City seeks new use for Monument Terrace Building

The soon-to-be-vacated Juvenile & Domestic Relations courthouse will be a subject of study in coming months.

City officials are mulling over new uses for the space, which will be left with significant vacancies following the completion of a new J&D building on Court Street.

The current facility, situated one block over on Church Street, will see two of its three floors emptied by the court’s relocation. The commonwealth’s attorney’s office, which occupies the third floor, is the only tenant staying.

A study is being commissioned to help pinpoint the best use for the space left behind. The city put out a request for project bids earlier this month. The deadline to submit a
proposal is Aug. 15.

“This is a good building; it was just a bad courthouse,” city engineer and project manager Jim Talian said of the circa-1933 structure, which once served as city hall.

The city has wanted to replace the J&D courthouse for more than a decade. The new building, which broke ground in January, will offer more space and better security. It also will include environmentally friendly features such as a green roof designed to improve insulation and minimize storm-water runoff.

The cost of studying the old courthouse, named the Monument Terrace Building, will come out of the construction project’s contingency fund. No set amount has been earmarked, but the price is expected to be small, Talian said.

Officials are considering using the extra floor space to provide new storage and offices for the police department, but have not ruled out other possibilities, he added.

“That’s going to be one of the candidates looked at pretty closely. They need more space,” he said. “This is probably not the best place for them, because there’s no parking and the police have a very vehicle-intensive department, but it is a space we have.

“There are a lot of possibilities, certainly,” he said. “Nothing’s been stricken as far as I know.”

If the police expanded to the Church Street facility, its operations would be divided among four buildings. Currently, the department works out of two facilities on Court Street. Its communications center also has a separate building on Candlers Mountain Road.

Acting Police Chief Parks Snead said lack of space has been a recurring problem for the department for years.

Part of the dilemma stems from the massive collection of records and evidence the department stores. Finding space for new personnel also has proved challenging. Snead said they’ve carved new spaces out of anything from vestibules to old holding cells.

“That bought us a few years, but now we’re right back in the same dilemma,” he said. “We are, once again, rather desperate for space.”

Snead said the pros and cons of setting up shop in the Monument Terrace Building would have to be weighed carefully.

A member of the police force has been appointed to an internal review committee formed around the pending building study.