RSS
Twitter
Facebook
YouTube
The Columbus Dispatch wrote
Courthouse price tag soars by $11 million
Friday, October 19, 2007
By Barbara Carmen
Franklin County commissioners were reeling from sticker shock yesterday, after learning their dazzling, $105 million glass courthouse could run 10 percent over budget unless they make hard choices.
“It looks like $11 million in compromises,” Commissioner Paula Brooks said after meeting with architects.
Commissioners had an immediate reaction to the redesigned exteriors. They didn’t like them.
Architects allowed that the projector they were using wasn’t the best, but they didn’t argue that they liked the original — and pricier — designs better.
Related Stories:
That’s what you get for 110 million?
I am really underwhelmed by the outcome of this project, and I think the franklin county commisioners are as well.
I wanted ground floor retail to be added along high st. This really would have made the building interact with the streetlevel and help to improve that section of high. The building is instead going to be another government building in Columbus without street level retail. That is what often causes state capitols to be labeled as “boring.” Government buildings often have the street interaction of a museum. (see state capitol, rhodes tower, riffe center, franklin county courhouses, and state building across from the Nationwide tower. Now the nationwide towers also have very poor street interaction, I would love to see the useless plazas in front of the nationwide center to be replaced with street level retail. That would continue the retail from the arena area/convention center to the center of downtown better than anything. Anyway, back on topic!
You (and everyone else) should write in to the Dispatch!
letters@dispatch.com
And the Commissioners (or at least their Aides)!
krfraser@franklincountyohio.gov
rjsontag@franklincountyohio.gov
ljstehle@franklincountyohio.gov
I don’t think street level retail has a place in a courthouse; they’re somewhat unique buildings. I’d say the same thing about the Statehouse and City Hall, too. There are a host of state and local government office buildings downtown that I think would do wonders for the pedestrian atmosphere of downtown if they added street level retail. Courthouses aren’t one of them.
Then again, I do sympathize with the point that the first run of this courthouse looked like just another “vertical ice cube tray” office building (which are fine for office buildings, but I’m not so sure about for hubs of important civic functions), and now it’s just being revamped to look even more sterile, combining the worst of faceless-bunker government architecture with the worst of generic office towers.
The $110 million price tag is also a little on the ridiculous side. (Heck, if they had that kind of cash to burn, they could have bought the LeVeque tower for under $10 million and spent $100 million rehabbing it, and had a lot more space and a more historic place to call home.)
Do you think that Rhodes Tower or the current Franklin County Courthouse Tower should have ground-floor retail? Because those places are deadzones after 5pm. We can’t have streetlevel vibrancy if there’s nothing to do at street level.
I’m thoroughly bummed about the proposed new look for the courthouse. We need something with an edge.
Maybe they should freeze salary increases for high-priced judges for 10 years to make up the money rather than making the building a cement monolith…
I don’t think judges are the place to find the extra money. Muni judges already hate the fact that they earn much less than first year attorneys at large firms here in town.
Yeah, muni and even common pleas judges don’t make shit really. Now, you want to talk about lifetime appointed federal judges, that’s a whole different story.
Even they don’t make that much, particularly considering the ranks of the legal profession from which they’re typically pulled. Federal judges aren’t picked from the ranks of first-year attorneys–they’re almost always either former partners or law profs. Profs may not make quite as much, but the lifestyle certainly has a lot of other benefits. And partners at larger firms can earn truly staggering sums, even in the Midwest.
LOL…granted, they could make more in a private practice…but a job you can keep till death, complete with a hunormous courtroom straight out of a movie, a pedestal like few others 10-20 feet above everyone else, and a GIANT portrait of you hanging in the place…and the freedom to act like a god…Federal Judges do kind of have it made ;)
Seriously man, my first time in a Federal Courthouse I think I may have pooped myself a little…and on top of that it was in Kineary’s courtroom.
Do you think that Rhodes Tower or the current Franklin County Courthouse Tower should have ground-floor retail? Because those places are deadzones after 5pm. We can’t have streetlevel vibrancy if there’s nothing to do at street level.
Unless the ground-floor retail is open after 5, it’s a moot point. I wouldn’t say there is a “ton” of ground-floor retail downtown, but there is still some; however, it’s pretty hard to find stuff that stays open after 5.
I really like the Supreme Court Building. Art Deco and really austere, the way courts ought to be. I think we should make the judges wear wigs again, have public canings and maybe stocks outside the courthouse.
OK, I did dig the old design, but can we make the inside of the court rooms look like (oh sh%t, this is serious, why am I here) instead of (wow, what great light and feng shui.- I want to hang out here all the time!) Seriously, the outside of the building should stay the same and cut all the expense out of the inside.
$62,000 isn’t bad, maybe not for a legal degree, but it isn’t easy getting an actual legal job that isn’t all clerical.
(B)(1)(a) Judges designated as full-time judges by section 1901.08 of the Revised Code, and all judges of territories having a population of more than fifty thousand regardless of designation, are subject to section 4705.01 of the Revised Code and, pursuant to division (C) of this section, beginning July 1, 1997, shall receive as compensation sixty-one thousand seven hundred fifty dollars per annum.
I would like it better if the new courthouse looked like this:
The judges would be required to wear capes instead of robes.
They all ready built the hall of justice in Cincinnati
but yeah, that is an awesome building.
the inside
One of my favorite buildings. Anyone else remember when they turned it into a shopping mall?
I’ve been all over that building, it’s pretty damn cool. There are glass catwalks in between the two layers of the big window in that picture that are pretty trippy to walk across. The glass is (was) pretty scuffed up, so you don’t see the bottom. It just fades away as you look through the layers.
Heh. If we had that, I’m sure people would take as perverse a delight in coming out to watch criminals be sentenced (and tickle the feet and do whatever else they did to people in stocks) as they did in the Colonial Era.
That said, I do more seriously sympathize with the point about the Ohio Supreme Court building. It looks stately enough for stately functions. Something a little shorter and wider but cast in that general mould could have fit in fairly well in that space. (Wonder how much that cost to build, in today’s dollars.)
A little bit more action on the ground floor of the Rhodes Tower would be more than welcome, and it’s not all that far off Gay St., which is becoming a more happening corridor. The Franklin County building is different, IMHO, particularly at the moment while it still functions as a courthouse (keep in mind what kind of foot traffic that means). Moreover, the building is, paraphrased “County Hall” (the equivalent of City Hall, just for the county); I think that the same concerns that make it slightly inappropriate to have street-level retail in one would apply to the other.
Heh. If we had that, I’m sure people would take as perverse a delight in coming out to watch criminals be sentenced (and tickle the feet and do whatever else they did to people in stocks) as they did in the Colonial Era.
Might bring people downtown after 5 PM, innovative and if it was a kid playing knock out in the stocks, well an eye for an eye? Instead of tickling the feet, passser-bys could try to knock him out with one punch.