Effort to build a new Lake County courthouse takes unexpected turn

LAKEPORT, Calif. – The seven-year effort to build a new and safer courthouse for Lake County encountered another delay last week when a state committee voted to reevaluate the Lakeport site where the facility is proposed to be built.

In a 13-3 vote – with two abstentions – the Court Facilities Advisory Committee, which met in San Francisco on Thursday, ordered state Judicial Council staff to take a closer look at the six-acre site, located at 675 Lakeport Blvd.

The committee's action suspends all work on the project's working drawings except to study alternatives and project costs. Judicial Council staff must prepare a report in six months or less for review by the Court Facilities Advisory Committee and its Courthouse Cost Reduction Subcommittee on all options to reduce costs.

“We were surprised by the result,” Lake County Superior Court Presiding Judge Andrew Blum told Lake County News. “We had been led to believe that they understood where we were and the need to go forward.”

“We are extremely disappointed and frustrated with the process,” said Lake County Superior Court Executive Officer Krista LeVier, who attended the meeting.

During the Thursday discussion, one committee member suggested reducing the number of courtrooms from four to three, which would have given the new facility less courtrooms than the current cramped facility has.

“It doesn't make sense to make a nonfunctional building to save pennies,” said LeVier.

Deepika Padam, senior project manager of the capital program, told the committee that a six-month delay equates to an additional $500,000 in costs.

The project is in the working drawings – or final phase – of design. However, it came in for additional scrutiny due to being $6 million – or 12 percent – over the state’s target budget due to increased design and environmental costs.

The Judicial Council gives $49.984 million as the current authorized project budget.

The project cost has gone through a series of cost reductions totaling 30 percent, down from an original estimated $35.3 million for construction of the two-story, L-shaped building to $23.8 million. The Courthouse Cost Reduction Subcommittee wanted the construction costs dropped to $20 million or below.

The design-to-budget is $27.8 million, which is $4.7 million less than the project’s design is expected to cost, according to meeting documents.

Projected budget overruns are as a result, in part, of the need to meet environmental requirements on the property, including nearly half a million dollars to protect and restore sensitive plants, besides managing the land's unusual topography and building the necessary access road.

State officials have acknowledged that the site – selected because it was one of the few areas out of the floodplain – will be difficult to build on.

It was pointed out during the meeting that the site – purchased by the state in 2011 for $1.1 million – was less expensive than the required mitigations to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, which total $1.4 million.

State staff argued in the documents presented at the meeting that, “If the schedule slips, construction inflation will likewise eliminate any savings.”

The project already is several years behind the original projections of a late 2014 completion. In that time, it has been reevaluated, with a smaller size proposed to save money.

The most recent projected opening for the new 45,300-square-foot building – reduced from an original estimated footprint of 50,158 square feet – was June 2019.

That, said Blum, was the projected date had the project gotten the green light on March 3, which it didn't.

With the latest decision by the committee, Blum said the opening date will be pushed back by at least six months – more if the state were to decide to start from scratch with a new site.

The effort to build a new courthouse began in earnest in 2009 after the Lakeport Courthouse – the top floor of which is owned by the state and houses the Lake County Superior Court – was ranked in the Trial Court Capital Outlay Plan's “Immediate Need Project Priority Group.”

That report found the fourth floor facilities were overcrowded, had structural and accessibility issues, poorly served the court's growing needs, lacked basic security and were, overall, unsafe.

“The project is very much needed,” said Blum, noting that the Lakeport courthouse was rated as one of the worst in the state.

Then the recession hit, which resulted in $1.5 billion in court construction funds being borrowed by the Legislature, swept to the general fund or redirected to court operations, said Teresa Ruano, spokeswoman for the Judicial Council of California.

“As a result, many court construction projects throughout the state had to be delayed indefinitely, and all others that are proceeding have undergone cost reductions. So any request for a budget increase on court construction projects requires stringent oversight and approvals,” said Ruano.

At the same time, the situation has only worsened as the local courts' caseload has continued to grow.

“Our courthouse is outdated and not capable of accommodating our county's current needs,” said Angela Carter, head of the county's public defender contract. “Every [criminal] case in the county is heard on the fourth floor of that building and it is becoming unmanageable.”

A smaller courthouse facility in Clearlake now is used primarily for small claims cases.

Before the committee

Ahead of the meeting, letters from the Board of Supervisors, Lakeport City Council and state Sen. Mike McGuire and Assemblyman Bill Dodd had been sent to the committee, expressing support for the courthouse and a need to move forward.

Armed with that support, Blum – accompanied by Judge Stephen Hedstrom, Judge Mike Lunas and Court Executive Officer Krista LeVier – made the trip to San Francisco for the afternoon meeting.

Originally, the Lakeport project was to have been the second the committee was to consider that day, behind a new Santa Barbara courthouse project that is $10 million over budget. Instead, when the Lake County delegation arrived, they found they had been moved to the top of the agenda.

Judicial Council staff made presentations ahead of Blum on the budget history of the Lakeport courthouse project, the funding for which originally was authorized in fiscal year 2009-10, according to Pearl Freeman, manager of design and construction for the capital program.

Freeman said that there were a series of cost-cutting actions taken beginning in 2010-11, which continued after the courthouse plans were first presented to the Courthouse Cost Reduction Subcommittee in December 2012.

Padam explained the series of measures taken to further reduce costs, including looking at different designs, such as a more compact, rectangular building, rather than the L-shaped construction originally proposed.

Padam said the work also included additional geotechnical analysis and negotiations with the city of Lakeport to do one bus stop instead of two as part of the CEQA requirements.

Next it was Blum's turn to speak, offering a presentation he said he spent months preparing, writing and rewriting it.

