Madison County OKs plans for new courthouse within 5 years

MARSHALL - In November 2021, Gov. Roy Cooper allotted $3.8 million to Madison County for renovations and new construction at the county courthouse in Marshall.

But the courthouse is one of the oldest in daily use in the state - it was completed in July 1908.

In February 2022, the county formed a focus group aimed at determining the most appropriate use of the funding.

Earlier this month, members of the group presented their recommendation to the Madison County Board of Commissioners: build a new courthouse.

The work group consists of nine members - including the clerk of court and two designees, the district attorney or their designee, presiding Madison County judge, the sheriff or their designee, one community member and two Madison County Board of Commissioners, per the recommendation of Commissioner Michael Garrison in the board's Feb. 8 meeting.

See: Madison to get $3.8M for courthouseMadison County set to receive $3.8M from state for courthouse renovations/construction

More: Madison BOC forms courthouse groupMadison commissioners approve formation of 9-member courthouse funds focus group

Superior Court Clerk Mark Cody was one of the members of the focus group.

According to Cody, the focus group's primary objective was to determine whether the funds would be best suited for a new construction or for renovations to the existing facilities.

"The majority of the folks that were appointed to the committee tried their best to figure out a way to use our current courthouse going forward," Cody said. "Our committee was formed, I believe, on Feb. 22. We met 15 times from that date until now, with various committee members assigned various tasks in between meetings. We employed an architect firm to help identify our needs, including both current and future needs. Also, a space needs assessment was performed."

Karen Gravel, a historic preservation architect, assisted the committee with the space needs assessment. According to Gravel, the team took a three-pronged approach to the assessment: looking at the physical aspect of the building, looking at test fits to determine potential improvements to the courthouse and interviewing past and current courthouse employees to talk about the employees' space needs.

"(The courthouse) is the focal point of the town, and needs to be treated with respect," Gravel said. "From a preservation standpoint, it's an important feature of your town, and I would urge you, at that scale of the city, it needs to be taken care of. But when you start looking at the building, all the exterior features are character-defining features: the wood windows, the brick masonry, the cornice, the bell curve, the stone base - all of that, along with the portico and the entry contributes to this building having such stature in where it is."

According to the group's findings, the windows need to be restored and repainted, and the aging roof will need to be repaired as well.

"The interior is in fair condition," Gravel said. "The electrical is certainly outdated. Mechanical has piecemeal systems that need to be replaced. The restrooms are inadequate. There are ongoing IT concerns. There is mold."

The space needs team's recommendations for the building's exterior include a number of "deferred maintenance items that need to happen and can happen independently of whatever happens with the interior of the building."

According to Gravel, those recommendations are:

• Replace the roof.

• Repoint the exterior.

• Waterproof the exterior foundation walls.

• Restore the windows.

• Restore the doors.

• Paint the cupula.

The group's recommendations for the inside of the building are a bit more complicated, Gravel said.

"There's so much that needs to happen from a systems perspective - electrical, IT, security and HVAC - that to really do a good rehabilitation of the building, everybody needs to move out," Gravel said. "It's hard to do a piecemail restoration or a rehabilitation of the building without moving people out, which when you start to think of that in the context of what to do (with the building), that becomes an added complexity for the county.

"Also, there are code issues with the building right now. The restrooms are deficient. Exiting is a problem because there is only one entrance on the ground floor, and that's where the security happens. It's a bottleneck of a door right now."

Safety and functionality concerns

During the team's interviews with current and former courthouse employees, a host of operational concerns arose, according to Gravel.

"The security screening at the only exit of the building is a huge concern," she said. "There are multiple paths of people crossing each other, which is fine, except you have people who are accused of crimes going in the same door as the judge, going in the same door as the public and the jury. There's just not a lot of separation that is supposed to be having in a courtroom of this time.

"From a functionality standpoint, the jury space where they deliberate is too small a place for jury to really have a ... they have to go out of the courthouse, as you all probably experience, for jury recess. The storage is lacking. There are no holding cells. Acoustics are difficult for both privacy and hearing. Just having the one courthouse in general makes it less flexible in general for having multiple court cases to be heard. And, as everybody repeated to me, parking is an issue downtown."

According to Gravel, the space needs team concluded that the most appropriate model for the courthouse is the "bare minimum" model.

