Bangor committee approves courthouse plan

BANGOR – A proposed $37 million state courthouse cleared a key city hurdle Wednesday when a City Council subcommittee gave its stamp of approval to the facility’s design concept.

During a meeting with the council’s business and economic development committee, Maine Supreme Judicial Court Justice Warren Silver said members of the courthouse’s planning team were eager to get the design approved because the state is putting the project out to bond next month.

Silver acknowledged that one of the biggest challenges facing the team was the need to strike a balance between safety and cost.

Security, he said, has been a key concern “in today’s world and, in part, in light of the events of this week,” Silver said, referring to Monday’s massacre at Virginia Tech.

“Unfortunately, security has overridden almost all of our concerns,” said Silver, a Bangor resident who heads the planning team.

Security measures, such as separate hallways for moving prisoners from the sally port in the basement to holding areas and on to courtrooms, has eaten up much of the available space, which already had been scaled back from the originally proposed 140,000 square feet for financial reasons. Security needs also have driven other design considerations on the inside and outside.

Proposed is a four-level, 90,000-square-foot building, likely with a red brick fa?ade.

“We went with the red brick based on the tastes of the people involved,” said Josiah Stevenson of Leers Weinzapfel Associates, the award-winning Boston architectural firm tapped to design the project.

WBRC Architects and Engineers of Bangor also is involved in designing the courthouse.

Conceptual drawings prepared by Leers Weinzapfel show that the Penobscot County Judicial Center will face Exchange Street, with Hancock Street on the west side of the lot and Washington Street on the east. The back of the building will overlook the Kenduskeag Stream.

Though on-site public parking is limited, the pedestrian walkway from the Pickering Square parking garage leads right to the courthouse parcel.

For security reasons, there will be only one vehicle access point onto the site from Hancock Street.

“We feel as a court system it’s important to be in downtown Bangor,” Silver said. “This site is a good site. It will be good for downtown Bangor and for the court system.”

According to WBRC’S Mike Pullen, the top two floors will house courtrooms, the ground floors will house public space and offices and the basement level, a sally port and 47 parking spaces for court employees, all of whom will go through security checkpoints and metal detectors just like the public.

The underground parking level will be enclosed in mesh wire so that water can enter and recede in the event of flooding.

The courthouse space crunch will affect the county’s district attorney and his staff. Penobscot County District Attorney R. Christopher Almy has expressed concern about the fact that plans do not include permanent workspace for prosecutors and staff.

If the district attorney’s offices remain at their current location behind the old Penobscot County Courthouse, prosecutors in Bangor most likely would be farther from Superior Court courtrooms than prosecutors in any other county seat in the state, Almy said last month.

In response to questions from city officials, Silver said the cost for adding another floor would be prohibitive. He said, however, that the planning team would work with county officials to come up with a solution.

“We want them as close as we can,” Silver said.