Room to spare

Three months after disclosing that the new federal courthouse in Cape Girardeau needs $2.2 million worth of work to be ready for use, the federal General Services Administration is still waiting for the authority to spend the extra money.

When the problems were disclosed in August, officials with the GSA Region 6 office in Kansas City said it would take about seven months to complete the work once approval for the spending was granted. Last week, GSA spokesman Charlie Cook said the request is pending with the Office of Management and Budget. Once OMB approval is won, he said, Congress must also OK the request.

"We don't expect the OMB to take too long to turn it around," Cook said. "The seven-month clock will start fairly soon after that. After the contracts are awarded, we will have a firm date."

With the extra work, the total cost of the courthouse has risen from an original estimate of $50 million to $62 million. Some smaller contracts, such as $200,000 for changing the emergency lighting and hardware replacements, have been awarded and will be finished by January, Cook said. Other work, such as replacing the roof, will take place after the courthouse is open for business.

The first construction contract was awarded in March 2003 with a projected July 2006 opening. With seven months needed to finish the extra work, the opening could be held in July 2008 if approval is received soon.

The current federal courthouse building is situated at 339 Broadway in Cape Girardeau. This building houses several government agencies that will not have offices in the new building. (Fred Lynch)

The GSA isn't waiting, however, to find quarters for the agencies housed in the current federal courthouse building at 339 Broadway. A contract was recently awarded to VerMaas Construction to build offices on Cape Centre Drive for the Social Security Administration, which uses 4,910 square feet in the federal building. VerMaas will receive $272,371 a year in rent to house the Social Security offices, six times what Social Security pays for space on Broadway.

There's no room in the new federal courthouse for Social Security, Cook said. Or the Drug Enforcement Agency. Or the FBI. Both have offices in the federal building on Broadway, and while the GSA is not actively looking for new offices, Cook said the DEA is interested in moving.

The GSA did find room to give the Clerk of Courts office nearly 20,000 square feet, or almost 10 times the allocation at the old courthouse, and there's room to provide almost 20,000 square feet for the U.S. Marshals Service, almost nine times its current allocation.

Other than Congressional offices, Cook said, the new courthouse, with 3.6 times the total square footage of the Broadway building, isn't designed to be a dual-use building. And keeping the agencies on Broadway once the courts have left isn't a viable option, Cook said.

The GSA rates its buildings on a three-tiered system based on financial performance. Without the courts, the Broadway location will move from a Tier 1 building, a solid asset, to a Tier 3 building, which means it is a financial drain, Cook said in an e-mail to the Southeast Missourian.

That means the federal government will declare the building surplus. Cape Girardeau County officials have applied to take over the structure, but any federal decision on the application is on hold until the move to the new courthouse.

The DEA and the FBI are the only tenants of the Broadway building who don't have a permanent home. "The remaining tenants will either move into new leased space, as in the case with the Social Security Administration, or remain in the current building under new ownership," Cook wrote in his e-mail. "While rent will increase for some federal agencies in Cape Girardeau, GSA is still acting in the best interest of the American taxpayers by evaluating decisions based on best value, not just lowest price."

The greatly expanded space allocated to some functions is justified based on the design standards for federal courthouses, said Jim Woodward, clerk of the court for the Eastern District of Missouri.

The clerk's office allocation seems large, Woodward acknowledged. He has three slots for deputies in Cape Girardeau, with two currently filled. He's waiting for the new courthouse to open to hire a third deputy, he said.

But the allocation includes space for a jury assembly room, where people called for jury duty can relax in relative comfort while waiting to be screened for service, he said. There is no comparable space in the building on Broadway.

And the new courthouse will have a separate office for the clerk of the bankruptcy court. There is no separate office for the bankruptcy court in the Broadway location, he noted.

"I can go room by room and tell you why it is there and what its function will be," Woodward said. "When you design a new courthouse, you are finally able to provide for all the functions and requirements."

A major part of the decision to build a new courthouse, Woodward said, was worries about the Broadway courthouse's ability to survive a major earthquake. If the federal government retained the building, he said, it would require a major overhaul to meet modern seismic standards.

But Woodward did acknowledge that the space his office will occupy exceeds its current needs. "But it is designed to accommodate growing needs," he said. "The GSA will tell you this is a 100-year building. In 2107, we will still be there."

rkeller@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 126

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By the numbers

Space has been allocated in the new Rush H. Limbaugh Sr. Federal Courthouse, but not every agency housed in the current Federal Building at 339 Broadway will have offices in the new building. The space allocations, in square feet, are:

Agency old courthouse new courthouse

Rep. Jo Ann Emerson 1,161 2,042

Sen. Claire McCaskill 310 313

Sen. Kit Bond 573 521

District Courts 9,987 22,273

Clerk of Courts 2,008 19,670

Probation 2,720 7,686

Magistrate 1,931 2,176

Pre-trial 490 5,139

District Courts-ADR 0 1,564

Marshals 2,270 19,941

DEA 2,385 0

FBI 1,290 0

Federal prosectors* 120 9,945

Social Security 4,910 0

Dept. of Homeland Security 300 372

PBS 0 171

Federal Public Defender 0 429

TOTALS 30,355 92,242

Total Square Footage 48,440 173,392

Usable square footage 30,649 96,328

* The federal prosecutor's office rents private space at 325 Broadway and will leave those offices for the new federal courthouse.

Soure: U.S. General Services Administration