"If we move to a place where we're not going to use the courthouse anymore, what would be the bare minimum of scope for that? This kind of suggests an approach where we're not going to use the courthouse anymore, and that's really the conclusion that we were coming to. So, what do you do in the interim?"

According to Gravel, until new facilities are built, the county will need to provide another door on the first floor, as well as code-compliant restrooms, and the mold concerns will need to be addressed, as well as potentially repainting and supplying new carpeting.

"This just helps get you to a place where you have a new courthouse," Gravel said.

Interim spaces

According to Gravel, the space needs team identified a number of privately held buildings the county could potentially use for some court functions in the interim.

"They did provide some nice space. The third floor of the bank building could be used for district attorney, but there were concerns about the district attorney being there with no security, or having to add security," Gravel said. "The third floor could also be good storage space."

Gravel said the team looked at using the Rexall Pharmacy building, located across the street from the bank building, for small-space courtrooms.

Additional spaces could help free up the courtroom's overuse, too. According to information received from local judges and the state, the courthouse is programmed and "needs to be open and available for use" 97% of the time during the year.

"That's heavily used," said Gravel, adding that the rate should be around 75-80% utilization. "The one courtroom doesn't leave a lot of time or space for flexibility."

The information from the state and local judges also revealed Madison's caseload to be only slightly behind Watauga County, which operates three courtrooms.

According to Gravel, the state's county staffing projections showed the county's court system was understaffed.

"Bringing all of that together, we have about 9,500 square feet assignable in the courtroom right now. You really need about twice that right now, to do what you need to do," Gravel said. "By 2030, you're going to need three times that.

"As I mentioned earlier, I'm a historic preservation architect. I want to reuse the historic buildings as much as possible. But we have come ... I have come to the conclusion, and I believe the committee has come to the conclusion that this courthouse is not serving the needs of the court system adequately or safely. We need to find another use for the courthouse.

"We all came to the conclusion that is the most efficient and effective thing for Madison County to focus on finding a new way to have a new courthouse in the future," Gravel said. "I believe in the heart of my heart that this is the right direction. I came into it really wanting for this to be a Hail Mary pass for the courthouse. But it really is not serving you all in the way that it needs to right now."

Timeline

Jim Baker, who served two terms as a Superior Court judge (1994-2010) and 12 years as an assistant district attorney (1983-94) in Western North Carolina, was one of the focus group's nine members.

Baker illustrated the courthouse's age by pointing out that Civil War reunions were held in the courthouse.

"Our courthouse was proposed 115 years ago and put into service 114 years ago, and it has served our county well," Baker said. "No one can say that Madison County has not made good use of the building. But even fine buildings cannot last and remain in use forever. Our 1908 courthouse was designed for a court system that has almost no similarities to the court system in use today. We did not have juvenile courts, child support courts, drug courts or other courts that we have today."

According to Baker, the committee's recommended timeline is for the courthouse to be completed within five years.

"We accept the committee's recommendations tonight, and we thank them for their work," BOC Chair Matt Wechtel said. "We're not quite done with them yet, so I think we're going to squeeze one more meeting out of (them), and we would like also for former Commissioner (Norris) Gentry to remain in his role on that committee until that final meeting can take place, and what would be some additional direction from us coming in the very near future, in regards to that final meeting."

Vice Chair Michael Garrison motioned that the county direct the new county manager's office "to create a plan for the scheduled benchmark stages and to commit specific steps for the design, funding, construction and occupancy of a new courthouse within five years, as recommended by the courthouse work group, and that we authorize the interim county manager to see, meet with and coordinate with any persons and professional service organizations that he deems necessary for the fulfillment of this board's mandate."

Garrison also moved the county task the focus group, of which he is a member, with determining the immediate triage renovations needs of safety, and the utility of the current courthouse necessary to continue to conduct our routine clerk and court functions while the county pursues a new courthouse facility, and then to bring those recommendations back to the (BOC) for consideration of the expenditure of the $3.8 million in state funding to address these immediate needs."

The Madison County Board of Commissioners will meet Jan. 10 at 7 p.m. at the N.C. Cooperative Extension, located at 258 Caroline Lane in Marshall.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Madison County OKs plans for new courthouse within 5 years