Commission chooses temporary courtroom, delays decision on "longer short-term" solution
Besides finding space to hold court in the immediate future, the county must provide a courtroom to use while building a replacement for its historic downtown courthouse.
Dan DeWitt
Brevard NewsBeat
BREVARD — The Transylvania County Commission took the first step on Monday in the long path towards providing courts with adequate space, settling on using a conference room at the county Board of Elections in the coming months.
The Commission’s discussion stalled, however, at taking the more expensive and challenging next step, identifying space that can serve as what Commissioner Larry Chapman called a “longer short-term courtroom.”
Because the county’s historic downtown courthouse contains only one courtroom, additional space will be also be needed for the three years or more required to complete the biggest and most expensive step, replacing or extensively renovating the courthouse — a project that commissioners agree is long overdue.
“There’s no question that you're going to need a new courthouse,” said Commissioner David Guice. “We started talking about this, folks, in 2005 and now it’s 2021. That’s 16 years.”
He and Commission Chairman Jason Chappell focused on the former county administrative building on E. Main Street — the current site of the Veterans History Museum of the Carolinas — as the best site for the medium-term courtroom.
County staff estimated the cost of renovating the building for that purpose, with seating for as many as 88 people, to be between $1.25 and $1.5 million.
Commissioner Larry Chapman, who is a volunteer member of the museum’s board of directors, highlighted that figure in his support for using the elections building as both a short- and mid-term court location.
“Regardless of my feelings about the military museum, spending $1.5 million or more on that old building would be kind of ludicrous,” he said. The elections meeting room, which was renovated about three years ago, he said, and “could be set up really nicely for a longer short-term courtroom.”
At Chapman’s request, the commission agreed to ask county staff to explore that option further and pause on choosing the location of the middle-term court location until that information is available.
County Manager Jaime Laughter said she had not previously considered the elections building partly because those renovations had been completed to hold the staff of Elections Director Jeff Storey, a process the county would have to renew if that building was used for court.
“You would have to completely renovate the building and completely move the elections office,” she said.
Guice also objected to using the elections building, citing the additional concerns of limited space for seating and parking.
“This is the first conversation I’ve ever heard where we are talking about moving the Board of Elections,” he said, noting that the county also owns the administrative building. And as much as he likes the museum, he said, it does not perform an essential government function and pays “minimal” rent for use of the space.
“We’re going off the rails if we’re talking about moving the Board of Elections,” he said
Clerk of Superior Court Kristi Brown brought up two factors that may ultimately weigh against using the administrative building, which is next to the existing courthouse. The noise of making improvements would be so disruptive, she said, “I don’t believe we could have cout while you’re doing renovations.”
She also said the space does not require the creation of a jury room or jury box, points mentioned in arguments against using the elections building.
“We’re not asking you to remodel a whole lot,” she said.
As committed as the commissioners are to either replacing or extensively renovating the old courthouse, they also realize it will likely cost more than even the most recent estimates of about $40 million.
“I would guess that we could conservatively estimate those (costs) have gone up by 30 percent,” said Commissioner Teresa McCall.