Travis County Commissioners Court
February 20, 2007
Item 32
32 is to consider and take appropriate action on Travis County committee to address new civil courts building, including charge, public hearing, communication with Travis County legislative delegation.
>> judge?
>> can someone tell me -- if someone can tell me what -- I understand that the local bills -- and this in fact would be something that would be local, I guess. If it goes forward, how much time we have to have left on local stuff? I understand at first there was a time line that was set, this is the end of local bill, blah, blah, blah, but from what I understand, there has been a change to that and I知 just trying to figure out how much time we have to deal with local bills.
>> it was a 30 day riment, requirement, and that advertisement was made -- it may have already run. I think we already complied with that requirement. I think it may have already run. I can check on that. That you can already complied with the requirements.
>> okay.
>> your legislative consultant was way ahead of us on that point.
>> I wanted to hear something. Something. Thank you, mr. Hilly.
>> john, while they're trying to get together over there, let me ask you this: we posted this language fairly broadly. And specifically there's language regarding, including charge. Ms. Perez I think has come up with the idea that we ought to receive a presentation from consultants that we ask to look at potential sites in the downtown area. Receiving that report is not specifically listed in this agenda wording. Do we believe that the language that's there specifically regarding including charge, and I guess preparation for communication with the Travis County legislative delegation, would be broad enough to cover such a report.
>> what I recall of the contract that this consultant was charged with going to do in preparing the report, it does seem like the report that they have to provide you would be beneficial in analyzing what the charge would be and communication of the delegation. I think if they were going to give that report today, it would be entirely acceptable within the language that you have here.
>> so is the intention to give us highlights of the report, so when we anticipate options we can take into account the highlights.
>> I don't know if that was direct at me, judge? But what we had hoped to do today when we met with you last Thursday, you had asked us to -- that you had expressed an opinion that you along with the rest of the members of the court, you had asked us why we had needed another building. You asked us what our options were. And the third thing is that you asked in what direction were we going. And I believe that we have tailored this presentation to cover those three areas, why we need a building, what our options are, and then what direction are we going. And I hope that's right on beam with with you wanted to hear and what the rest of the court wants to hear. And --
>> when I used the word charge, that's really what I had in mind, john.
>> I知 wondering if I can take just a few minutes to review why we need another building. I have two facts. Swun that the five story heman marion sweatt courthouse has approximately 125,000 square feet. It 75,000 of that is given owe to courts -- is given over to courts and offices, and 50,000 of that is given over to common areas like hallways, stairways and mechanical operations? And I知 doing that to give awe frame of reference. If I may, the second fact factoid, is that in 1977 -- I chose that date because that's when I first came to the courthouse -- the population of Travis County was 393,000. Today as we sit here it is 30 years later, it is approximately 893,000. If you look at the state demographers site, most people agree that the projected population for Travis County 33 years from now is 1.39 million. In other words, the growth that we have experienced since 1977 will be equal to about the growth that we will experience in the future. We've gained 500,000 over the last 30 years and we'll gain approximately 500,000 in the next 33 years. In 1977 the courthouse was configured dramatically different than it is today, but it contained 11 courts. Those were five civil district, two criminal, county courts at law one, two and three, the probate court and the justice of the peace precinct five for 12 judges. The courthouse at that time also contained the sheriff's office, constable precinct five, I believe the treasurer and the auditor were housed on the second floor, as I recall. The property frordz the county clerk. The district attorney's office was on floor 3 and the c-14-county attorney's 's office on the fifth floor of the there was a law library and one court up on five. And I致e excluded from discussion the jail portion of the courthouse.
>> that was when all the elected officials got along real well, didn't they, judge?
>> we were a sleepy community then, judge.
