Most at public opinion meeting support Cape Girardeau County buying federal building

Supporters outnumbered dissenters Thursday during the Cape Girardeau County Commission's public opinion session on the old federal building.

About 15 people attended the meeting, many of them leaders from Cape Girardeau. Chamber of Commerce president John Mehner said the commissioners' combined experience in engineering, business and real estate makes them qualified to decide whether to buy the building. Mayor Jay Knudtson and former District 2 commissioner Joe Gambill also spoke in favor of the acquisition.

"I am painfully aware of the shortage of space in the Common Pleas Courthouse," Gambill said.

The county has discussed a purchase since Gambill was in office five years ago. All three current commissioners have said they support buying the building from the General Services Administration as a cost-effective alternative to constructing a new building.

The only dissenting opinion at the meeting was from county resident Pat Wissman.

"I'm kind of for it, but yet I'm against it," he said. "Is there a chance that, even though we need it, we can hold off on it some?"

Wissman cited the recession and renovation costs as reasons to wait to make a decision. He listed possible alternatives, including using the commission meeting room as a courtroom. The GSA will put the federal building up for auction if the county does not make an offer.

The circuit courts in Cape Girardeau County operate both in Jackson and Cape Girardeau. The county leases the Common Pleas Courthouse for a nominal fee from the city, but there are ongoing space and maintenance issues with the 150-plus-year-old building.

The federal building would also become home to other county operations in Cape Girardeau. Several county officials have satellite offices in the Courthouse Annex, and juvenile offices are on the Common Pleas Courthouse grounds.

To get more input on a potential purchase, the county had more than two dozen people, many who work in the Common Pleas Courthouse or adjacent buildings, tour the federal building Thursday.

As employees peeked into empty offices, they saw spacious areas but also debris from moving out. An old computer with floppy disk drives sat on the floor in one room. In the drawers of the main courtroom, pens, paper clips and even a decades-old jury summons had been left behind.

As she walked with colleagues into an office suite, Cape Girardeau County Juvenile Detention Center superintendent Pat Colon jokingly said, "Wow, they have doors here."

Juvenile department employees work in an open area where a lack of privacy makes confidential work with juvenile offenders difficult, Colon said.

Although there is a consensus that a change must be made, commissioners have said the federal building is not an ideal solution. There are questions about how well the facility meets county needs and how much work and money are required for renovations.

Associate Circuit Judge Peter Statler said during the tour that the county should build a courthouse designed for the circuit court, not buy the federal building.

Everyone else, he said, is thinking that "anything is going to be better than what we've got. Cape County, in my opinion, doesn't need to go second class."

The commission will vote July 30 on whether to make an offer before the July 31 GSA deadline.

astephens@semissourian.com

388-3654

Pertinent addresses:

1 Barton Square, Jackson, Mo.

339 Broadway, Cape Girardeau, Mo.