The entire block bounded by Broadway, Lincoln Street and East 13th and 14th avenues should be demolished to make way for a new $273 million Center of Justice, according to a feasibility study to be released today.
The site currently holds the Colorado History Museum and the Colorado Judicial Branch.
To make the proposal happen, the state would have to relocate the Colorado History Museum and ask the legislature for funding for both projects, said Bill Mosher of Trammell Crow Co., the project manager.
The feasibility study’s results will be presented to the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee and the Capital Development Committee at noon today in Room 356 of the state Capitol.
Finding $112 million to finance the new museum will be tricky, Mosher said. Among the options is using a portion of the state’s gaming tax revenues, which generated about $100 million last year.
The state historical fund receives 28 percent of those revenues for operating costs, money it does not want used for building a new facility. Another 49 percent goes into the state’s general fund, which Mosher said could be used to build the museum.
Mosher declined to release details of the financing proposal until the study is presented to the committees today.
He said the Center of Justice could be self-funded by increasing court fees, which would require legislative approval, and by consolidating agencies from 10 different locations into a single, 650,000-square-foot building. Doing so is expected to save the state $60 million in lease payments over the next 30 years, the study found.
The existing judicial complex needs more than $17 million for maintenance work, including electrical, roofing, security systems and fire safety.
Mary Mullarkey, chief justice of the Colorado Supreme Court, said a new complex is badly needed. The Colorado Judicial Department has offices scattered all across the metro area.
The new judicial complex would house the state Supreme Court, Court of Appeals, all offices of the Colorado Judicial Department, the state public defender’s office and the offices of the state attorney general.
“My concept is that it would be the center of justice for the state,” Mullarkey said. “The location has a lot of symbolic importance.”
Work on a new Center of Justice can’t start until the history museum is relocated, 2011 at the soonest.
The project management team examined sites that would be suitable for a 240,000-square-foot museum and narrowed their choices to three: a parking lot a block south of its current location; the Evans School site on Bannock Street south of the Denver Art Museum; and a site bounded by Bannock and Cherokee streets and West 13th and West 14th avenues.
“Our biggest criteria is to stay in the Civic Center area” said Rebecca Laurie, spokeswoman for the Historical Society.
Staff writer Margaret Jackson can be reached at 303-954-1473 or mjackson@denverpost.com.
