Sunday, February 07, 1999
Courts step up to a new home
Justice center to improve conditions
BY CINDY SCHROEDER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
COVINGTON — In Kenton County Juvenile Court, the temperatures often mirror the tensions of the participants.
“The climate control is non-existent,” said Chief District Judge Ann Ruttle, who added it's not uncommon for courtroom temperatures to reach 95 degrees. “It's so hot up there, I take a fan.”
There's also the problem of prisoners being transported through public areas as they're taken to and from court, crowded hallways that offer no privacy for lawyers and their clients, few public restrooms, and security features that are ranked among the worst in Kentucky courthouses.
Kenton County officials hope to resolve those long-standing problems this spring, when they move their court operations into the new Kenton County Justice Center at Third Street and Madison Avenue.
Tentatively set for mid-June, the move will relocate all Kenton County courts and related functions in an eight-story, $19.5 million facility, just a block west of the present county building.
The Corporex Cos. project also includes an adjacent $16.5 million, 1,600-space parking garage that opened last August for courthouse and public use.
“It's like having a beat-up '60s car versus a BMW,” Kenton County Project Manager Rob Thrun said, in comparing the present 29-year-old courthouse with its state-of-the-art predecessor. “It's not a plush building, but every aspect of (the courthouse) has been improved.”
While the sheriff's office and the Kenton County Jail will remain in the present county building at 303 Court St., all other court-related functions will be housed in the new facility. Those include Kenton County's circuit and district courts, the clerks' offices serv ing those courts, juvenile court, court designated workers, pre-trial services, bailiffs, the master commissioner, and the regional court administrator.
Also moving to the new building will be Donald Wintersheimer, a justice on the Kentucky Supreme Court, who's now based at Northern Kentucky University.
Although the new justice center was designed to serve the public more efficiently, security concerns were the main impetus behind it, said Patricia Summe, chief Kenton circuit judge.
“The security conditions in the (present Kenton County Building) are among the worst in the state,” said Russell Salsman, spokesman for the Administrative Office of the Courts.
Factors such as “hidden areas” offering little or no visibility in the event of trouble, isolated courtrooms and judicial offices, and a general layout that hinders visitors' ability to easily move around the courthouse all factored into the decision to build a new Kenton County Justice Center, Mr. Salsman said.
Prisoners get elevator
Before Kenton County prisoners were routinely shackled for court appearances, a few had bolted from the bailiffs as they were being led through public areas, Kenton Circuit Judge Douglas Stephens said.
In the new justice center, prisoners will be brought to courtrooms from the basement on their own elevator, and be taken directly to a holding cell or a courtroom in the middle of the building, without walking through public areas, Mr. Thrun said.
The new justice center also will have rooms where lawyers and their clients can confer before and after court appearances, rather than sit on benches in public hallways. Witnesses can be segregated from the public in small rooms near the courts, rather than wait just outside the courtroom, where they currently risk having antagonists “standing across the hall leering at them,” Judge Stephens said.
Unlike the present county building, access will be controlled through one public entrance off the main lobby, Mr. Thrun said. All visitors will have to pass through a metal detector, and purses and packages will be X-rayed.
In the southwest corner of the Kenton County Parking Garage, 25 spaces will be walled off for judges and other court personnel. Judges can take their own elevator to a private hallway outside their offices, without mingling with the public, as they do now.
Other security features include more than 50 cameras scattered throughout the building to monitor visitors, and judges' chambers and clerks' offices that are walled off to the public, except by admittance by court workers.
Under the current arrangement, “people just walk right through the office” to pick up various forms, or to look up court cases, said Mary Ann Woltenberg, Kenton Circuit clerk.
“You'll have people involved in domestic violence cases walking into the middle of the office to fill out forms,” Ms. Woltenberg said. “With the new building, there'll be an area just outside our office where people can get domestic violence forms, look up cases, or deal with probate matters.”
Like most of the workers in the Kenton County building, the employees in the circuit court clerk's office also are looking forward to having public restrooms on each floor, instead of only one for each sex in the entire building.
Other features:
• The arraignment courtroom for traffic cases and initial court appearances will be nearly twice as large as the present courtroom — 2,400 square feet instead of 1,400 square feet. It also will be just off the main lobby on the first floor, instead of requiring a trip to the third floor, and a probable wait for an elevator. Space also has been allotted just outside the courtroom for a possible future fee station for convenience in paying fines.
• Circuit and district courtrooms will be 1,900 square feet, about 500 square feet larger than the current courtrooms.
• The new building will have a climate control system to avoid the present extreme temperatures in courtrooms and clerks' offices.
“(The temperatures) tend to distract people,” Judge Summe said. “I've had jurors who come in wearing T-shirts in the winter and big sweaters in the summer.”
• Public elevators also will be synchronized, so that they don't all show up at the same place at the same time, as they often do in the current building.
The move to the new justice center will free up 21/2 floors in the 10-story Kenton County Building for possible expansion of some county offices. County officials also expect to lease some Class B, or moderately-priced office space, to private users, such as lawyers.
“There's a shortage of quality office space regionwide,” said Danny Fore, president of the Tri-County Economic Development Corp. “There's definitely a need for a range of product.”
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