City, chief justice, county officials air easing court space

BANGOR – The chief justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court and county and city officials pledged Tuesday to continue work toward finding a solution for easing the state court system’s space crunch during a meeting of the Penobscot County commissioners.

County, state and city representatives have been working for at least three years now to find more space for the state court system, which has outgrown its quarters on Hammond Street.

Chief Justice Leigh Saufley was invited to Bangor to meet with county and city representatives to provide comment on the state Judicial Department’s facility needs in the Bangor area.

Though space issues at the District Court facility prompted the search for a solution, district court is not the only unit in need of more space. The county jail, overhauled in 1988, is at or over capacity on most days and there isn’t enough space for all the court records that need to be maintained, to name a few examples.

Commissioner Peter Baldacci, chairman of the three-member county panel, told Saufley that officials in the Bangor area were contemplating a campus-type setting that would house the district and superior courts, law library and county functions. The campus concept, he said, arose from the need to maintain efficiency while containing cost.

Saufley, who said she has reviewed some of the proposals that have been suggested to date, pointed out that her goals for Bangor include keeping the court and related functions in downtown Bangor and that they be gathered into a government complex of sorts that would provide space for the courts, jury rooms, meetings and offices, to name a few. She said she’d also like to see the county’s solidly built and historic courthouse serve as the gateway to that complex and that she would like to see security and technology integrated into the plan.

Acknowledging that she’s still new to her job and as such is “blissfully unaware” of what it might cost to carry out a plan, once one is completed. She encouraged those involved in the solution not to think about that for now.

“It limits our thinking if we think about cost,” she said. If the plan ultimately chosen has merit, she said, the Legislature likely can be convinced to support it. She asked officials at the meeting to submit a plan to her this fall.

Saufley urged county and state officials to take the long view in their planning process – to develop a complex that will meet space and programming needs 50 years into the future. That, she said, likely would be more cost effective in the long run than doing it piece meal in several phases.

A site sketch prepared by WBRC Architects, shows that the county and city have a roughly 6.5-acre site to work with. The area, bordered by Hammond, Central and Court streets and the Kenduskeag Stream, currently houses the Penobscot County Courthouse, the annex used for the District Attorney’s Office, the county jail and Bangor District Court, all of which are owned by the county, and the city-owned Bangor Police Department and W.T. Grant building, located on the corner of Hammond and Franklin streets, parts of which are leased to Cadillac Mountain Sports.

In recent years, county, city and state officials have looked at a series of options for easing the court space problem, but have not yet come to any decisions.

One tentative game plan from two years ago called for the county to purchase the Grant building from the city and then redevelop its top three floors to suit the needs of the state court system. A more recent proposal would have relocated the crowded district court to the larger, city-owned police headquarters, while yet another called for adding a third floor to the district court building.

Should the district court move into the police station, the displaced police force would be moved into a new building elsewhere in the city, though a site has not yet been identified, according to city officials. City Manager Edward Barrett last year estimated that a new police station could cost the city about $5 million.