County studying Cape move

~ The key, one official said, is to acquire the federal courthouse for little or no cash while retaining some federal agencies as tenants.

Cape Girardeau County public works director Don McQuay laid a small piece of rusty pipe on the table in July when he appeared before the county commission.

The pipe, part of the antiquated plumbing system that provides both heat and cooling in the Common Pleas Courthouse, had deteriorated from both the inside and the outside. Water had eaten away at the pipe from the inside, and condensation caused by cold water used for cooling had eaten it from the outside.

Now public works employees are installing new pipe in the heating and cooling system in the courthouse, working their way through walls to reach the radiators in the 150-year-old brick building.

"We're having to crawl through the walls and everything," McQuay said. "We are like tunnel rats."

Whether those kinds of jobs will continue is an open question. After months of discussion, the commission is beginning to take a serious look at whether it can afford to move court and other county offices into the soon-to-be-empty federal courthouse on Broadway.

Commissioners have named a three-person committee to examine the two buildings and the costs associated with staying at each location. The committee includes former commissioner Joe Gambill, retired retail manager Harry Rediger and banker Moe Sandfort.

Common Pleas Courthouse

Federal Building

Along with judicial offices in the Common Pleas Courthouse, the county operates satellite offices for functions such as voter registration and the tax assessor in an annex near the courthouse.

The key to making a move work, Commissioner Jay Purcell said, is to acquire the federal courthouse for little or no cash while retaining some of the federal agencies as tenants.

Preliminary figures, Purcell said, show utility costs in the federal courthouse, at about $56,000 a year, are about double that for the two buildings on the Common Pleas grounds. And regular building maintenance costs of $86,782 a year are about three times as expensive.

But two federal agencies currently housed at the courthouse, the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration, pay enough rent to cover the difference, Purcell said.

The federal courthouse would provide a more secure location for courtrooms, he said. While the Common Pleas Courthouse is mainly used for civil cases, he noted, some of those, such as domestic relations cases, have a potential for violence.

But security can be too tight, Purcell said. "Most people would be offended if you put them through a full-out security process to pay their taxes."

The committee selected to evaluate the switch hasn't met. The members have all received basic information about the buildings but must do a thorough study, said Sandfort.

"My thought would be to look at a cost-benefit relationship," said Sandfort, community bank president for Bank of Missouri in Cape Girardeau. "There would have to be either enough revenue through rental income or return on investment so for a businessman it would be reasonable to make that decision."

The Broadway courthouse has 47,946 square feet of rentable space compared to 15,644 in the Common Pleas Courthouse and annex. The county would use more space, but not nearly all of it, Purcell said.

If the county decides to leave the Common Pleas building and annex, the city of Cape Girardeau, which owns them, would become responsible for their upkeep.

Acquiring the federal building would require cutting through a maze of regulations controlling the use of surplus federal property. When the new $50 million, 150,000-square-foot federal courthouse opens in about four months, the wheels will start turning to dispose of the old building, said Charlie Cook, a spokesman for the General Services Administration in Kansas City.

The first step is to evaluate the building and wait for applications from groups that would use it to help homeless people, he said. If no viable proposals are received, then the government considers whether to transfer the property to local government use, either at market value or at a discount.

If no government use is found, the building would be put on the real estate market, he said.

How much the government charges, he said, is based on how the building is to be used. "All those questions would be answered based on the specific proposal," he said.

Keeping federal agencies in the courthouse after it is sold is unlikely for any extended period, Cook said. "I have never seen a case where that had been approved," he said.

Some agencies might stay "looking at the short term," Cook said. "But we wouldn't consider the FBI staying in the building for a permanent thing."

Purcell, however, hopes that influence from the congressional offices of U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson and U.S. Sen. Kit Bond could overcome that reluctance to stay.

The county has been working with both offices and the U.S. Department of Justice as it studies the transfer, he said. A Justice Department program helps local governments obtain former federal courthouses when they are reused for law enforcement needs.

That could leave the county needing funds to purchase those portions of the building that would house nonjudicial functions, Purcell said. The county has no capital purchases budget but does have $5 million in emergency reserves.

The committee will handle all those details as it works on a recommendation. None of the three has a firm opinion about their work.

"I am going in totally open," said Rediger, a member of the Cape Girardeau Planning and Zoning Commission and former manager at J.C. Penney. "I want a tour first and to get numbers, but I can't really comment yet because I don't know where I am heading and where the committee is heading."

The Common Pleas Courthouse would serve the county adequately for years to come, Gambill said. A newer, bigger building would be nice, he said, "but it needs to be evaluated on a cost basis. If you are in love with having that building, then you are blinded to what it will cost down the road."

Intangibles, however, could tip the scales. The Common Pleas Courthouse and annex have about 60 parking spaces, while users of the federal courthouse must find street parking. Whether judges feel an urgency about more security could also play a role.

For McQuay, a newer building could mean fewer problems. The Common Pleas Courthouse wasn't built for electricity, much less for modern computers and office equipment.

Almost every space that can be used for storage is packed, except the dirt-floor former jail cell in the basement.

But the county has kept the building in good shape, McQuay said, and the heating and cooling pipes are the only recent problem.

From time to time, however, the Common Pleas Courthouse will need work, he said. "It is a cranky old man, so you have to give it hard medicine. Right now, the building is telling me what is wrong with it."

If it were up to McQuay, the county would move its operations. But he said he knows money will decide the issue. "I think we need it, but I think we have to make sure we can afford it."

rkeller@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 126