He told the group that the current courthouse is unsafe and overcrowded, with jurors having to stand out in the hallway along with witnesses, and inmates being walked through public corridors.

“We are a very, very busy court,” he said, explaining it is rated for five and a half judge positions but has only four. Visiting judges from the Bay Area have told him they've never seen court calendars as large as those at the Lake County Superior Court, he said.

“You're not being asked to build a courthouse that is going to sit idle. It's going to be heavily used,” said Blum.

He said the project – which went back to the drawing board for the third or fourth time last year due to being over budget – is “far from extravagant.”

Blum continued, “We’ve seen some of the new courthouses that have come online recently. They’re beautiful. And they should be beautiful. A courthouse shouldn't look like a strip mall. This building however – there’s no granite, there’s no marble, there's no columns, there’s not even tile on the floors. It's stucco, it's concrete floors, it's drywall.”

He said the Lakeport design is for a decent, functional, safe building, which is all they’ve ever asked for. “We simply don’t have that in our county.”

The county court was told that an elevated site, out of the floodplain, was needed. “That's why we ended up with the site we have,” Blum said.

He said the county is the poorest in the state, with 25 percent of the population living below the poverty level. There were a dozen homicides last year, most related to marijuana, and a severe methamphetamine problem. He also referenced last year's devastating wildland fires.

Blum asked for the committee to fund the project so it could finally get going.

Committee members agreed that a need certain existed, and went on to question the site selection, alternative locations and CEQA mitigations.

One alternative site mentioned during the meeting is the Vista Point Shopping Center property, located across from the proposed building site. Blum said the landowner wanted about $3 million for the property, which he said had a fair market value of about $800,000, and the state wouldn't pursue the purchase.

During the discussion, one board member brought up the possibility of pursuing eminent domain to acquire the land, an avenue Blum said the state hasn't been willing to pursue.

Blum also was questioned about possibly locating the facility next to the Hill Road Correctional Facility. He said that option has been considered repeatedly, but there is no land available there, especially now that the sheriff's office has received a $20 million grant to expand the jail.

“This is in the sticks of the sticks,” replied Blum of the jail location. “There's nothing but rattlesnakes out there.”

Blum said that the shopping center was among the 35 or so sites originally considered, most of them eliminated due to being in the floodplain. The shopping center was dropped due to cost.

“It's an eyesore,” Blum said of the shopping center. However, “Many of us would have preferred that site years ago,” explaining a new courthouse would have turned the eyesore into an asset.

Committee member Jeffrey Johnson, an associate justice on the Second Appellate District Court of Appeal, suggested that creativity is important when dealing with a $6 million shortfall. He suggested space reduction – specifically, eliminating the fourth courtroom and staggering schedules.

Don Byrd, presiding judge of the Glenn County Superior Court and an ex-officio, nonvoting member of the committee, advocated for the courthouse project, having seen the need firsthand during a visit.

Byrd – whose 122-year-old courthouse in Willows is slated for a $40 million renovation – was concerned that the committee's proposed action to reevaluate the site would put the Lakeport project a minimum of seven years behind where it should be.

“I don't know how much longer that they can last in this building that they have,” he said, citing the current building's numerous safety concerns and questioning if the delay would save money.

David Power, a retired Solano County Superior Court judge, said there was no question about the need, and he didn't think reducing the building size would work. His focused on the money needed specifically to deal with the site's topography and poor soils. He was very concerned that once construction activities on the site started, the cost would turn out to be much higher.

“I know of no other site that has CEQA costs like this,” said Power.

Steve Jahr, a retired Shasta County Superior Court judge, said he had visited all the courts working for the council, with one of the most memorable visits being to Lakeport, where the judges gave him a tour. They showed him the sorry state of the facility and the fullness of the calendars.

They also took him to the proposed site. “It was a site that was troubling to me,” Jahr said.

He said the court hasn't made mistakes, but has been cooperative and flexible. He said the architects made the mistakes.

“My impression at this juncture is one of enormous disappointment,” he said, adding that changing course will be costly.

Jahr said he would reluctantly support the additional costs, and he voted against the motion to reevaluate the site, joining Siskiyou County Superior Court Presiding Judge Laura Masunaga and Stephan Castellanos, FAIA, the former California state architect who is now principal architect for Derivi Castellanos Architects in voting no.

Byrd and Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge William Highberger, both ex-officio members, abstained because they are chair and vice-chair, respectively, of the Trial Court Facility Modification Advisory Committee.
                  
Chair Brad Hill, administrative presiding justice of the Fifth Appellate District Court of Appeal, said the committee's action did not mean the door was being closed on the project.

“We want this project to succeed, we want it to move forward. We just don't want to shut down another project in the process,” he said, adding that working together they could hopefully get the Lake County courthouse project on track and built for the county's citizens.

Following the Lakeport courthouse discussion, the committee gave the Santa Barbara courthouse project a similar outcome.

Blum said that, after the presentation, Johnson approached him to tell him he was touched by the presentation.

“I touched their heart, not their pocketbook,” said Blum. “I hit the wrong target.”

Blum spoke with state Judicial Council staff on Friday, who were getting started with the site reconsideration process. He said Lakeport is the first project with a site to be told to go back for reevaluation.

The process has been slow for Blum, who during his three years as attorney general on Micronesia saw a new courthouse project built.

LeVier recounted the lengthy process that the local court had gone through to get the Lakeport Boulevard site.

She said that, hopefully, once this new review is completed, the project can move forward.

“We just want a functional, safe building – that's all we're asking for,” she said.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.

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Written by: Elizabeth Larson

Published: 09 March 2016