Columnist Jeff German: Courthouse project dampened

Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2005 | 11:02 a.m.

This is your courthouse update directly from a very wet Regional Justice Center -- the "project from hell" that was supposed to have been completed three years ago this month.

The news, I'm afraid, isn't good.

The county's prospects for moving into the $185 million publicly financed high-rise, designed to unclog our justice system, have taken a turn for the worse.

Heavy rains the past couple of weeks have sprung 37 leaks throughout the 17-story project, dampening the county's hopes of a June opening.

"I'm no longer willing to predict when it will be able to open," says Randy Walker, the county official who has been struggling for three years to light a fire under the project's seemingly inept general contractor, AF Construction.

"I can't in good conscience recommend we take control of a building that has 37 leaks in it."

And there's no telling when the leaks will be plugged.

Walker says AF Construction, which already is in arbitration with the county over its sloppy work, has been slow to make amends.

When will this nightmare end? This is our money flowing down the drain.

Not everyone is drowning in their sorrows at the courthouse.

If you make it to the 7th floor, you'll see a big smile on the face of District Attorney David Roger.

After two years in office, Roger finally has found his own man to oversee the important criminal division.

The youthful Christopher Lalli took over those duties a few days ago.

Lalli may have taken some lumps as the lead prosecutor in the Ted Binion murder retrial, which didn't turn out the way his boss had hoped, but he's regarded as one of the sharper minds in the DA's office.

He replaces the retired Chuck Thompson, a holdover from the administration of Roger's predecessor, Stewart Bell.

Lalli will bring enthusiasm to the criminal division, which has to be bad news for the bad guys.

Some big news -- the kind that will make people "crazy" inside the mob-infested topless nightclub scene -- should be breaking at the federal courthouse in the coming weeks.

But the FBI's top local mob fighter won't be on hand to soak it up.

Jerry Hanford, who has headed the FBI's organized crime squad here the past six years, one of the longest tenures ever in this high-pressure job, is taking a well-deserved early retirement at the end of the month.

He has accepted a plum position as corporate director of investigations for Wynn Las Vegas, which is set to open in April. Former Sheriff Jerry Keller and Larry Mefford, who once ran the FBI's counterintelligence division in Washington, also are on Steve Wynn's all-star security team.

Though Hanford's expertise is in traditional (La Cosa Nostra) organized crime, he's generally credited with directing the FBI's attention here to other organized criminal syndicates. You name the groups -- whether they're of Asian, Russian, Romanian or Israeli descent -- and you'll find them operating on the streets here.

The traditional mob, it turns out, has plenty of competition in Las Vegas -- which is something we'll also being hearing about in the coming weeks.