New courthouse no 'box'
Published Friday November 21st, 2008
New sketches of planned courthouse released in wake of preliminary designs criticized last month
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By Brent Mazerolle
Times & Transcript Staff
Sometimes, it seems, it's all a matter of perspective. Having the latest drawings helps too.
Architect's illustration
This is the final design for the Moncton justice centre. It features a five-storey glass atrium at the apex of its two wings, which replaces a circular feature prominent in earlier designs.
Moncton East MLA Chris Collins wants Metro Moncton residents to know their new downtown courthouse, which will serve as the justice centre for southeastern New Brunswick, is not the square box shown to the news media last month.
Instead, in basic shape and orientation at least, it will bear far more similarity to the design on the sign that has been advertising the future site of the courthouse at Assomption and Westmorland for the past three years.
The green glass has been traded in for a sturdier looking and probably more timeless sandstone brick, but the south facing plaza and L-shape complex of two wings have been maintained. For architectural interests, the final design includes a five-storey high glass atrium at the apex of the two wings, replacing a circular feature prominent in earlier designs.
Collins said yesterday the flat perspective showing the west view of the building that was published in the Times & Transcript last month made it appear as though the public plaza had disappeared from the final design. The perspective also made it appear as if the "two-wing" design had been replaced by a basic rectangular box.
Compounding the problem, the sketch provided to the media at the time was, in fact, one of many revisions and not the ultimate design.
The MLA dropped by the Times & Transcript's offices yesterday to set the record straight and hoped to reassure the public with the final sketches. There had been criticism in late October when Supply & Services Minister Jack Keir announced that Dartmouth's CitiGroup Properties has been chosen to build the $48-million structure, not so much because of anything in the building's content, but because of its style.
The price tag has grown by $20 million since the previous Conservative provincial government first turned the sod at the corner of Assomption Boulevard and Westmorland Street back in 2005, but Collins said the new design includes significant changes that a number of stakeholders believed were missing from the preliminary designs three years ago. Perhaps the most significant change is the addition of secure underground parking for judges and other court officials, a particularly challenging bit of engineering on the site, which is on the Petitcodiac flood plain and has a high water table.
Collins said the elevation of the building in the final design calls for it to be above the high water mark set by the Saxby Gale in 1869, including the entrance to the underground parking. The garage itself will be waterproof.
For the sake of better security than is offered by the city's law courts today, which are just one tenant in a mixed use building, there are a number of features in triplicate in the design of the new justice centre. For instance, judges will travel in one elevator, the public in another and prisoners in a third. There are also separate corridors and other design features to keep some of the various users of the courts separated from each other.
The new design also ups the number of courtrooms from the 13 announced in 2005 to 15.
The building will take up pretty much all of the land available and so one wing has risen to four storeys and the other to five storey from the originally planned three. With the underground garage included, the building will now boast six levels.
"The footprint is so big we'll be going to the city for some variances," Collins said.
Court staff, sheriff services, victim services, probation services and Crown prosecutors will all find a home within the complex.
It will feature a law library and will offer 188 parking spaces, including the 84-stall parking garage. Parking, along with security, had been identified as a major concern after the initial design and site were announced in 2005.
"We've got most of the concerns addressed in this design. Now it's the time to move," Collins said. "The good news in this is something is getting done."
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