County considering consolidation of courts in Lockport addition
LOCKPORT — Niagara County is studying the construction of an addition to the County Courthouse here and the transfer of all State Supreme and Family courts from Niagara Falls to Lockport.
It would be part of a proposed new county office campus that could be built around the existing county buildings centered on Hawley Street.
“That is a footprint we’re going to look at,” County Manager Gregory D. Lewis said Tuesday. “We don’t know what blocks, what streets.”
The County Legislature’s Administration Committee voted Tuesday to add $31,500 to Cannon Design’s existing contract for design work on the county’s planned new county office campuses. Lewis said, “It’s a challenge for them to come up with a solution.”
Richard W. Eakin, deputy commissioner of public works for engineering, said the county has been hearing from state court officials that they are dissatisfied with conditions in the Angelo DelSignore Civic Building in Niagara Falls, where two parts of State Supreme Court and one part of Niagara County Family Court hold their sessions.
“The Civic Building is not a good courthouse. It doesn’t meet modern standards for courts,” Eakin said.
At the courts’ behest, the county awarded about $2.5 million in contracts in 2006 to redo the balky heating and air conditioning system in that building.
But the courtrooms, offices and other facilities remain topics of complaint for the state Office of Court Administration. However, it has not reached the point of mandating that the county construct new court space, as it did with the City of Niagara Falls and as it did several years ago with the County Courthouse in Lockport.
David Bookstaver, spokesman for the Office of Court Administration, said the matter is on the radar for Justice Sharon
S. Townsend, presiding judge of the Eighth Judicial District.
“Judge Townsend’s office has been in preliminary discussions with the County Legislature to explore our future options,” Bookstaver said.
Lewis has long been promoting the idea of new county campuses, which Eakin said seems to have become a rough plan for a large complex in Lockport and a smaller one to deliver human services in Niagara Falls.
Several years back, the cost estimate was $50 million, but that was for two roughly equal campuses in Lockport and Niagara Falls.
Lewis said building costs are going up — the $40 million estimate for a Public Works facility that was touted as costing $15 million was “the canary in the coal mine,” he said — but what the price tag of the campuses would be is unknown.
He vowed that the price will be “drilled down” as much as possible.
Lewis said the county plans to sell the run-down Human Resources Building at 10th and East Falls streets in Niagara Falls and the Mount View campus on Upper Mountain Road in Lockport.
“We’re not trying to build on the outskirts of Lockport,” Lewis said.
As for Niagara Falls, Lewis said the county is looking for “footprints” near the Trott Access Center at Portage Road and 11th Street.
There was a little talk of the county moving its court facilities into the new Niagara Falls city courthouse, but it came to nothing. “My thing is about centralization,” Lewis said.
He said he didn’t think the court system would care much about the location. “I think they’d let the county build it anywhere as long as we met their standards,” Lewis said.
Eakin said the report from Cannon Design, a Grand Island firm, is expected by the end of the year. With the addition for court consolidation work, the firm’s contract is now worth $191,500.
