MOUNT VERNON — Although many details are yet unknown, the city has taken its first solid step toward resolving the issue of a new municipal court building.
At the April 25 city council meeting, council members authorized the city to enter into agreements to acquire whole or in part four parcels of property:
•10-16 N. Main St.
•18-20 N. Main St.
•6 Chestnut St.
•3 E. High St.
According to City Engineer Brian Ball, the city has signed purchase contracts for the East High, 18-20 N. Main, and Chestnut Street parcels. Ball said the owner of 10-16 North Main is a willing seller but has not yet signed a contract.
Plans call for two new buildings: a city annex on the parcels north of City Hall and a courthouse on the East High/Gay Street parcel. Ball said the buildings would be three- or four-story structures.
Whether the 3 E. High St. building will be rehabbed or demolished is unknown. Ball said the goal is to preserve or recreate the storefront retail space on the square and around the corner on High Street.
“We feel retail space is very important, very vibrant. We don’t want to put any of those folks out of business,” he said. “While they might be affected during construction, the goal is not to displace those businesses.”
The court complex will be a standalone building from the city. It will include the Mount Vernon Municipal Court, city law director’s office, municipal clerk’s office, and probation staff.
The city will demolish its tax/utility building at 3 N. Gay St. Staff will relocate to the Chestnut Street annex along with other departments.
“At this point we are not looking at attaching the police department to the building,” Ball said.
The police department will move to a new building on Sychar Road. The city bought the 2.6-acre parcel in 2010 with the idea of locating a satellite fire station there. The city has since decided that a second station should be farther east.
“The police department has different needs, and they are not compatible with the court,” Municipal Judge John Thatcher explained.
Additionally, the impound lot on Greenwood Avenue would move to Sychar Road to provide better control and reduce time lost traveling between the police department and impound lot.
As far as the Plaza Building parking garage, Ball said that lack of parking was an issue as they explored other locations. However, to buy half a block needed to provide adequate parking would be very expensive.
“It firms up that doing repairs to our parking garage makes sense,” he said, adding that the plan is to shore up the garage for another 10 to 15 years.
As the city builds, officials are determined to replicate the architecture of Public Square and downtown Mount Vernon.
“We want to be sensitive of the heritage of Mount Vernon,” Mayor Matt Starr said.
The process
The municipal court is located in the Plaza Building at 5 N. Gay St. Finding a new location started with a 2016 assessment by the Ohio Supreme Court that identified several areas of concern.
The city upgraded its security in 2017, but other areas need a long-term fix. Meanwhile, the building was deteriorating, becoming more costly, and did not have the storage and personnel space to accommodate the growing needs of the court system.
The city asked a consultant to do a 20-year needs assessment. It tasked the consultant to design a facility without a location in mind so that city officials could focus on needs rather than be pressured to recycle a used building.
“We asked them to define the existing and future needs that fits the people first, then we can use it as a measure to grade where to put the building,” Ball said.
Results
The current square footage for the municipal court is 3,735; the needs assessment reported the 20-year need is 13,778.
Other square-foot comparisons include:
•Clerk’s office — 1,362 currently, 4,239 needed
•Probation — 1,979 currently, 5,795 needed
•Law director — 2,829 currently, 4,699 needed
The 20-year numbers include space for walkways and infrastructure.
One significant addition to the new court is a sally port, a secure entryway into the building. Prisoners enter through the sally port to a holding cell, appear in court, and then leave without intermingling with the public.
Under the current situation, prisoners are close to victims, victims’ families, witnesses, jurors, probationers, and others attending court functions.
Another significant addition is a second courtroom. With the increasing caseload, Thatcher anticipates the need to hire a magistrate to handle some of the cases.
Other highlights include a single point of entry, security control room, several attorney rooms, and a crime victim waiting room. The number of holding cells will expand from two to six.
The probation department, clerk’s office, and law director’s office expansions include additional storage space, conference areas, an evidence room, computer room, space for a victim advocate and social workers, and public and staff restrooms.
Police department
Based on the needs assessment, the police department would double its current net square footage, going from 8,134 to 16,851. An additional 37,494 square feet is needed for walkways and infrastructure.
Significant additions include an indoor range, media and decon rooms, sally port, two holding cells, and three additional interrogation rooms. Areas such as the training and evidence rooms, storage and conference areas, office space, and restrooms would also expand.
Timeline
With the preliminary study phase concluded, the city hired an architect to analyze the footprints of the proposed annex and court locations.
“The architect will take the needs assessment and make it a site-specific plan. The architect will bring back alternatives to the court and committee and other department heads, and we’ll review those,” Ball said, adding that the city will seek public comment down the road when plans become more concrete.
Plans for all three buildings — court, annex, and police department — will be done simultaneously. No cost estimates are available as yet.
Once estimates are in hand, the city auditor will work on financing. Since 2018, the city has set aside $500,000 a year for a new building or a major overhaul of the Plaza Building. The fund balance is $2.5 million.
Additionally, Thatcher said he started a special projects fund in 2016 to handle anticipated architect and moving fees. The fund currently sits at around $100,000.
Thatcher anticipates moving the court in three years and is working on creating estimates for what it will cost to move.
Ball said some aspects will have to be figured out as far as construction.
“We want to be ready if the opportunity comes to do all at once,” he said.
Where it won’t be
Many residents have asked why not move the court to existing locations rather than build new. Here’s why other sites were discarded.
Mount Vernon News and First Merit
“Parking was the biggest problem to me,” Thatcher said. “We need to have not just parking for employees, but we somehow we have to include a sally port for transporting individuals into the jail.”
Additionally, Thatcher said that the News building is not much bigger than the current location in terms of usable square footage, and the Area Development Foundation already has plans for the building.
Cooper Progress Park
Thatcher said the CPP administration and engineering buildings are too big, and the parking lots will remain under the ownership of the Property Owners Association. Additionally, the Court Facilities Committee felt CPP is designed to bring in new jobs, not merely transfer jobs from one location to another.
The biggest reason, however, was “potential indefinite amounts of money.”
“Under the CPP structure, there are fees every year, whether you own or rent, and they’re indefinite and unknown fees. The auditor could not certify that the city would have that money, and the city cannot enter into that sort of a contract,” Law Director Rob Broeren explained.
The why
The court moved in the mid-1980s from City Hall to its current location. Judge Thatcher said that at that time, there were a couple of probation officers and two or three in the clerk’s office in addition to the judge.
Since then, the staff has expanded to four probation officers, a drug court coordinator, and six clerks. A drug-testing lab is situated in a former closet.
The court also now offers support services associated with the justice system. However, space for employees related to those services is tight.
“A lot of what we are looking at is we have outgrown this building,” Engineer Ball said.
A trend to funnel lower-level felonies to local jails and a shift toward treatment vs. jail have also affected the court.
“That is the probation model that all courts are going with,” Thatcher said. “The more cases, the more people on probation. The more people on probation, the more services are needed. The more services, the more we become a one-stop shop.”
Similarly, the city law director’s office has expanded to keep up with an increasing caseload and state requirements such as Marsy’s Law.
“The state keeps adding additional services on us,” Law Director Broeren said. “There are a lot of these new things that are not only statutorily required but they are required by the constitution.”
In addition to lack of space, Ball noted the monthly electric bill is over $12,000, and there is no fire suppression system. Knox Pages has previously reported on other problems in the Plaza Building.
