Posted Jan 14, 2014, 9:30 PM
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$181 million federal courthouse project in Mobile included in 2014 federal funding bill
John Sharp
AL.com
January 14, 2014
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Quote:
MOBILE, Alabama – Local officials praised the announcement Tuesday that $181 million was secured in a massive fiscal year 2014 funding bill to build a new federal courthouse and refurbish the existing building in downtown Mobile.
The reaction came after an announcement from U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby's office that $69.5 million will be appropriated to construct a new home for the U.S. District Court and to renovate the existing building on St. Joseph Street.
That amount is combined with $49 million remaining from previous appropriation and will satisfy a concern raised by the Judicial Conference, a policy making arm of the U.S. court system, to upgrade one of its top priority projects.
The Mobile project will consists of a 138,000-square-foot facility with three District courtrooms and three Magistrate courtrooms costing $85.9 million. The balance of the appropriation includes $32.6 million to modernize the existing courthouse and accommodate the U.S. Bankruptcy Court and U.S. Probation, which is house in leased space that costs taxpayers about $1 million annually.
"These funds will provide Mobile with a new courthouse that meets modern security standards and facilitates efficient processing of cases," Shelby, R-Ala., and vice-chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in a news release announcing the funding. "The construction and operation of this facility will also generate huge economic activity in the heart of Mobile."
Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson publicly announced the appropriation during Tuesday's council meeting and said "it's a really big deal" for the city.
"The construction and operation of this facility will generate huge economic activity," Stimpson said. "We are very, very blessed once again."
The appropriation is included in a $1 trillion budget agreement Congressional leaders backed earlier in the day to continue funding the government and to stave off another shutdown. The House is expected to vote on the plan Wednesday and the Senate is scheduled to vote Friday.
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For downtown Mobile, the bill – if approved by Congress and enacted by President Barack Obama – could be a significant economic boost. The courthouse project, long in the planning process, would take about 5-1/2 years to design and construct.
Shelby's office, in its news release, said that the John A. Campbell Courthouse, which was built during the Great Depression, lacks the physical space to accommodate the full program and operational needs of the Southern District in Mobile and is unable to support criminal proceedings adequately.
The building, according to the release, crowds its tenants into a situation that requires the public, jurors, attorneys, prisoners and judges to use the same corridors. Additionally, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court and U.S. Probation are housed in a privately-owned lease space that costs taxpayers $1 million annually.
According to a 2009 AL.com/Press-Register story, the new courthouse is designed to shut off traffic to Conception Street, between St. Anthony and St. Louis streets. The colonnade of the proposed design has it curving around the two-block site, encircling a cluster of oak trees.
It's unclear if the existing design work by Boston architectural firm Moshe Safdie and Associates will be included in the Mobile project.
The new courthouse will modernize the security concerns from the existing building, which was constructed in 1935 for $790,000 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration.
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