Work on justice center could start in February

Design work should be complete on the new $18.9 million Whitley County Justice Center next month with demolition work on existing buildings on the site starting around late February, Whitley Circuit Court Clerk

Gary Barton told the Williamsburg Kiwanis Club Thursday.
The new justice center is being built on the block adjacent to the Whitley County Courthouse where the old jail and Williamsburg City Hall now stand.

The old city hall won’t be demolished until the new one is complete in late May.
Demolition work on the remainder of the structures will start in late February or early March, and actual construction will start as soon as that is complete, Barton said.

The building is expected to be finished by February 2011.

He said the architects were slated to be finished with design work by Dec. 29, but because a geothermal system has been added that deadline has been pushed back for two weeks.
Barton said the project is slightly over budget, but because interest rates are so low, the bond payment will still be within budget.

The new justice center will be three floors with 58,000 square feet.

“A lot of people don’t know what’s in it. They think everyone is moving out of the old courthouse, which isn’t the case,” Barton said.

The new building will solely house the judiciary, including the circuit court clerk’s office, district courtrooms, circuit courtrooms, and offices for judges.

The judge-executive’s office, PVA, county clerk, and sheriff’s offices will all stay at the existing courthouse.
Barton’s office will be located on the first floor of the new building along with the Court Designated Worker, who handles juvenile cases, and the pre-trial officer, who interviews people that are arrested and gathers background information to assist judges in setting bond amounts.

The second floor will house district court facilities and the third floor will house circuit court facilities.
Barton said the building is designed so the busiest offices are on the first floor, and the least busy are located on the top floor in order to reduce wear and tear on the elevators.
One new feature of the facility will be one public entrance and people entering it will have to go through a metal detector.

There will be a separate entrance and secure parking lot for court personnel.
Barton showed a computer simulation of what the building will look like as you drive into town from US25W on Main Street.

Barton noted that Whitley County traditionally has the 22nd to 25th busiest court docket in Kentucky out of 120 counties.

He took issue with a recent Lexington Herald-Leader series criticizing the building of new judicial centers across the state and the cost of the projects.

“We’re entitled to a nice facility just as Louisville or Lexington is,” Barton said. “We’re building a facility that will be there for 50 to 75 years.”

Project development boards, which are composed of circuit clerks in the affected county, the judge executive, a circuit judge, a district judge, and various other community representatives, oversee justice or judicial center projects Barton said.

All plans have to be approved in Frankfort.

Barton said the Whitley County Project Development Board accepted presentations from six different architects before deciding on one, Murphy Graves, that hadn’t done a judicial center project before.
“When they came to do their presentation, they were by far the best that we saw,” Barton said.