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• MADISON AREA OFFICE AND RESEARCH FACILITY overcrowding. The Area Office consists of 18 people who provide general DNR information, license sales, public assistance in forestry, wildlife, fisheries, conservation law enforcement, solid and hazardous waste management, waste water management, water quality, water regulation and zoning, and state park information. Some of these services are duplicated at the District Office. The Bureau of Research personnel are located in -the Southern District Office, GEF 2, GEF. 3, the Nevin Hatchery, and numerous outlying field stations. The staff provides research services, project studies and support to DNR activities. These functions require little public contact. The proposed Mendota Research Facility (Camp Uakanda) was built in 1957 as a main lodge building for the YMCA. It is located off County Trunk M on the north side of Lake Mendota. This is a few miles north of Madison, contiguous to the newly developed Governor Nelson State Park. The building contains two floors with approximately 4,800 gross square feet (GSF) on each floor, for a total of 9,600 GSF. The building temporarily housed the District staff from 1976 to 1980, after a fire destroyed the District office building at their Fish Hatchery location. The Wakanda building is presently vacant. Recent DNR organizational changes have created a policy which encourages the combination of district and area offices if they are located in the same city. DNR feels that location of these two offices in a single facility would improve public service, reduce confusion for the clients seeking service, increase efficiency and reduce costs. DNR has six district offices. Four are in the same city as the area office; Milwaukee, Eau Claire, Madison and Green Bay. Milwaukee was created as a combined District/Field office, Eau Claire has a request in this biennium to combine their district and area offices, and Green Bay will be combining their district and area offices sometime in the future. All Area Director positions have already been eliminated. The request proposes to remodel the Southern District Office building and construct an additional 2,000 GSF of office/public contact area in order to house the district staff plus the area staff. The Area Office lease then would be cancelled. The Camp Wakanda building would be remodeled and approximately 1,241 GSF of floor space would be added to house 30 Bureau of Research staff presently located in the District office (23) , GEF 3 (3) , and the Nevins Fish Hatchery 'white house' lab (4) . The project would also include parking lot modifications and paving at both locations. Although the request would move 23 research staff and a research library out of the headquarter's building to accommodate 18 area staff in the building, DNR maintains that additional space is necessary at both locations. The additional space at Wakanda is necessary to create a new entrance, elevator, office and lab space. The additional space at the headquarters building would accommodate a need for area office client 380