Sprucing Up Justice

Renovation, expansion projects enhance South Central courthouses

By Angelle Bergeron

Lady Justice may be blind, but knowing others are watching, she likes to get spruced up every once in a while. Three courthouse projects in the south central region have the lady upgrading existing facilities, moving to new ones and consolidating services.

In early fall, contracts were expected to be let for the $19 million new Mobile County courthouse that is scheduled for completion mid-2009, says Susan McGallagher, project manager in the Mobile satellite office of lead architect Goodwyn, Mills & Cawood of Montgomery.

Occupants of the old courthouse and adjacent annex building moved to the old Mobile County Press Register building so the courthouse could be demolished in early 2006. Last winter, Gulf Services Contracting of Mobile completed partial demolition of the one-story annex building that was constructed in 1976.

“GSC left a post-tension slab floor, roof slab and concrete columns and stripped everything else off the building,” McGallagher says. “The new bid is going out to add onto the original annex single-story building and go up another three stories.”

The annex is U-shaped, wrapping around a small, historic building, the LeVert House, McGallagher adds. The new design will add onto the annex foundation so that the front portion of the U will be two-story and the rear will be four-story, for a total of 100,000 sq ft.

“The plan is to house all city and county agencies in this one location, so they can share facilities,” McGallagher says. The owner, the County Commission of Mobile County, expected to let the construction contract in the fall, pending approval from Mobile’s Historic District commission.

The new concrete block and steelstructure building will feature a traditional design with brick veneer, pre-cast cornice and other precast elements at the entrance and on the ends of the building, McGallagher says.

Meanwhile, plans have been in the works for about 10 years in Sebastian County for construction of a new Courts Facility in Fort Smith, Ark., that would consolidate courthouse services. Those services have been scattered among the original courthouse building constructed in 1937 and other locations throughout the county.

By November, Beshears Construction of Fort Smith will be 80% complete on the $10,556,000 contract to build a 70,540-sq-ft courthouse that will include eight courtrooms, holding cells and probation offices.

“We have multiple courtrooms at multiple locations that created inefficiency,” says Tom Minton, assistant county administrator for Sebastian County and project manager for the new courthouse. “The county planned, set aside revenue and this project is the culmination of lots of long-term planning across the tenures of multiple county judges.”

Minton described the existing courthouse with admiration - cement with steel reinforced centers, wide hallways and ornate courtrooms. “It’s sturdy and nice looking but there’s not enough physical space and inefficient use of space,” he adds.

For the new building, the county wanted something that would blend in with the downtown area’s historic mix of architecture but would provide the appropriate sense of judicial dignity with modern use of space, Minton says.

When Beshears began construction in July 2006, the site had been previously cleared by another contractor, says Travis Beshears, vice president and project manager, so the contractor got right to work on the foundation.

“The foundation was made with geo piers because we are so close to the Arkansas River and there are sandier soils in that area,” Beshears says. “Our subcontractor drilled holes, poured gravel in those holes and them compacted them with a pneumatic ram air hammer. That pushes the gravel out into the soil around it, gives it bearing strength and then the foundations are poured on top of it.”

A distinguishing feature of the courthouse will be the dramatic, 30-ft-tall clock tower that will rise above the L-shaped building, Beshears says. Rather than perform the work 60 ft above the ground, the contractor constructed the 13- by 13- by 30-ft. structural steel tower of metal trusses and plywood on the ground.

“It made it a lot easier to work on the ground, and then we just picked it up and placed it in one piece,” Beshears says.

In New Orleans, the two buildings that make up the Hale Boggs Federal Courthouse are receiving a roughly $23 million internal upgrade that won’t make a bold, aesthetic splash like the two previously mentioned projects, but will have a tremendous impact on the buildings’ functions and occupants.

“Most all of the work on the project is something the tenants never see, but it affects them,” says Brad Barber, project manager for Bernhard Mechanical of Metairie, general contractor on the project. “It’s always a big rush to do it on the weekend or all in one night so they are not without electrical or AC for any period of time, but the only thing people were really happy about and really see are the elevator interiors.”

To accommodate the building operating hours from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., the contractor coordinated weekend schedules and nightly, 10-hour crews beginning at 6 p.m.

The mechanical upgrades, new fire alarm system, renovations (including the elevators) and Americans with Disabilities Act-compliance changes are all part of a nationwide, ongoing construction program, says Tim Thury, senior project manager for the building’s owner, the General Services Administration. “We have ongoing projects we initiate every year, whether it’s new construction or renov ation,” Thury says.

The project was just short of $15 million and had a scheduled completion date of Nov. 29, when it was initially let. However, increased mechanical upgrades and ensuing scheduling have driven up the cost and pushed the completion date to February.

“Originally, we were going to refurbish the main building switch gear, which is located in the existing basement, but they came up with a change order to move it to the first floor,” Barber says.

The change order for the HVAC system to replace cooling towers, boilers and double the capacity of the emergency generator pushed the schedule back the most.

“We needed three or four weeks of cranes for that and, by the time we got the equipment approved to do the big lifts, the earliest we could have done it would have been August or early September,” Barber says. GSA didn’t want the contractor to do the HVAC system switch in the hottest months and stipulated that phase would be delayed until November. “That’s when they extended the contract until the end of February 2008,” Barber says.

He adds that the contractor is determined to complete all other facets of the contract by the original deadline.

Bernhard was awarded the contract about a week before Hurricane Katrina made landfall in August 2005, so the contractor didn’t receive the notice to proceed until Nov. 5, 2005.

And then it took time to find sufficient manpower.

“There were so few people around, no housing, increased wages, and if you could find a guy who would qualify, he wasn’t going to sit around a couple weeks before he started working,” Barber says.

Security has remained a huge obstacle throughout the project because workers are required to be escorted by a U.S. marshal-contracted court security officer on at least two-thirds of the project work area. “The new fire alarm system has to go in every room in both buildings and for a long time we only had one CSO,” Barber says.

Nightly, the project used probably 40 people to install the fire alarm. “We would have put more on the job, but we couldn’t put more on the site without more CSOs,” Barber adds.

Bernhard’s subcontractor, HiTech Electric Inc. of Houston, subbed out the fire alarm system to Siemens Building Technologies Inc. of St. Rose, La. The technical new system involves the addition of smoke detectors, horns, strobes, pull stations and new conduit and wiring throughout the whole building to support unmentionable security capabilities.

Other facets of the project, including bringing 36 restrooms and door knobs throughout the two buildings within ADA compliance and refurbishing 17 elevators, allowed for daytime work and more lenient security requirements.

The contractor should be placing the new HVAC equipment on the roof this month and also placing a huge bronze eagle on the courthouse steps.