>> [ laughter ] 30 years later those -- you have removed the sheriff, the constable precinct 5, the treasurer, the auditor, the property records for the county clerks the district attorney's office, the county attorney's office. You have removed one of the county courts at law. And we have now grown to 18 judges. And that is 10 district courts, three associates, two county courts at law, two jungz in the probate section -- two judges in the probate section and one judge for jp precinct 5. We, along with mike wicker, have been working on projections that we think will be necessary for planning and programming. Right now our best estimate is that we will in the year 2040 need 28 judges. And that is 24 judges in the combined county court, associate judge district courts, three judges in the probate court suite, one judge and two associates. And one jp 5. The second thing that these are sort of the numbers, and it really doesn't -- we essentially have to double our capacity between what we have now and what we will need in the future, and that's really not a surprise, I don't think, to the court. Certainly I致e said similar types of things in the past, but also your strategic plan which you adopted in 2002 2002 identified that you would need approximately 250,000 square feet for court facilities by the year 2020. The second problem with the present courthouse is that it does not have, as blessed as it is and as many good memories, it does not have the functionalty nor the utility for 21st century litigation. When the courthouse was designed in 1930, added to in 1956 and again sometime in the scikt 60's, computers were not on the scene. Every office now in that courthouse has a bundle of computers. The hvac system is in the midst of remodeling, retrofitting, which is 20% done. When the boiler went out last month, and as our office temperatures plunged down to 60 an 59 degrees, as people started switching on their space heaters, these circuit breakers, started breaking. Our wells were designed -- the wells, the working area that we have in front of us here was designed for an era when you could walk to the courthouse containing your file in your hand as opposed to the people who bring in boxes and boxes. I mean, it's not unusual for me to receive a case from the state which has 27, 28 boxes of material. We have added the electronic courtroom suite, but the courts themselves rn not designed for the technology that we are using in the 21st century. Secondly as our population has increased, the nature of the cases that we tried, those involving children have dramatically increased. In 1977 I don't think we had a cps. Now our caseload is over 1500 and we're required by the state to have hearing every six months in all of those cases. We bring children. We do not have a holding cell within the courthouse, so if we bring prisoners because of late child support, domestic violence, or if they happen to be a father of one of the cps children, we have no secure place to hold them. The security arrangements in the courthouse, we're thankful for that which the court has provided, but there is not a security consultant in this country who would say that our courthouse is safe. And in fact, you've received some recommendations from the sheriff's office and the others concerning the security. In short, we need a new courthouse.
>> calf rope, you've got us.
>> I was just winding up to the big one. In short we need a new cows courthouse. If not, as I致e asked you before, when? But it's the -- the time is ticking and I appreciate your attention and so I hopefully judge, I致e answered the question that you posed last Thursday, which was why do we need a new courthouse.
>> the other step that I致e heard that I thought was telling is that typically you've got to replace one of these courthouses about every 50 years. Did you say that or somebody else?
>> we were on a trip to the harris county courthouse, and the facilities -- chief facilities person with harris county said that they generally age buildings -- county buildings at 55 years and then every 55 years they need either a dramatic top to bottom remodel, retrofitting, or they need a new building. And sort of by historical comparison, there's only been three courthouses in Travis County in all of its history. In 1854 they had a courthouse at fourth and guadalupe which I take it was probably where that hub is now. It had two courtrooms and what described as a dungeon. The Commissioners court constructed a courthouse at 11th and congress in 1874, and 56 years later built this courthouse at 1100 guadalupe. We are now 76 years into the life of this building. And with that I値l be quiet for awhile.
>> can I just follow up on a couple of things? We're under an obligation to naturally utilize the resources available to us, absolutely, and I certainly don't disagree with the idea that if we're going to keep this, our downtown properties, we have to maximally utilize them. One idea that bubbled up, and I wanted your response to this, is is there a way to better utilize -- aside from building a new courthouse, because of course we'll still have the heeman swoet and we'll still be using that as well, but to maximize the heman sweat, and irrespective of if we would have a new courthouse, by not dedicating a new courtroom to a new judge and instead having courtrooms set aside, specific courtrooms for jury cases versus bench trials, so that we can really utilize the space maximally. I知 getting the hairy eyeball.
>> well, how I was trying to respond to you is that there's no doubt that the question about the judge, the court suite and a courtroom, one per judge, is historical. I was just trying to see, thinking in my own mind, the functioning. We think we're utilizing it pretty well. We now have one of our judges halftime at the court and halftime at juvenile, judge murr. We now have one of our judges dedicated full time to the cps docket. There's no question that an arrangement the way we're doing it is somewhat inflexible. I had videotape, something I presented to the court, about the crowing on the fourth floor, and I counted and there was like 48 people standing. I went inside to the courtroom, which was conducting the hearings, and there were 45 chairs sitting right there. I wish I had those chairs somewhere else so I could get the 48 people to have a seat. The problem is that when there are jury trials, you now have to pull in panels of 50 to 60 people and so in that respect it's not the most efficient, I will grant you, not the most efficient utilization of space, but if we didn't have that and we went to what I will call a chicago system, which assigns judges to courts, you're still going to have to have seven or eight jury courtrooms that would have the same amount of capacity and you will need a jury assembly room. I don't know if any of the Commissioners went with us, facilities, down to san antonio, but they had a very larng what they use as a ceremonial courtroom and also as a jury assembly room. But to make the most efficient use of those jury spaces, you need a jury assembly room right there within the courthouse because you never know when the cases are going or whether they'll fold or what they need. So I知 not sure how much we can save that way, Commissioner, but certainly within design and programming, we're going to look into that, just as we are in an area that's near and dear to Commissioner Daugherty, which is we're starting to use courtrooms after 5:00 because a significant portion of our population is not available to us during regular working hours and need to come and get their divorces and their adoptions and other types of things done afterwards. So I would imagine that a feature of a newly constructed courthouse would be to have courts situated to where we could use them after 5:00 and not have to open up the entire courthouse to do that.
