Denver plans to build a 321,000-square-foot courthouse but isn’t using 225,000 square feet of existing office space that some say could be used for courtrooms.
Tuesday’s election on $378 million worth of jail cells and courtrooms includes asking voters to spend $127 million on a new courthouse.
But two city-owned buildings – the Denver Permit Center and the Wellington Webb building – have at least 85,000 square feet of vacant space, according to city records. The Rocky Mountain News building, purchased by the city for $16 million, is 140,000 square feet.
Instead of being razed for a new courthouse, opponents of the justice center argue, the News site, along with the other buildings, could be used to house some city departments currently in the City and County Building. That would free up more space for the courtrooms.
Currently, the city is leasing space for courtrooms from the Adam’s Mark Hotel for $400,000 a year.
“We have viable choices that are less money and less time and would go a long way toward solving our problems,” said Christie Donner, executive director of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition. “The city just needs to think outside the box.”
James Mejia, project manager for the initiative, says the existing space won’t work.
The city considered retrofitting the News building, but requirements for courtrooms made that impossible, he said. The ceilings are too low to accommodate judges’ benches and jury boxes, and column spacing is too narrow, which would make a direct view of the proceedings difficult for some court watchers.
Also, vacant space in other buildings will be filled as the city adds staff, Mejia said.
“We are several hundred employees down because of one of the worst recessions in Denver history,” he said. “That space won’t be there when we get back to a higher level of staffing.”
Opponents of the justice center, including Robin Riddel Lima, executive director of the Golden Triangle Arts District, said voters should not be taking on new debt when there is space readily available.
She, Donner and others contend that the city could remodel the Smith Road detention center and move the City Council and mayor’s office from the City and County Building to open areas in the Webb building.
Criminal courts could then be relocated to the third and fourth floors of the City and County building, opponents said. The civil courts at the hotel could be moved to the first and second floors.
Spillover, they said, perhaps could go to the Permit Center building to the south. Although the election commission currently takes up half that space, it is soon scheduled to move to the Minori Yasui Building.
Using all that space would also allow for waiting rooms so victims and their families awaiting court would not have to brush shoulders with inmates.
One of the big arguments for a new courthouse is that shackled inmates now are led through the hallways in the City and County Building to court, free to harass or possibly injure victims or law enforcement. Also, the courtrooms are so small that judges and prosecutors are close to defendants.
Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey, a prosecutor for 21 years, says he and other prosecutors have been attacked in courtrooms.
Bill Vandenberg of the Colorado Progressive Coalition says the safety issues in the courthouse are “exaggerated.”
“They are scare tactics to build a phenomenally expensive courthouse,” he said. “They need to go back to the drawing board and find an efficient, fiscally responsible way to do this in a reasonable amount of time.”
Under the plan, the new jail and courthouse would not be finished until 2009, leaving four years of uncertainty for the city.
Mejia said the city would “manage the best we can,” but to merely renovate the Smith Road jail and the city buildings for courtrooms wouldn’t work.
“You can’t do anything on Smith Road unless you displace inmates, and no one wants to take them,” he said. “Even if we found a place, we would incur transportation and housing costs.”
Additionally, Mejia pointed out that it’s important to have all the justice buildings downtown to increase efficiency among law-enforcement agencies. Now, the city buses inmates into court for $500,000 a year.
Staff writer Karen E. Crummy can be reached at 303-820-1594 or kcrummy@denverpost.com.
Early voting
Early voting for Tuesday’s municipal election will be open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. through Friday at these locations:
Civil Service Commission, 1570 Grove St.; St. Andrew’s United Presbyterian Church, 3096 S. Sheridan Blvd.; Southwest Improvement Council, 1000 S. Lowell Blvd.; Big Bear Ice Arena, 8580 Lowry Blvd.; District 3 Police Station, 1625 S. University Blvd.; Porter Place, 1001 E. Yale Ave.; Former District 2 Police Station, 3555 Colorado Blvd.; Pecos Community Center, 3555 Pecos St.; Corona Presbyterian Church, 1205 E. Eighth Ave.; Montbello Recreation Center, 15555 E. 53rd Ave.; Play It Again Sports, 2200 S. Monaco Pkwy. Early voting at the Denver Election Commission, 200 W. 14th Ave., Suite 100, will be from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. through Friday. As of Tuesday afternoon, the city had received 37,029 requests for absentee ballots. Of those, 21,109 had been returned.
