by Mike Sever
Record-Courier Reporter
After two years of talks and little apparent progress on a joint county/city justice center in Kent, some county officials want the county to move forward with building a new courthouse.
"At this point we feel we are losing an opportunity; time is money at this point," said Portage County Municipal Court Judge Barbara Oswick.
With little construction going on, she said she believes the county could save money by building now rather than waiting for Kent to figure out what it wants to do downtown.
"We owe the taxpayers of this county a decent facility to do business," she said.
The municipal courts instituted a special fee a couple years ago to pay for a new courthouse. The fund now has nearly $2 million in it.
A new municipal court building in Kent has been discussed for more than half a decade. The court has been housed in the former 1930s-era post office on South Water Street.
Criminal and traffic cases originating in Aurora are handled at the Kent courthouse.
When Judge Donald Martell was on the bench he cited the building's inadequate public space, a leaking roof and lack of office space for court personnel.
"The courthouse that we have is close to unusable," Oswick said, noting the building does not meet Americans with Disabilities Act standards.
Commissioners paid for a space study in 2004 and had it updated in 2007. That's when talks started with Kent about doing a joint police station/municipal court building to save money.
But there has never been a quantification of savings from a joint project, or how much a stand-alone courthouse would cost.
In two years of talks, the parties have yet to sign a final memorandum of understanding on how the project is to be managed and financed, or who will pay for what.
NOR IS THERE any agreement yet on the location or size of the building.
After the county and Kent started talks, Kent State University joined for a time. The idea was KSU and city police departments could share space.
But faced with the prospect of massive funding cuts in the state budget, KSU has apparently dropped out of the project.
County commissioners have just put their comments to a draft memo that was proposed a couple months ago, said William Lillich, Kent's safety director.
That agreement, he said, would continue the feasibility study as "a more definitive process that would involve a lot more time and effort and detail."
Lillich was hesitant to quote a price tag for a building expected to be about 100,000 square feet, but said it probably would be more than $20 million "when you throw in site acquisition and prep."
After two years of meetings, Oswick said, "we haven't even approached" a vote on a location. Lillich said several sites have been looked at and additional ones are being analyzed.
Kent officials want to use the new facility as one of the centerpieces of downtown redevelopment.
Recently, Oswick and County Clerk of Courts Linda Fankhauser proposed that architects Brandstetter Carroll Zofcin Inc. of Cleveland estimate the cost.
The firm designed the recently completed Stow municipal courthouse, the Elyria municipal courthouse and more than 25 courthouses in Ohio and Kentucky.
Commissioners agreed last week to put out a request for proposals to do a cost study, even though a location has not been selected.
By statute, the municipal court branch must be located in Kent, according to Fankhauser.
E-mail:
msever@recordpub.com
Telephone: 330-296-9657