Friday, April 24, 1998 | 10:13 a.m.
The judges, attorneys, administrators and architectural consultants charged with designing the Regional Justice Center are having to cut corners to meet the $90.5 million no-nonsense budget set for them by the Clark County Commission.
Since the architectural design for the 620,000-square-foot project came in $10 million over that budget, administrators and elected officials have been working hard to find creative ways to trim the project costs and space but still meet court needs for the next 20 years.
"They designed a tentative building, and it cost more than the amount we have," District Attorney Stewart Bell said. "We have to figure out ways to cut the costs to within the budget we have and deliver the building we need.
"The idea is to get the same services for $10 million less."
That will mean changing the composition of the building's exterior and interior, looking at creative ways to move inmates and the public around and cutting office and courtroom space.
Eventually, the district attorney's office will move out into a second phase south of the justice center to accommodate future case-load growth.
Officials involved in the project said they hope to have a clear idea by the first week of May of what they will be able to build in time for the scheduled October 2001 opening. The first public hearing is scheduled for May 27 before a design review committee chaired by County Commissioner Lorraine Hunt and includes Las Vegas Mayor Jan Laverty Jones and county commissioners Myrna Williams and Lance Malone.
"It's really premature," District Court Administrator Chuck Short said.
Short said it would be unfair to say the project is $10 million over budget because that final design hasn't been approved, nor have decisions been made about the quality of the exterior or interior.
"Until we have a schematic design to base the cost estimate off of," Short said, "it's difficult to know what the cost is going to be, and if we need to scale back either the quantity or the quality of the space."
Still, they've already had to face some hard realities. For one thing, they've cut the number of courtrooms from 24 to 20 in the past six months. And they may have to scale back by as much as 5 percent, or 25,000 square feet, how much floor space will be built out by the time the center opens. The remaining space would be built out as needed.
"That's a last resort," Bell said. "We want to give the public the most belt for the buck."
The project has been budgeted at $119.5 million, with $29 million to come from the city of Las Vegas for the municipal court portion and the county to pay for justice and district court space.
That budget doesn't include another $5 million for a proposed top floor for the Nevada Supreme Court.
District Court Judge Nancy Becker and Bell had asked the county for more, but the Commission balked at the extra $60 million and set its share at $84.5 million in December 1996.
"When the Commission cut back the budget and said this is the budget and you will live within it, it fell on us and our consultants to find a way to do that," Bell said.
Nine months later, the courts found an additional $6.5 million in administrative court fees and the board voted unanimously to increase its share by that amount.
That gave planners a little extra breathing room, but they still have to make some creative adjustments.
"It's pretty tight for what we have to deliver," Bell said.
Bell said it wasn't up to him to make the hard money decisions, but to make it work.
Several million dollars can be saved simply by choosing a less expensive material for the exterior than the limestone suggested by the designers, one official said.
And more money can be saved depending on how inmates are routed, the ratio of public use to office space and how to accommodate certain court and attorney functions.
"It's a puzzle," said Don Burnette, assistant director of administrative services for Clark County and a member of the design team. "We are working on a number of configurations."
Burnette said the design process is really just getting started, applying programming information from various departments and doing a detailed analysis on the spacing and personnel needs.
"We are going to be making some difficult decisions every step of the way," Burnette said. "Not everyone is going to get what they want."
Already, justices of the peace have agreed to conduct 75 percent of their arraignments by video -- something other courts have been doing for years.
"It's safer, it requires fewer detention officers to move from the detention center to the court house and saves on the space we have to build," Short said.
District judges have agreed to putting courtrooms in the basement with the holding cells for the purpose of conducting arraignment hearings, Short said, shrinking the amount of space needed inside the building for inmates.
"Because we have a 200-person holding area in the basement, it allows detention to cycle them quicker through the arraignment cycle than currently," Short said. "It's a good business decision in the sense that the whole system operates more efficiently with the same level of effectiveness."
archive
