, DFCM, Oakland, and all of our trade partners,” Despain said. “It’s been an amazing, historical, iconic project.”
Museum of Utah History
The North Capitol Building includes Utah’s first dedicated state history museum, set to open in June 2026.
“This is the space where, really, Utah’s fine art collection and history’s preservation will happen for the next 100 years,” said Tim Glenn, the museum director.
Glenn explained the museum will display 950 artifacts when it opens, with a regular rotation moving through the exhibition space. The North Capitol Building also includes a specialized storage area suited to house all of the state’s historical pieces.
“This is purpose-built and state of the art. It provides (an) opportunity for us to grow. All of the state’s treasures will be here, and future state treasures will be here,” he said. “Our collection currently has around 30,000 artifacts, 28,000 books, 8,500 manuscripts, 23,000 pamphlets, and many, many other materials,” he said. “All of that will be stored in this space.”
Showcasing the state’s historical collection in the museum also opens up the public’s access to them, Glenn noted.
“We also have our engagement room in this building,” he said. “If (visitors are) doing research or have an interest in a particular artifact or manuscript collection, they can make an appointment in our engagement room and pull artifacts from this space right up into that research area.”
A ribbon cutting ceremony will commence Friday at 12:30 p.m. The North Capitol Building opens to the public on Tuesday, on the first day of the legislative session.
