Courthouse site proposals set for public hearing

There will be a pub­lic hear­ing on Sept. 15 to con­sid­er site pro­pos­als for Clark County’s new judi­cial center. 

A pub­lic notice was pub­lished by The Winchester Sun Sept. 1 announc­ing the meet­ing at 5 p.m. at the Clark County Courthouse. 

“The pur­pose of the hear­ing is to receive site pro­pos­als from prop­er­ty own­ers and present them for open dis­cus­sion,” the legal ad said. 

Interested prop­er­ty own­ers are expect­ed to sub­mit plats of their land to the County Judge-Executive’s Office along with their ask­ing price and state­ments per­tain­ing to any known his­tor­i­cal or envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns. They may also mail that infor­ma­tion to the coun­ty judge or send it by email to dlayne@winchesterky.com with the sub­ject line KCOJ Facility – Site Proposal. 

Public com­ments will also be heard at the meet­ing, which will be in the Fiscal Court cham­bers on the first floor. 

The hear­ing is a meet­ing of the Clark County Project Development Board, which is chaired by Deputy County Judge-Executive Ed Logsdon. Other mem­bers are Judge Cole Maier, the vice chair, Judge Nora Shepherd, Judge Earl-Ray Neal, Judge Julia Adams, Circuit Clerk Tony Kirk, and for­mer Winchester Mayor Ed Burtner. 

Kirk said there will also be rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Kentucky Administrative Office of the Courts participating. 

The cir­cuit clerk said there is not yet a pro­posed loca­tion for the new courthouse. 

“There is no place in mind,” he said Tuesday. The meet­ing is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple to “offer their land up” for the project. 

The Project Development Board, along with the archi­tects, Sherman Carter Barnhart of Lexington, and the con­struc­tion man­age­ment firm, Codell Construction Company of Winchester, will con­sid­er the proposals. 

Kirk said the new judi­cial cen­ter would be financed by a bond issue, and the state would pay the coun­ty until the bonds are paid off, and then pay rent to the coun­ty for use of the property. 

He said the AOC would like­ly want to build the judi­cial cen­ter close to down­town because that’s where the cour­t­house and the jail are located. 

“All of those are fac­tors in where we pick a loca­tion,” he said. 

Kirk said most new judi­cial cen­ters are built in or near down­town, but some coun­ties have built them far­ther out from the city center. 

The cir­cuit clerk said he hasn’t heard any­one on the project board voice an opin­ion about exact­ly where the new facil­i­ty should be built. 

“We’re going to go into September with open minds and see where we’re going,” he said. 

“I think most on the board have a deep desire to keep it down­town,” he said. “It’s just a mat­ter of find­ing the [right] prop­er­ty in the vicin­i­ty,” and for the right price. 

“I’m sure the more we spend on land acqui­si­tion, the less of a build­ing we’re going to get,” he said. 

“I think that project ini­tial­ly was a six­ty or eighty mil­lion-dol­lar project,” he said. 

A mod­ern cour­t­house is need­ed, Kirk said, because the Clark County Courthouse and the Governor James Clark Judicial Center, locat­ed in an old post office build­ing, are no longer adequate. 

Kirk said there are secu­ri­ty con­cerns about the fam­i­ly and cir­cuit courtrooms. 

He said the new cour­t­house will prob­a­bly have two court­rooms for each of the divi­sions: cir­cuit, fam­i­ly, and dis­trict court, where­as now there can only be one of each in ses­sion at a time. 

The court offices will also move to the new facil­i­ty, along with judges’ offices, pro­ba­tion and parole, pre­tri­al ser­vices, drug courts, and court-des­ig­nat­ed workers. 

The cour­t­house at 34 S. Main St. and the old post office build­ing would no longer be used for court-relat­ed pur­pos­es, except pos­si­bly the County Attorney’s Office. 

The coun­ty attor­ney is a coun­ty offi­cial, even though he and his assis­tant attor­neys are also pros­e­cu­tors for dis­trict court. 

Kirk said he and County Judge-Executive R.J. Palmer have been work­ing togeth­er to try to get some main­te­nance done on the two exist­ing build­ings “to make sure they’re in good shape mov­ing for­ward” because the coun­ty will no longer be get­ting rent mon­ey from the Administrative Office of the Courts for those after the new cour­t­house opens. 

It’ll be up to the coun­ty gov­ern­ment to decide what to do with the cur­rent cour­t­house and judi­cial center. 

“They’re beau­ti­ful, his­toric build­ings,” Kirk said. “You’ll nev­er get this kind of work­man­ship and archi­tec­ture in a new build­ing, as we all know. . . . But old­er build­ings come with inher­ent problems.” 

Kirk said he doesn’t know when the project might be completed. 

“Everyone on the board has a desire to get this going as quick­ly as pos­si­ble,” he said. “We are all push­ing to get this start­ed and get it done.” 

He said the board has been work­ing on it for six months, and it usu­al­ly takes about five years to get a new cour­t­house built. 

“It’s long and ardu­ous,” he said. 

Kirk added, how­ev­er, that hav­ing for­mer Chief Justice Laurance B. VanMeter of Clark County as head of the judi­cial branch at the time, and state leg­is­la­tors Greg Elkins and Ryan Dotson advo­cat­ing for the new cour­t­house prob­a­bly helped get it approved and moved along. 

“We were close to the top, and I think that just kind of put us over the top,” he said.