EVERETT — There’s an emerging consensus that Snohomish County needs to stop and rethink its new courthouse, even if that means mothballing the project altogether.
The County Council plans to take a formal vote next week. Their decision could delay the scheduled mid-2015 groundbreaking date — how long is unknown. They could ponder other sites, despite having spent millions of dollars to date preparing a spot across the street from the aging building they intend to replace.
“The last few weeks we’ve all had a lot of new information regarding the courthouse project,” Councilwoman Stephanie Wright said. “In evaluation of the new challenges to the budget, the new challenges to the timeline, I feel at this point we need to stop and reevaluate how we’re going to move forward.”
Wright’s council colleagues all supported the idea, at least in theory, when it came up at a meeting Monday. They directed staff to draft a written proposal for their regular meeting at 10:30 a.m. Feb. 2.
Council members also have asked Executive John Lovick to provide a recommendation on how he’d like to proceed.
The Everett City Council put the $162 million project in doubt last month by taking emergency action to ensure that the new building would provide enough parking downtown. Before then, zoning in the city’s downtown business district didn’t specify any parking requirements for the project.
The emergency action would require at least 300 parking spaces.
Cost estimates for a new parking structure range from $20 million to $45 million. With the eight-story building already on a tight budget, there’s no money to add that into the project.
A majority of the council members have said they’re dead-set against spending more on courthouse construction.
“I’m not in favor in any way of expanding the courthouse budget,” Councilman Terry Ryan said.
County officials insist they’re designing a replacement building that won’t add employees — or create any new parking demands.
“The courthouse project management team is disappointed by this last-minute change of direction mandated by the City Council,” reads a handout that county facilities director Mark Thunberg presented to County Council members Monday. “It seems reasonable that this requirement could have been communicated at any of a number of meetings or email exchanges over the past (two years), allowing the county team to work jointly with the city to resolve the issue.”
Mayor Ray Stephanson said county officials led him to believe there would be hundreds of spaces at the new courthouse. The plans actually include only 30 high-security parking spaces.
The new building also will eliminate more than 130 spaces in a county-run parking lot at Wall Street and Oakes Avenue. While not in heavy use most days, those spaces do fill up during events at the Xfinity Arena across the street.
The city also maintains that the county has fallen short of a 2002 agreement to provide at least 1,385 off-street parking spaces around the county’s downtown administration buildings. That was one of the reasons the city used to reject the county’s environmental application for building the courthouse.
Everett’s demands are firm, Stephanson said.
County officials, however, say they’re still confused about what the city expects.
“From my standpoint, it makes some sense that we might have to replace the surface parking that we’re displacing. That seems reasonable to me,” Council Chairman Dave Somers said. “Three-hundred spaces for a new courthouse when we’re essentially moving across the street doesn’t make any sense to me.”
Postponing courthouse construction will cost money.
Contractor Hoffman Construction Co. of Seattle estimated that every month the groundbreaking gets pushed back will increase costs by at least $193,000, mainly because of market forces.
The county has spent nearly $7 million on the new courthouse so far, without a single shovel of dirt being turned. At least $3.4 million was used to buy six properties condemned for the new building, county figures show. The total includes relocation costs for affected businesses.
Thunberg suggested that the county might consider building its new courthouse outside of Everett.
The county charter specifies that the county seat must be in Everett. However, there is precedent for putting major court facilities outside the county seat, as with King County’s Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent.
If Snohomish County officials were to consider another city, they would need to evaluate what long-term inefficiencies that could create, such as added costs for transporting prisoners there from the county jail in downtown Everett.
Reevaluating the courthouse plans could entail more stakeholder meetings among elected leaders, judges and other court personnel, Wright said. She’s worried about the long-term consequences if county leaders move ahead with the current plan.
“I am committed, we do need a new courthouse, we do need to move forward on something,” she said. “I’m just afraid that under these constraints, we’re not going to make the best possible decisions.”
Noah Haglund: 425-339-3465; nhaglund@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @NWhaglund.
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