Commonwealth’s Attorney Larry Cleveland wanted the McClure Building for the temporary location of the Franklin County Courthouse.
“I would have liked to have stayed downtown for convenience sake, but we’re not going to,” Cleveland said on Saturday. “So we’ll make it work. We’ll just have to drive back and forth from downtown a lot.”
Cleveland’s office is in the Fiscal Court Annex, and the temporary courthouse will be in Prevention Park at 669 Chamberlin Ave.
Developer C. Michael Davenport received a phone call from the state Administrative Office of the Courts Friday morning saying his technology center has been chosen for the courthouse.
A new $29 million Franklin County Judicial Center is being built downtown around the historic courthouse, which has to be vacated during the two-year construction project.
Five bids were opened Wednesday at AOC, and Davenport’s technology center was the lowest bid – $234,355 a year.
The Franklin County Bar Association supported the downtown seven-story McClure Building at the corner of West Main and St. Clair, but that bid was $579,981, the second highest.
Davenport said he was “elated to win the bid and will work very hard to make everyone in the courthouse happy.”
Cleveland said he understands AOC’s decision.
“You can’t justify the big difference in price,” he said. “I feel like we got a bargain because the rent is so much less.”
Franklin Circuit Court Clerk Sally Jump agreed.
“The bids were so far apart, I don’t see how you could not award the bid to Mr. Davenport,” she said. “It’s not like we’re sitting on a pot of gold.”
Jump said it will be farther to the post office and downtown bank, “but the advantage is we’ll all be in one building. We can adapt wherever we are.”
Jump has 23 full-time employees and said it will be a “monumental task” to pack five storage rooms full of court files to move to the new site.
Franklin County Judge-Executive Ted Collins, chairman of the Project Development Board overseeing the judicial center construction project, said leaving downtown “will be an inconvenience for attorneys and a whole host of other folks.
“Any time a court system makes a move there will be some bumps in the road, but I believe we can work them out.”
Collins said one concern is the traffic signal at U.S. 60 and Cardwell Lane. He said he wants to discuss with the state district highway engineer the possibility of having a left turn arrow added to the westbound U.S. 60 light.
“I also want to see about getting a street light added at that intersection,” he said. "It’s pretty dark at night.”
Davenport’s building, completed in 2007, is 38,000 square feet, but AOC needs only 24,412 square feet for courthouse space.
Davenport is responsible for renovating his building to AOC specifications and renovations must be completed by March 1.
The move from the current courthouse to the temporary one will begin March 1 and must be completed by March 15.
Demolition of two courthouse annexes downtown will begin March 15 and end by June 1.
The technology center will house all of the offices and personnel in the entire courthouse on St. Clair during demolition and construction.
The other three bids submitted to AOC last week were:
>$314,853 for the former Genesco Shoe factory at 300 Myrtle Ave.
>$361,914 for a former state auditor’s office building at 105 Sea Hero off U.S. 460 at Silver Lake.
>$1,264,494 for the former Heck’s discount store at 803 Schenkel Lane.
After the bid opening Wednesday, Davenport said, “I certainly understand the desire to stay downtown. I simply responded to an ad for office space and I believe I’ve submitted a fair bid.
“Hopefully they will look at it as a temporary inconvenience for a longtime benefit. I will work very hard to make everyone in the courthouse happy, and I believe they will be very, very happy here. It’s a beautiful building and it’s extremely energy efficient.”
Davenport said he’s confident all the necessary renovations can be completed by the March 1, 2010, deadline.
Davenport said he’s donated the technology center to the Salvation Army through Christmas, and “renovations can easily begin the first week of January.”