Courthouse plans nearing design phase

BANGOR – The pace is picking up for the $37 million state courthouse project, which will be situated on the corner of Exchange and Washington streets.

State court officials last year received the go-ahead to issue bonds for the project from state lawmakers and tentative developer status from the city.

Since then, they have been meeting with city and county officials and other affected parties to come up with a plan that meets everyone’s needs, State Court Administrator James “Ted” Glessner said Tuesday in a telephone interview.

The project now is close to moving into the design phase. Ricci Greene Associates, the New York City consulting firm that helped state officials with the site selection process last year, has been tapped to draw up architectural plans for the facility, Glessner said.

“What I see is construction next summer,” he said, with completion targeted in late 2008 or early 2009, based on a projected 18-month construction schedule.

The state court system plans to move its operations from the corner of Hammond and Court streets to a spot overlooking Kenduskeag Stream.

The new courthouse will house Penobscot County Superior Court and 3rd District Court and likely associated offices. Proposed is a modern facility that will be secure for the public, court staff, jurors, lawyers, defendants and others, court officials have said.

Though the new courthouse will be designed to meet today’s safety and security needs, it won’t necessarily look so modern that it looks out of place in Bangor’s historic, largely brick-clad downtown.

“Don’t expect to see chrome and smoked glass. It’ll look like a courthouse,” Glessner said.

In addition to the city development site known as B-13, the state is seeking to acquire a long narrow parking area known as Kenduskeag Plaza East, City Solicitor Norman Heitmann and Glessner have confirmed. The city-owned parking plaza is located across the Kenduskeag Stream from the backside of the Pickering Square Parking Garage.

“It’s not part of B-13 but it would finish the [courthouse parcel] off nicely,” Glessner said. “The question is can we acquire that space [to meet the court system’s parking and security needs] or will the city continue to lease it for parking.”

Heitmann, who was part of a group of city officials who met with state court system representatives last week, said that the state has been clued in on the city’s efforts to develop a set of design standards for the downtown and waterfront.

The design standards -which will apply to downtown, Bangor Waterfront and the Main Street corridor from downtown to Interstate 395, including Bass Park – are being developed by a 10-member task force appointed in January by City Council Chairman John Cashwell.

The idea behind the task force is to make sure that the character of new construction does not clash with Bangor’s existing traditional downtown historic settings and densities.

The guidelines will be used to evaluate proposed development on city-owned property downtown, along the Main Street corridor and on the waterfront, and will be shared with developers of private projects in those areas.

The site chosen for the new courthouse was among nine in Bangor and neighboring Brewer that the state scoped out last year.

Though the City Council and the Penobscot County commissioners originally wanted the new courthouse to be built at the current location, both bodies last year signed a resolve supporting the B-13 site after it became apparent that retrofitting a new court building on the existing campus would be cost-prohibitive.

The Penobscot County Bar Association also has expressed its support for that plan.