Emmett: New center for jurors likely to be built above ground
Harris County is unlikely to repair Hurricane Harvey flood damage to the 6-year-old, $13 million Jury Assembly Building that sits beneath a park in downtown Houston’s courthouse square near Buffalo Bayou, County Judge Ed Emmett said Tuesday.
While no official action has been taken, the county will likely find a replacement facility that is not underground, Emmett said after Tuesday’s county commissioners meeting.
“We’ll build another one somewhere, and I doubt if we’ll put it underground next time,” Emmett said. “That’s not my decision yet, but we don’t have basements in Houston for a reason.”
Emmett said he believes there will be a “complete replacement of the Jury Assembly Building.”
“I don’t think there will be a redo of that building,” he said.
More than 100,000 people report every year for jury duty for trials in criminal cases, civil cases, divorces, child custody and juvenile cases.
The facility was built to hold several auditoriums where prospective jurors waited to be shuffled off to different courthouses in panels of 60.
The building, which is located at 1201 Congress, is surrounded by the criminal courthouse, the civil courthouse and other court buildings. It was designed to allow jurors to easily reach their destination courtrooms through a tunnel system to all the courthouses. A tunnel also connected the building to a parking garage.
It was designed to put green space in the center of the courthouse square, which is a block from Buffalo Bayou.
When it was built in 2011, the architects said they reviewed the impact from Tropical Storm Allison, which flooded the tunnels in 2001. They built the new jury center’s aboveground portion well above the historic high-water mark.
The aboveground part of the building is a glass structure the size of a bus covering an atrium staircase leading down to the auditoriums. The mostly glass structure meant natural light poured into the subterranean facility.
To protect from rising floodwaters, the lower level and related tunnels were equipped with flood doors the size of cars.
Harvey’s floodwaters went well over the underground building, apparently breaking out windows along the ground and flooding the building from the roof. It is still unclear if the massive flood doors worked. If they did, they created a giant watertight bowl next to the bayou.
Since the jury facility is damaged beyond repair, and the former jury assembly building was long ago converted into the Harris County Law Library, officials are now working to find places for prospective jurors to gather.
Judge Bob Schaffer, the administrative judge overseeing the courts, said selection of small jury panels are expected to resume on Oct. 16. They are tentatively scheduled to begin meeting in the cafeteria or other large rooms in the Harris County Administration Building at 1001 Preston.
“We’re moving forward,” he said Tuesday. He said he expects criminal court cases to be among the first heard in a wave of jury trials.
Emmett noted that the Harris County Criminal Courthouse, the 20-story building that was also crippled in the floods, will not be open for at least nine months.
Those courts have moved to the civil courthouse at 201 Caroline where judges have doubled up for morning and afternoon dockets.