EVERETT — A divided Snohomish County Council has approved spending another $1 million or more on plans for overhauling the county courthouse.
Council members expect to receive architectural designs by the end of the year. After that, they would have to vote again to move ahead with the renovation.
“It’s an important step,” Deputy Executive Marcia Isenberg said. “We can’t do the rest without doing this first. It’s the first of many steps to come.”
The council voted 3-2 on Wednesday to add up to $1.1 million to its contract with Heery International. Among the questions for the Atlanta-based architecture firm are how much extra life the renovation is expected to squeeze out of the nearly 50-year-old building.
They also want to know what exactly the county’s $62 million budget for the project will buy. One of the chief components is likely to be a new tower built on the north courthouse plaza that would house elevators, restrooms and an entrance.
As is, the courthouse has just one restroom that’s fully accessible for physically disabled patrons. Ideally, they’d like to have one on each of the building’s five floors, Isenberg said. The shafts for the existing elevators are too small to accommodate modern replacements, which is one of the reasons for putting them in the proposed tower.
Voting against the contract amendment were councilmembers Stephanie Wright and Brian Sullivan.
To Sullivan, the renovation plan would throw good money after bad. He agrees with judges who contend that no renovation could fix security flaws in the old building’s design, which makes it difficult to keep in-custody defendants separate from the general public or court staff.
“I want to solve the problem permanently, not temporarily,” Sullivan said. “I think that after spending 60 million bucks, we’re not even solving the problem temporarily.”
Sullivan remains disappointed that the county scuttled plans last year for a new eight-story justice building on the north side of Wall Street, directly across from the county’s main administrative buildings. He insists that the project could have been finished on time and within its $162 million budget. County Executive Dave Somers, who was on the County Council through the end of last year, had his doubts and now says that the county’s financial situation is too precarious to justify building a new courthouse, even on a more modest scale.
The county has spent about $12.9 million to prepare the abandoned project, the bulk of it for design work and buying six business properties through eminent domain to accommodate the project’s anticipated footprint. Those properties — three former law offices, a bail bonds business, a legal messenger service and a small parking lot — remain in the county’s possession with no long-term decision on what to do with them.
After taking office as executive, Somers convened a working group to look at building a new courthouse versus remodeling the aging concrete-faced building at Wall Street and Wetmore Avenue. In May, the executive recommended a renovation. He said his decision was based mostly on financial concerns, including a predicted $6 million shortfall in next year’s county operating budget. The failure of a 0.2 percent criminal justice sales tax on the Aug. 2 ballot increased the chances of budget cuts next year, including layoffs among county staff.
Noah Haglund: 425-339-3465; nhaglund@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @NWhaglund.
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