Security concerns driving push for new courthouse addition

Ten years after Bibb County’s Superior Court judges ordered commissioners to build a new courthouse, long-range planning has begun for an addition to the 93-year-old facility.

The addition — an annex to be built adjoining the existing courthouse complex — will be paid for from the $280 million special purpose sales tax initiative that voters approved in November.

All told, $40 million from the sales tax proceeds has been earmarked for the project and a parking deck, said Chris Floore, a Macon-Bibb County spokesman.

With many proposed projects and the county expecting to collect about $30 million in sales tax funds annually, commissioners created a priority list for projects at their planning retreat in January. Using that list and the shovel-ready status of some projects as a starting point, Macon-Bibb’s sales tax project manager consulted with county departments and created a prospective timeline, Floore said.

Commissioners are set to discuss — and may vote on — the timeline and budget for the projects Tuesday.

Based on the prospective timeline, money is scheduled to go toward the courthouse addition’s planning and design in 2018. A parking deck is budgeted for 2020.

Funds to be dedicated to the courthouse annex aren’t set to roll in until 2024 to 2026, Floore said.

Security challenges

The current facility, at the corner of Mulberry and Second streets, has long presented security challenges.

“It was built for a different time,” Bibb County Sheriff David Davis said recently.

Davis said his deputies do a good job of keeping the courthouse safe, but there’s little room for error given the building’s design.

“My security staff has to hit a home run every time there is a trial,” he said. “We just hope and pray every day that we don’t have a serious incident.”

In a 2007 order, judges Bryant Culpepper, Martha Christian, Phillip Brown, Lamar Sizemore and Tripp Self noted a series of security challenges among the reasons why a new courthouse was needed.

“The increased potential for violence in modern society, coupled with the lack of adequate physical security measures available in the courthouse, have caused the risks to court personnel and members of the public using the courthouse to become precipitous, dire, dangerous and urgent,” they wrote.

None of the judges who signed the 2007 order remain on the bench. They have all retired or gone on to serve on another court.

Speaking on behalf of the current judges, Chief Judge Ed Ennis said, “Each and every one of us has the same concerns that group of judges had when they signed the order.”

Despite years of periodic renovation work within the building, jurors, judges, shackled inmates and the public use the same hallways as they did a decade ago.

“We don’t want to sound like scaredy-cats,” Ennis said, but there have been instances in which judges have been accosted outside as they’ve walked to their cars. “We’ve found that we have to be alert to that and prepared for that.”

So far, none of the interactions has involved a physical threat.

A recent sales-tax-funded project included $5 million in improvements to the existing courthouse, but the renovations “didn’t do everything that needed to be done,” Floore said.

Those renovations have recently been completed but left little change on the third floor, the area that houses the Superior Court oprations, where felony criminal cases, divorces, child custody disputes, lawsuits and other potentially contentious cases are handled.

If money was available, an additional $2 million or so of work remains, he said.

Ennis said the judges are hoping to gain support to move the courthouse addition higher on the list of priorities.

“We are enthusiastic to see it begin sooner rather than later,” he said.

Floore said officials know there’s frustration that it seems the courthouse project keeps getting put off.

“We recognize the need for the courthouse, based on what they’re telling us from a safety perspective,” he said.

It’s been 12 years since Brian Nichols shot three people inside downtown Atlanta's Fulton County Courthouse.

Nichols overpowered and shot a deputy assigned to escort him from a holding cell to a courtroom. After stealing the deputy’s gun, he walked into a courtroom and shot Judge Rowland Barnes and court reporter Julia Brandau.

He shot and killed another deputy who chased him as he left the building. Before surrendering to authorities, Nichols also killed a federal agent. He’s serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

Then-Fulton County homicide prosecutor David Cooke was among the first to go into the courtroom where Barnes and Brandau lay slain to look for clues.

The shooting put local governments across the country on notice about safety concerns, said Cooke, now the Macon Judicial Circuit’s district attorney.

Talking about the Bibb County courthouse, Cooke said, “This building is ripe for something like Atlanta happening again.”

Plans not yet final

Court records show the judges’ 2007 order gave county commissioners a deadline of July 1, 2009, to build a new courthouse.

About six months before the deadline, commissioners petitioned the judges for a three-year extension, citing a “severe economic downturn.”

The judges granted an extension to July 1, 2012. Their order is the last filing in the case.

A new $43 million courthouse and a separate juvenile justice center were included in a 2010 sales tax proposal that voters rejected.

The Thomas Jackson Juvenile Justice Center was built on Oglethorpe Street at a cost of $7 million, funded by later sales tax collections. It opened in 2014, alleviating some concerns the judges expressed in their 2007 order.

The county has taken other steps to address their concerns through renovations.

Renovations improved handicap accessibility on the second, fourth and fifth floors, ensuring public areas and restrooms are accessible, Floore said.

Some of the “hidden areas” in the building the judges contended posed a safety risk still remain because they’re accessible from emergency staircases. Work on the second, fourth and fifth floors did, however, eliminate some of those areas, he said.

The once-cramped jury assembly room the judges noted as a concern in the 2007 order was replaced last year with a new, more spacious waiting area.

Floore said it will take a year to 18 months for design work to be completed for the new addition.

The location for the parking deck still needs to be chosen, and the deck must be built before the annex, he said.

Plans for the new annex itself are in their infancy. It’s unclear how big the building will be or what offices will be housed inside it.

Early thinking is that the building will connect to the existing courthouse complex, much like the annex that was linked to the Grand Opera House building years ago. Beyond that, though, there is much to decide.

“None of that has been finalized,” Floore said.

This story was originally published April 7, 2017 at 12:30 PM with the headline "Security concerns driving push for new courthouse addition."