COURTHOUSE GETS $23,700 REVOLVING DOOR

What goes around, comes around very seldom in Cape Girardeau where there currently is only one revolving door in the whole city.

But that will change when work is completed next week on a revolving door for the Federal Building on Broadway.

The new door on the front of the Federal Building will be the second in the city. The other has been a fixture at Southeast Missouri Hospital for years.

The hospital door is being replaced with a new revolving door as part of construction of a new front entrance and lobby.

At the Federal Building, work began earlier this week on installing a revolving door and an adjacent electrically powered door for those in wheelchairs.

The project will cost $23,700.

Currently, there are double sets of electrically powered doors that open into a small lobby.

"They are old and we have had a lot of problems with them," said Duane Cary of the General Services Administration, which manages the building.

The doors have opened and closed at times when there has been no foot traffic at the doors, he said.

Currently, when the doors open they let in a blast of cold air in the winter and hot air in the summer.

The revolving door will keep out much of that outside air, improving energy efficiency in the Federal Building, Cary said.

Those who handle security for the U.S. Marshal's Service at the front door of the Federal Building regularly freeze in winter from all the cold air rushing inside.

"It will get down into the 40s in the lobby," Cary said.

The new revolving door is being added to the front of the building, which will allow more space for security personnel and the metal detector machines.

Those machines currently take up much of the space in the Federal Building lobby.

It is so cramped that officers are forced to stand in the hallway. It gets particularly crowded during trials when lawyers, defendants in civil suits, witnesses and spectators enter the building and make their way through the congested hallway.