Courthouse board receives no site offers

The board over­see­ing plans for a new cour­t­house received no pro­pos­als from prop­er­ty own­ers inter­est­ed in sell­ing dur­ing a pub­lic hear­ing Tuesday afternoon. 

Few res­i­dents showed up for the spe­cial meet­ing of the Clark County Project Development Board at the coun­ty cour­t­house to par­tic­i­pate in the discussion. 

In response to a ques­tion by board mem­ber Ed Burtner about what hap­pens if no one makes an offer, Danny Rhoades, exec­u­tive offi­cer for the Department of Court Facilities of the Administrative Office of the Courts, said the board may “work with the archi­tect to iden­ti­fy sites and go out and do direct solicitation.” 

Deputy County Judge-Executive Ed Logsdon, who chairs the board, said in response to a ques­tion, that no mem­ber of the board had talked with prop­er­ty own­ers about pro­pos­als out­side of the meeting. 

“We’ve heard rumors,” Logsdon said. “If you hang around the cour­t­house, you hear rumors every day.” 

District Judge Earl-Ray Neal, a mem­ber of the board, remind­ed those attend­ing that the pur­pose of the pub­lic hear­ing was not only to solic­it for­mal pro­pos­als, but also to hear from the pub­lic about the project. 

“If you have opin­ions about where it should be, now is the time to step up to the mic and tell us, because we’re on the record,” he said. 

One attendee, Sheila Whisman, point­ed out that Winchester has many old, dilap­i­dat­ed, or vacant build­ings that could be used as a site for a new judi­cial center. 

Ron Kibbey said he pre­ferred that the new facil­i­ty not be out of town. 

“I hope that you find some­thing with­in the city itself, just for acces­si­bil­i­ty,” he said. 

Logsdon said he thinks that is what board mem­bers would pre­fer, in part because it would reduce the county’s cost of trans­port­ing pris­on­ers from the jail. 

“As I under­stand it, we want to give first con­sid­er­a­tion to down­town prop­er­ty,” Special Circuit Judge Julia H. Adams, a mem­ber of the board, said. 

However, Rhoades men­tioned that some coun­ties had built new cour­t­hous­es away from downtown. 

He men­tioned that in Graves County, where a dead­ly tor­na­do in 2021 destroyed most of the coun­ty seat of Mayfield, it was at first hard to find a suit­able loca­tion where adjoin­ing landown­ers were will­ing to sell. However, two years after the storm, the coun­ty broke ground on a new cour­t­house on the site of the one that was dam­aged. It is being built using insur­ance and Federal Emergency Management Agency funding. 

County Magistrate Robert Blanton, whose dis­trict includes down­town Winchester, men­tioned that Madison County recent­ly remod­eled and expand­ed its old cour­t­house, and Clark County could do the same. 

“To me, that is a viable option if you need to do so,” he said. 

Madison com­plete­ly ren­o­vat­ed the inte­ri­or of its 19^th cen­tu­ry cour­t­house and added near­ly 4,900 square feet at a cost of $17 mil­lion, con­sid­er­ably less than the $22.1 mil­lion that was allo­cat­ed by the state. It was ded­i­cat­ed in 2025. 

Blanton not­ed that the coun­ty gov­ern­ment owns the Clark County Courthouse, which has the cir­cuit court­room and judges’ offices, and the Clark County Detention Center, locat­ed direct­ly behind it. 

The coun­ty also owns the Gov. James Clark Judicial Center, which hous­es the Circuit Clerk’s Office and dis­trict court­rooms and offices, locat­ed across Cleveland Avenue from the courthouse. 

Logsdon said a new jail would cost an addi­tion­al $40 million. 

“In my opin­ion, that will not hap­pen,” he said. 

Logsdon said after the meet­ing that park­ing is cur­rent­ly an issue around the cour­t­house square, and if a site is cho­sen with plen­ty of park­ing space, that could free up more space around the cour­t­house for gen­er­al parking. 

Rhoades gave an overview of the project, which was autho­rized by the state General Assembly in 2024 at an esti­mat­ed cost of $60 million. 

Codell Construction Company of Winchester was award­ed the con­tract, and Sherman Carter Barnhart of Lexington is the archi­tec­tur­al firm. 

The esti­mat­ed size of the build­ing is 60,000 square feet, and the building’s “foot­print” would be between 20,000 and 30,000 square feet, or one-half to three-quar­ters of an acre, he said. It is pro­ject­ed to be two to three floors. 

“Obviously, the site will deter­mine what that ends up being,” Rhoades said. 

He said the facil­i­ty would include court­rooms for dis­trict, cir­cuit, and fam­i­ly courts, spe­cial­ty courts, office space for judges and their staff, the cir­cuit court clerk’s staff, file stor­age, and space for the pub­lic to inter­act with the staff. Also includ­ed would be space for statewide pro­grams, pre­tri­al ser­vices and court-des­ig­nat­ed work­ers, secu­ri­ty staff, check­points, mon­i­tor­ing, and pris­on­er hold­ing areas. 

It would not be lim­it­ed to those, “but those are the essen­tials,” he said. 

There would be secure park­ing for elect­ed offi­cials and staff park­ing, which would be sep­a­rat­ed from gen­er­al parking. 

“The loca­tion of the site should max­i­mize the visu­al pres­ence of the project in the com­mu­ni­ty, and first con­sid­er­a­tion must be giv­en to a site that is near­est to the exist­ing cour­t­house or cour­t­hous­es,” he said. 

Rhoades said the board and archi­tects would do pre­lim­i­nary assess­ments of the poten­tial sites. 

“We will give con­sid­er­a­tion . . . to at least three sites,” he said. 

Determining fac­tors will include size, loca­tion, cur­rent use of the sites, who the own­ers are and how many there are, envi­ron­men­tal and his­toric preser­va­tion con­cerns, demo­li­tion require­ments, water issues, and utilities. 

“After the final assess­ment of the sites, we will be able to choose which of the sites to have appraised, and then once those appraisals are received, we would make pur­chase offers on those sites,” Rhoades said. 

One of those who spoke dur­ing the meet­ing was state Sen. Greg Elkins, R‑Winchester, who was instru­men­tal in get­ting the fund­ing approved. 

He men­tioned that the new judi­cial cen­ter is great­ly needed. 

“We rank these cour­t­hous­es accord­ing to need,” he explained. 

Having been a coun­ty mag­is­trate, Elkins said, he was famil­iar with the cur­rent Clark County Courthouse and shared safe­ty con­cerns about that facil­i­ty, where cir­cuit and fam­i­ly court tri­als now take place. 

“You could car­ry any­thing you want­ed to car­ry in there. And I know the judges and bailiffs and the peo­ple par­tic­i­pat­ing can’t feel safe under these cir­cum­stances. I wouldn’t,” he said. 

“It was impor­tant to get those funds to build a judi­cial cen­ter so that we can have a degree of safe­ty that we’ve nev­er seen in Clark County before,” he said. 

“I don’t want to see this stall,” he remarked. 

Elkins also men­tioned that the mon­ey could not have been used for any­thing oth­er than a cour­t­house. If it weren’t used in Clark County, it would go to anoth­er county’s court project. 

“We don’t want any part of that $60 mil­lion to go back to Frankfort,” Logsdon said. 

Other mem­bers of the Clark County Project Development Board are Judge Cole Maier, the vice chair, Judge Nora Shepherd, and Circuit Clerk Tony Kirk. 

The next meet­ing of the Clark County Project Development Board will be on Friday, Sept. 25 at 1:30 p.m. at the Gov. James Clark Judicial Center.