Fredericksburg will spend the next five months gathering information that will allow it to compare two Princess Anne Street properties as potential sites for new court facilities.
That study--which will compare the current Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court site with the post office property across the street as locations for three new courtrooms--will cost between $50,000 and $100,000.
City Council members want to know if they can expect to save millions of dollars--while preserving their ability to expand the courts in the future--by using the city-owned juvenile court site instead of buying the U.S. Postal Service property.
This will delay the timeline for building new courts. At the beginning of this year, council members were working on a schedule that would have had them looking at a guaranteed cost estimate and information to give a final up or down vote on a court proposal for the post office site in June.
Now, it appears that council members will just be getting to the point where they could settle on a location to move forward with by June.
At issue is whether the city can take on a project so expensive it could require a 10-cent hike in the real estate tax at a time when it is cutting salaries--and possibly jobs--to keep its budget balanced as tax receipts plummet.
Council members two weeks ago backed off from a more than $50 million proposal to build an all-in-one courts complex on the current post office site. Building there would require the city to buy the land and build a new facility for the post office.
Using the juvenile court site would require the city to buy an adjoining piece of private property at 707 Princess Anne St., but that is a smaller land acquisition, and doesn't come with the cost of building new space for the Postal Service.
The city is no longer looking at building new space for all three of its courts at one time. Fredericksburg will solicit bids from architectural firms to look at building new space for the Circuit and Juvenile and Domestic Relations courts on either the city property or the post office property.
Assistant City Manager Bev Cameron said the city would also make upgrades to its General District Court to try to get another 10 to 15 years out of it. But at some point, the city will have to find more space to build new General District courtrooms.
Councilmen Brad Ellis and Hashmel Turner both said they wanted to make the choice of potential courts locations even broader by putting a privately owned site on Lafayette Boulevard back in play.
A group of landowners made a proposal to build a courts complex on that site in 2007. The council decided to stop looking at that option in December 2007, saying it wanted to keep the courts in the core downtown area.
Other council members said last night they still think it's important to do that.
The resolution the council approved last night says the city wants to keep the courts on Princess Anne Street. Ellis and Turner cast the only two votes against that resolution.
Emily Battle: 540/374-5413
Email: ebattle@freelancestar.com