Few in Snohomish County’s administration might admit it, but the city of Everett may have done the county a favor with its recently clarified parking requirement for the county’s courthouse project, putting the project on hold as it prepared to break ground later this year.
There’s growing sentiment among the County Council to step back and reconsider the current direction of the $162 million project, even when the project’s inertia is taken into account, as reported Tuesday by Herald Writer Noah Haglund.
Millions already have been spent to purchase the parking lot property across Wall Street from the courthouse and relocate the businesses that were there. Simply putting off the project, by the project contractor’s estimate, is going to cost the county $193,000 for each month its start is delayed. Nor are construction costs likely to become less expensive in the future.
The County Council is expected to discuss whether to reevaluate the project at its regular Monday meeting.
It’s unfortunate the project advanced to this point before the city made clear its contention that the new courthouse would require the addition of 300 new parking spaces. Adding a parking facility now to the current project would cost another $20 million to $45 million, a figure a majority of the County Council has made clear is not within the project’s budget. Clearer communication between the city and the county could have saved the county significant money and effort.
But now that we’re here, before the county puts a shovel in the ground, it should reassess what it knows, what it doesn’t know and whether other options are worth investigating, including the scope of the project. Snohomish County Prosecutor Mark Roe has made it clear he doesn’t need a new building as much as he needs more people in his department and in the courts’ other departments.
The County Council rejected an earlier option to build the new facility at its current plaza location as too costly. The county should re-examine that conclusion and then reconsider if building a courthouse facility somewhere else in Everett or elsewhere in the county makes sense in terms of cost to the taxpayers and service to the public. The county charter specifies Everett as the county seat, but other counties have built courthouse facilities outside their official seat, specifically King, which built a regional justice center in Kent. Moving the courthouse some distance from the county jail would require transporting defendants by vehicle, but that was going to occur with the facility built across Wall Street.
While that evaluation is going on, the county would do well to have detailed conversations with the city about parking requirements if the courthouse is built at its current location, its proposed location or somewhere else in the city.
The county already has made a good case as to why the existing building, opened in 1967, isn’t a good candidate for a remodel. The building needs extensive seismic upgrades and replacement of its electrical, water and sewage systems. Finding temporary space during construction would also be costly and disruptive. And once work was complete, the expected service life of the building would only be extended by a decade.
Re-examining the courthouse project might still confirm the size and the selected location across Wall Street as the best option.
But the old woodshop teacher’s axiom still applies: Measure twice. Cut once.
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