Old county courthouse awaits verdict
BOISE – Right next door to the state Capitol, the old Ada County Courthouse stands grandly amid lush, shady lawns, its art deco spires a counterpoint to the neighboring Capitol dome.
Like the Capitol, the 1930s-era courthouse is now owned by the state, having been purchased for $2.5 million in 1999. But unlike the bustling Capitol, the old courthouse has stood vacant for more than two years, its doors chained and padlocked, its courtrooms, marble stairways and tiny, dim offices abandoned.
A special legislative task force voted in October 2001 to renovate the old courthouse for meeting rooms and offices, plus add a four-story addition to the back of the building to provide more modern and useable space. The plan would have cost $16.2 million. But lawmakers, split between those who want to demolish and replace the old courthouse and those who want to preserve at least part of it, never could come to a decision.
“It really is the Legislature’s building to decide what to do with,” said state Department of Administration Director Pam Ahrens. “We’ve just stabilized the building. Of course, we have security go through it from time to time. It does have mice.”
While the old building’s fate was debated, the state’s finances crashed, giant budget surpluses disappeared and lawmakers were forced to raise taxes to keep state government functioning.
This year, when the joint budget committee was asked to approve a $10,000 expenditure to keep heating and preserving the vacant building, North Idaho Rep. George Eskridge balked.
“Ten thousand dollars is $10,000,” said Eskridge, R-Dover. “To me, it’s money that’s being wasted because we’re using it to keep a building warm that we don’t want.”
As a result, the state is doing just the bare minimum at the old courthouse – mowing and watering the lawn, and trying to keep the structure from deteriorating. From outside, the courthouse doesn’t even look vacant – a few rose bushes are in bloom, and the parking lot behind the building is full, a result of the general parking crunch in the Capitol mall area.
Inside the building, old jail cells in the upper floors sit vacant, light filtering in from windows first through a thick layer of wire mesh, then through heavy bars. Two large courtrooms that each seat about 100 people are filled with old, somewhat rickety theater seats. Wood paneling covers much of the walls, and often-remodeled office spaces have been cut into a warren of little rooms, many of which can be reached only by walking from one into the next and into the next.
In many of the smaller courtrooms, huge posts disrupt the line of sight from the gallery, while drab carpeting and 1950s-style dropped ceilings predominate, creating an institutional feel.
An exception is the main lobby of the building, which rises for several floors. There, the floors are marble, the railings shiny brass, and the light fixtures are intricate art deco-style pieces that mimic the outside shape of the building. Old, original public telephone booths off the lobby have painted tin walls and sliding oak doors.
Original murals, painted by artists employed by the federal government during the Depression as part of the Work Projects Administration, show settlers along the Oregon Trail, covered wagons, the establishment of Boise, scenes with civil war soldiers, and some problematic scenes of settlers encountering Indians, including one in which settlers are preparing to hang a Native man.
For years, the murals were covered up because of those unsettling images. Now, they preside over empty stairwells. The canvas on which they’re painted is beginning to peel away from the walls.
Ric Johnston, facilities coordinator for the state Department of Administration, shines a flashlight into a tiny room that holds an old, cast-iron spiral staircase, which leads up to a fan room and mechanical area.
“The heating and cooling system is in very sad shape,” Johnston said, examining a forest of steel duct work that’s part of the heating system.
Two huge boilers in the basement, originally fed by coal shoveled through chutes from the back of the building, were converted to gas in the 1950s or 1960s.
The plan approved by the legislative task force envisioned hooking the building up to the natural geothermal hot-water heat system that powers the Capitol and other buildings along the Capitol mall. It also called for extending a tunnel system that connects other state buildings to include the old courthouse, for an additional $295,000. Long-term plans call for a new parking structure a couple of blocks away, where a state parking lot now stands, to help serve the expanded building.
Rather than remodel the old courthouse, Ada County built a large, modern courthouse several blocks away. As part of the purchase deal with the state, the county leased the old courthouse back for two years while its new building was being completed. Those lease payments were held for maintenance of the building, and they were the source of the $10,000 expenditure that Eskridge helped block on the budget committee.
Ahrens said she was directed by former Gov. Phil Batt and former legislative leaders Jerry Twiggs and Mike Simpson in 1995 to acquire two key pieces of property if they became available – the courthouse site and land just on the other side of the Capitol. That property is now a state-owned parking lot. Both properties, if commercially developed, could have affected the Capitol in the future, Ahrens noted.
Lawmakers also are in great need of public meeting space. When legislative committees hold high-interest hearings, people pack into the Capitol’s small hearing rooms, fill the doorways, and lurk in the hallways outside, trying to hear. The Capitol’s largest room, the Gold Room, holds barely 100 people.
“There just isn’t adequate space for Idahoans to come see the Legislature at work,” Ahrens said.
Lawmakers also have expressed concern about that, and last month the Legislative Council once again directed its legislative services staff to look into options for meeting space at the old Ada County Courthouse and elsewhere.
The state also just acquired the old Borah Post Office building from the federal government for $1. Ahrens said that historic structure has a large meeting room that, unlike the courthouse space, should be useable immediately.
Eskridge said he recognizes that the state doesn’t have the money now to either renovate or replace the old courthouse.
But, he said, “We need to make some decisions. … As it stands there, it’s kind of an albatross.”
His move to block the maintenance money “puts pressure on to make a decision,” Eskridge said. “The property is worth far more than the building is, and as long as you keep the building on there, you have nothing.”