Justice Facility expected to provide needed space

Dan Kulin

Monday, Oct. 20, 2003 | 11:02 a.m.

The dirt is moving on North Las Vegas' largest and most expensive construction project to date, the new $29.7 million Justice Facility, which has space for an expanded municipal court and new booking and release centers for the city detention center.

Grading work on the 8 1/4 acres at the corner of Civic Center Drive and Las Vegas Boulevard North began earlier this month, and the first cement will be poured within the next four weeks. Work is expected to be done in February 2005, Assistant Public Works Director Robert Harary said.

A groundbreaking is scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.

North Las Vegas Municipal Judge Warren Van Landschoot said the new building will provide needed space for more municipal courtrooms. Van Landschoot is the city's only municipal judge, working out of the one-courtroom courthouse between City Hall and the site of the new courthouse.

The new courthouse will open with three courtrooms, plus a training and traffic school room that can easily be converted into another courtroom, Van Landschoot said.

With the additional courtrooms, the city will add a second municipal judge in 2005 and probably a third judge two years later. The new judges must start working for city on staggered terms so all the judges aren't up for re-election at the same time, he said. Van Landschoot's current term ends in 2005.

The city is eligible to bring on additional judges because of the high case load in the Municipal Court, he said. According to a city statement, during the fiscal year that ended June 30, Van Landschoot handled 8,797 criminal complaints and 40,557 traffic citations. Meanwhile, the Henderson Municipal Court, which has two judges, handled 2,950 criminal complaints and 18,607 traffic citations.

Mayor Michael Montandon said the need for more space so the city can add judges is a big reason for the new Justice Facility. But the new building will also allow other city employees, some of whom work in temporary trailers next to City Hall, to move into the old courthouse, he said.

The new Justice Facility will also make the courthouse a safer and more comfortable place, the judge said.

Now the metal detector is inside the lobby near the entrance to the courtroom.

The new building will have a larger lobby and the metal detectors will be by the front door in the new courthouse.

"It will stop them before the get in the front door," Van Landschoot said. "There will be no weapons inside the courthouse, whereas now you could walk around with a gun."

The new building will also improve the safety for the Detention Center operations, Ken Ellingson, chief of detention and corrections, said.

Now the booking and releasing operations at the Detention Center are close to each other, with the prisoners coming in and going out passing close enough to reach out and touch one another, he said.

"People are coming in angry and intoxicated, and they shouldn't be too close to the people leaving," Ellingson said.

In the new Justice Facility, the booking and release operations will be on opposite sides of the detention center area, he said.

The new building won't increase the number of beds at the detention center, but it will have new holding cells, including two quarantine cells for prisoners with serious contagious diseases such as tuberculosis, Ellingson said.

Overall the Justice Facility project includes construction of a two-story, 96,000-square-foot building and a 442-space parking lot.

The building was designed by RAFI Architects, and the general contractor is Clark and Sullivan Contractors.

City bonds that will cost $2.5 million a year for the next 20 years were used to pay for the Justice Facility.

Van Landschoot, who had a hand in designing the new building, said he's not overly concerned that the project will encounter the problems of Clark County's Regional Justice Center.

The county project is almost two years behind schedule and projected to be about $6 million over budget, said Randy Walker, the county aviation department director who has also been charged with overseeing the project.

Van Landschoot said the big difference between the two projects is cost. The county center is projected to cost $129 million, which is more than four times the expected price of the North Las Vegas Justice Center.

The judge said that an unexpected labor strike or other problems could affect the city project, but that the North Las Vegas center is not as prone to delay as the county one.

"That is a huge project," Van Landschoot said about the Regional Justice Center. "Our building is not nearly as sophisticated."

The mayor said there have been many meetings with top city staff to reinforce the concern that the city project not end up like the county justice center.

"Heads will roll if that happens to us," Montandon said.