On Monday the State Public Works Board (SPWB) approved selection of a preferred site at 675 Lakeport Blvd., which is within the city limits near downtown Lakeport and offers good access from Highway 29 and Lakeport Boulevard.
Officials said the location is also close to services that would make it convenient for court users and meets the size requirements for the courthouse parcel.
Mary Smith, chief executive officer of the Lake County Superior Court, is also a member of the local project advisory committee, which is part of the site selection process.
“It's not a simple criteria,” she said of the guidelines to choose the location, noting that they're “pages long.”
She said the committee wanted objective criteria to guide the process.
The courts in Lakeport currently occupy the fourth floor of the Lake County Courthouse at 255 N. Forbes St. The facility, built in 1968, currently is overcrowded, with accessibility and security issues.
The new courthouse project was ranked as an “immediate need” in the judicial branch’s capital-outlay plan and is among the branch’s highest-priority infrastructure projects.
It is among the first of 41 projects to be funded by Senate Bill 1407, which finances critically needed courthouse construction, renovation, and repair through a portion of judicial branch fees, fines, and penalties rather than the state’s General Fund.
The proposed project will house four courtrooms in approximately 50,000 square feet.
The AOC is also finalizing contract negotiations with Santa Rosa-based TLCD Architecture and national firm Shepley Bulfinch, which have been selected to assist with the feasibility process and potentially the design of the new Lakeport courthouse.
Site selection approval enables the Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC), which manages the project, to perform additional due diligence and feasibility analysis on the property and begin negotiations with the parcel’s owners, the Seregow Trust and Assembly of God Church.
The AOC is also continuing evaluation of an alternate site, on Martin Street near Bevins Street, and expects that site to undergo the same SPWB process at a later date.
The AOC process typically includes a preferred and an alternate site through due diligence and acquisition negotiations, until the environmental reviews are complete and a final site decision is made.
A third site that was originally short-listed, a portion of the Vista Point Shopping Center, is no longer on the active list of potential sites because of a prohibitively high offer cost, officials reported.
Selection of a preferred site also enables the project team to initiate environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).
The CEQA process will include a public review period and community meeting, to be scheduled later this spring. The final site will not be selected until the AOC has completed the CEQA process and evaluated all potential impacts.
Site selection and acquisition typically take between one and two years depending on the complexity of the environmental review process, but the project team is working to accelerate the schedule if possible.
Smith said the local selection committee will continue to be involved with project, and will be more active at various points as the process moves forward.
Design of the new courthouse, she added, is still a long way out.
“This is just the very beginning point, and anything can happen still,” she said.
More about the project can be found at www.courtinfo.ca.gov/programs/occm/projects_lake_lakeport.htm .
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