County Commission Once Again Takes up Courthouse Construction
The Commission renewed talk of the dire need to upgrade court facilities and acknowledged it won't meet a previous goal of deciding on a location before the end of the year.
BREVARD — The Transylvania County Commission on Monday waded — not dove — back into the politically treacherous subject of replacing the county’s historic courthouse.
Commission Chair Jason Chappell, who placed the matter on the agenda, kept expectations low from the start of the discussion.
“I’m not asking for any decisions tonight. This is just a start — looking at that process again,” he said.
He also said, citing the complexity of the issue and the Commission’s reduced meeting schedule for the rest of the year, that the board would miss a goal he had set this spring.
“Earlier on, I said I hoped we could come up with a decision by the end of the calendar year, and that is probably not going to happen,” he said.
The Commission did agree on a few steps forward. Given that the County has conducted two studies since 2015 to help determine space needs and possible locations, it did not need to order another.
The Commission also directed staff to reform a committee of stakeholders in the community and to determine if the recently passed federal infrastructure bill might help pay for the project. County Manager Jaime Laughter also said she would seek updated cost estimates of the three main locations under consideration.
Potential sites include the current downtown location, land on Morris Road north of downtown and a county-owned parcel near the Transylvania County Library.
The downtown site would be the most expensive of these options, according to 2020 report, at more than $45 million, and the Morris Road site the cheapest, at nearly $37 million.
The presumed escalation of these costs during the Covid-19 pandemic was a primary concern, especially on the part of Commissioner Larry Chapman, who pointed to several upcoming capital needs and skyrocketing construction costs that have forced the Transylvania County School Board to reconsider its plans for its $68 million school renovation project. Voters approved the project in 2018, and it will be funded by the county.
“We’ve got a $68-million school bond disaster out there and that’s my word,” Chapman said. While adding that he admired the Board for handling the project, he also said, “we’re three years out and we haven’t put a spoon of dirt in the ground yet.”
Given this example and other costly projects on the horizon, he argued for a reconsideration of the amount of courthouse space needed — at least 60,000 square feet, according to architects’ studies.
“A lot of us were looking at Taj Mahals,” he said. “I think our biggest challenge now is — Do we need all that size?”
Probably, said Commissioner David Guice, who has a long background in corrections and criminal justice. He pointed to, among other factors, the expanding need for processing juvenile cases and urged the Commission to work toward a long-term solution.
“Whatever we do, we’ve got to be thinking forward in how we address these needs,” he said. “Remember, we’re building a building that will last — most people say 50 years, I would say folks in Western North Carolina always stretch it to 75 to 100 years.”
Commissioners also talked about the number of years the county has been confronted with the need for a modern, spacious courthouse. A timeline on the county website documents discussions on the subject dating back to 2005. Chapman referred to a statewide report on criminal justice facilities from 1978.
Even then, he said, “This courthouse was rated number 85 out of the 100 courthouses in the state,” he said.