The board, at Supervisor Anthony Farrington's request, voted to send letters opposing one of the siting locations for the building to the Judicial Council of California's Administrative Office of the Courts, the city of Lakeport and the county's state legislators. The clerk of the board confirmed that the letters went out last week.
In response to the April 26 discussion, the Administrative Office of the Courts cautioned that design is in the very early stages, and that it hasn't decided on a set design or situation for the building.
The design process “is just getting started” and is expected to last about a year, said Administrative Office of the Courts spokesperson Teresa Ruano.
Nor is the state going to consider an alternate site in Lakeport for the courthouse, an idea put forward by supervisors and community members at the board's meeting last week.
The state has purchased a six-acre property at 675 Lakeport Blvd., situated just below the Vista Point overlook where the Lake County Chamber of Commerce building is located, for the new building, which will be 50,158 square feet, have two stories and a basement, and include four courtrooms, according to the Administrative Office of the Courts.
The project is funded by Senate Bill 1407, which Rona Rothenberg, senior manager of the Administrative Office of the Courts' Office of Court Construction and Management, told the board raised $5 billion through judicial branch fees, fines and penalties to finance courthouse projects around the state.
The Administrative Office of the Courts said that locating the building on the north side of the project – what would be referred to as the “north scheme” – is its preferred option, although it emphasized that how the building will be sited isn't yet finalized.
Farrington is among the members of a project advisory committee that has met over the last few years to consult the state on its selection site for the new courthouse, which was ruled a priority due to the cramped conditions on the fourth floor of the current courthouse on N. Forbes Street.
At an April 18 meeting, Farrington said the committee was presented with two “schemes” – one with the building facing north, the other facing south.
The north scheme, said Farrington, would have had the building rising 10 feet above the level of the Vista Point parking lot, where many visitors and residents go to enjoy the view. He also criticized what he said was a very plain looking design that, coupled with the north scheme siting, wouldn't be in the community's best interest.
Farrington said his concerns “should have some weight in this proceeding.” He said he asked the state for more public hearings and workshops, and was told by the state that it's not their practice to hold such meetings.
He said he had advocated for the state purchasing the nearby Vista Point Shopping Center, part of which has a collapsed roof, and building a new courthouse there.
However, Anne Ording, an Administrative Office of the Courts project manager, told the board that the shopping center property was only three acres and was priced too high.
The current owner, Windsor developer Matt Riveras, purchased the property from the city of Lakeport in 2007 for $1,001,000. Ording said Riveras had wanted $3 million for the property, despite the fact that the property appraised at under $1 million.
Ording said the property was “way over what our budget was to purchase.”
Rothenberg told the board that the Lakeport courthouse was ranked among the top 50 courthouses projects among hundreds that were ranked, and that the Lakeport Boulevard site that the state purchased was one of 36 separate sites that had been “diligently evaluated.”
The shopping center and the 675 Lakeport Blvd. sites were the top two locations, and the latter was chosen after negotiations with Riveras didn't yield an agreement, Rothenberg said.
She said the Judicial Council doesn't have the ability to pursue eminent domain, one method for acquiring the property that was raised during the supervisors' discussion.
“The building will be a lasting edifice” expected to last between 50 and 75 years, Rothenberg said.
But she warned that any delays could preempt the county seeing the $53 million project completed in light of the state's fiscal issues. She said the county's support of the project was critical to keeping it moving.
Supervisor Denise Rushing asked if the county risked losing the money for the project if it took any actions to delay it. “We do,” Rothenberg said.
“I'm not going to be leveraged like that,” Farrington told Rothenberg. “That's not going to work with me.”
He asked if the city of Lakeport could exercise eminent domain to take the shopping center property, but Rothenberg said they're already under way on the selected land.
Rothenberg said there is no resistance by the Administrative Office of the Courts to public input, and noted that, while the state can design and build the courthouse without public input, it seeks to be a good neighbor.
Melissa Fulton, another project advisory committee member and the chief executive officer of the Lake County Chamber of Commerce, said her board of directors supported the southern scheme, which doesn't block Vista Point's view. “I have spoken to no one who said the north scheme is the way to go.”
