EXPANSION
board plans ahead. The county has done a great job ... of staying ahead of space needs.”
The commissioners plan to spend anywhere from $16.5 million to $19.8 million to build an addition to the Union County Justice Center, which was added to the county courthouse in 2000. The money also will be used to renovate and expand an adjacent former bank building the county just bought for $440,000.
The bank building plus the addition will add about 32,000 square feet to the justice campus on West 5th Street at the edge of downtown.
Requests for qualifications from interested architects were due Monday. The hope would be to have construction on the former Richwood Banking Co. building begin in the spring and completed for an opening in June of 2019, said Randy Riffle, the county’s facilities director. The Justice Center addition would open in 2020.
The county will use some of the $5.6 million it has in its capital projects fund and borrow the rest, said Board of Commissioners President Gary Lee.
Lee said the rapid population growth in the county, an increasing caseload in Common Pleas Court and the need for Sheriff Jamie Patton to consolidate his operation under one roof led to an $80,000 space-needs study done earlier this year by Silling Architects. That’s the same firm that designed the $39 million Delaware County Judicial Center that opened a few weeks ago.
When all is finished, the county prosecutor will move from the existing justice center to the bank building.
The Juvenile/Probate Court will move from the historic, 1883-built county courthouse to the third floors of the existing justice center and the addition.
The sheriff will stay on the second floor of the existing building but will also get the whole second floor of the addition for his operations. Currently, Patton’s evidence room and detectives are in another location, along with the county coroner.
The moves will clear space in the courthouse so that once state approval is granted a second judge can be added to help ease the burden of Common Pleas Judge Don Fraser.
Last year, the court held 2,280 hearings in 944 cases, and those numbers don’t even include the specialty docket drug court Fraser runs. Fraser wrote in a report prepared for the commissioners that, by comparison, when he took office in 2009 the court held 1,508 hearings.
The renovations also will address longstanding security and access issues, with a newly-designed entrance, new elevator and indoor, secured parking for judges.
“We can’t sit back and wait,” Commissioner Charles Hall said. “We have to do this now so that when a second judge is added we’re ready. This prepares us for the future.”
Sheriff Patton said there are still challenges to work through, such as parking issues and interior design, but he said the end product will help the public be better served in a more functional and more secure space.
“I pay taxes. I want my taxes to go where they should and be spent appropriately, too,” he said. “I think it’s a pay-me-now or pay-me-later situation. We need to think about the needs of the future on this justice campus.”