Lower Lake resident Victoria Brandon said everyone was in support of preserving the view, and she also suggested that eminent domain be looked at with regard to the shopping center property, noting that relocating the building site would have some benefits.
“What we are is that lake and that mountain, not a courthouse,” she said.
County Administrative Officer Kelly Cox, who was at the April 18 meeting, said he was under the impression there would be more excavating to have the building located at a lower height. “I suspect other people thought that, too.”
Rothenberg said excavation is an option that's not been fully vetted.
The discussion ended with the board voting unanimously to send letters of opposition to the north scheme, with a second unanimous vote to send letters to the city of Lakeport and state legislators opposing the siting proposal.
State: Early proposals easy to misinterpret
The state said the location of the building is set, and they're not going to look at an alternative following a yearlong process that resulted in the Lakeport Boulevard site being chosen in the fall of 2010.
Lake County News requested from the Administrative Office of the Courts the initial look at the siting proposals that had been shown to the project advisory committee, but Ruano said nothing is available for the public at this time.
She said the state will wait to release plans to the public, as the early concepts are very easy to misinterpret.
“What the project advisory board saw was really, really preliminary,” she said, and not intended to be a representation of what the building would look like.
“They were all very aware of that,” she said. “It was a concept piece.”
Richard Knoll, the city of Lakeport's community development and redevelopment director, worked to lobby the state to keep the courthouse in Lakeport, and now sits on the advisory committee.
He said the April 18 meeting was the first in a long time for the group, and he had been anxious to see how the state's plans had progressed. What they were shown were very early ideas. “I would stress the term 'conceptual,'” Knoll said.
In designing the building on the site, Knoll said the state has to take into account a “cone of vision,” an easement the city put in place in the late 1960s that is meant to preserve views from Vista Point. He said said the easement starts in the overlook's parking lot and extends out in a triangular shape eastward toward Mt. Konocti and Clear Lake.
It also includes a height limit. “You cannot build a building into this cone of vision area,” he said, and so the easement creates a limitation on where the building can be located on the property while still complying with the height limits.
The Administrative Office of the Courts said it's trying to take the city's “cone of vision” easement on the property into account while making the building the most functional and accessible. Ording told the Board of Supervisors last week that the north scheme doesn't violate the easement.
The early concepts showed a two-story building with a flat roof, the use of a lot of glass on the southern exposure, and a lot of stone and masonry, Knoll said.
He said there were probably more people at the meeting who opposed the north scheme than those who supported it. Knoll said he was in the group who supported orienting the building more toward the north and Lakeport Boulevard.
Originally, the Administrative Office of the Courts had chosen the architectural firm Shepley Bulfinch to design the building. However, the state has since switched to the award-winning San Francisco-based Mark Cavagnero Associates for the task, Ruano said.
Mark Cavagnero Associates, which Ruano said isn't yet under contract with the state, has designed courthouses in San Francisco as well as the new Mammoth Lakes courthouse in Mono County for the Mark Cavagnero Associates, which now is under construction, according to the state.
Ruano said the reason for changing architects is unlikely to be made public.
The initial phase for architectural design and the creation of preliminary plans is expected to take about a year, said Ruano.
As a result of the dialog with the Board of Supervisors last week, Ruano said the Mark Cavagnero Associates is going back to the architect to discuss the design and siting further.
Still, even after the discussion with the county, the north scheme is the one preferred both by the Administrative Office of the Courts and the court, as “it appears to provide the most appropriate access both for the public and for secure transport of in-custody defendants, accommodate required setbacks, involve the least site work, and provide visibility and prominence at the gateway to town from the freeway,” the state said.
Ruano said there will be opportunities for the public to comment on the final plans once they're released. “We recognize the importance of the building to the community,” she said.
Such buildings “symbolize the rule of law in our democracy, so there's a reason they're important,” Ruano added.
The Administrative Office of the Courts said the current project schedule calls for the new building's construction to begin in fall 2012 and be completed in 2014.
More details and background on the project can be found at www.courts.ca.gov/2798.htm.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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