>> perhaps we can also think about these kinds of, you know, queueing for jury cases and the space needs for jury cases as we're designing our new courthouse as well so that we can maximally utilize the space there.
>> certainly that's a legitimate inquiry and it's not something that we're necessarily adverse to thinking about because that space is expensive to construct and if yu not utilizing it, then it's very expensive.
>> in an et, as -- I知 sorry, Commissioner. Go ahead.
>> I知 good.
>> as we continue to look at the movement of things that we deem -- this court has deemed and staff has deemed not necessarily to be located downtown, and as we have decentralized and have taken things out from the downtown area, that we feel is not necessarily have to be here, we've been getting quite a bit of applause. I知 thinking -- I知 coming back to you now, judge. Don't think I知 trying to get around you. But I知 thinking about the move that we made to the airport with the tax office, the county clerk. Of course now we have the sheriff going out there and part of his entity. And that movement, we're getting a lot of applause from it as far as decentralizing. My concern here is looking at what's being proposed here as far as the new courthouse, and I just want to -- the committee I know was charged to go out and look at didn't things, but I知 still concerned about the process itself. That's why I asked mr. Hilly, john, earlier about the public hearing, hearing from the community because of the capitol view corridor that is in question on one of the sites that we're looking at. But understand that with maybe just adjust wants or design, maybe minimal, I really don't know the full ramifications of that at this point, where it wouldn't be as a significant impact if things are designed accordingly. And I really don't know all about these things. These are just things I知 hearing. So I知 just wondering where we are, I guess, to the point whereby we're still need to go have a public hearing, not going -- not foregoing that, but then again looking at the necessaries that are in place where if anybody happened to ask, well, Commissioner, how are y'all going to do that to lessen maybe the impact over the capitol view corridor. All these things are kind of percolating in my head now and I guess I really need to hear more about that in case I am asked the question of minimizing an impact as far as the capitol view corridor. So that's basically what I知 trying to get the flavor of at this point. Of course, leaving the things that need to be downtown, downtown as far as government is concerned. Those are -- of course the court system have to survey downtown. But these other things -- right now I知 just searching for some type of inkling to -- to where I will be comfortable in knowing that there's efforts that are being made to minimize impacts, if that is where the court decides to go.
>> and Commissioner, I appreciate that and as a teaser, I think we're going to show you today a couple of things. With respect, to the courts need to be downtown? I知 going to give you an answer which is on -- which may seemingly be flippant, but there are 253 other counties in Texas that have answered that question, and the answer is they put them downtown. I can't think of a metropolitan area in this country that have never thought about that the courts would be ancillary. Now, there are some things, for instance, here we place juvenile a mile and a half from here, but in terms of the necessity of placing the courts downtown, I think it's a given because the rule of law, the amount of commerce, where the people come, centrally located, the downtown is the area. With respect to the view corridor, I don't want to get totally into that, but I believe we are sensitive to the view corridor. Niement sure my debate is -- I知 not sure my debate is probably effective, with how the view corridors actually are, but secondly we're in the early stages of this process. I believe we have the ability if we use our creative thought to turn and to make a statement with this view corridor. And if y'all will hang in there with us, I think we're going to surprise you with some of the thinking that we've been doing. So alicia, do you want to pick it up?
>> let's see some of it.
>> thank you, judge.
>> let's go ahead and go to it. We have here individuals from broadus corporation. We had contracted with broadus, jim and his associates, to look at two sites. And the court wanted to specifically look at san antonio and to look at the site right across from here. There had been discussion among the court members about the capitol view corridor and whether you submit anything for legislative action or support a bill lifting the wooldridge park capitol view corridor. In them considering that, they came up with some ideas which we believe not only enhances the capitol view corridor, but also provides an opportunity for the -- for Travis County to use valuable land it already owns. And I think that the presentation will speak for itself.
>> good afternoon, Commissioners. I知 joined by ed lee here in the audience as well. We're appreciative to have the opportunity to visit with you today and present to you some of our intermediate or preliminary findings based on the site analysis study for the two locations to which alicia just referred. Just as a quick background on who you ended up hiring to actually do this report, broadus and associates is an Austin based firm. We're headquartered here in Austin. We're one of the top 40 program management firms in the united states. Currently we're managing over $1.4 billion in projects on behalf of owners, city, county, governments, institutional clients, universities, colleges throughout the state of Texas. We have over 60 full-time employees, but we approach projects from the owner's perspective, and when we get involved in the front end planning and helping owners to find the overall scope and parameters of a project, we spend a lot of time thinking about plans which are actually implementable and that can actually move forward and achieve the budget and schedule criteria that are associated with projects. One of the other things that we would like to pride ourselves on is a very interactive and inclusive process, especially in the early planning phases. We just feel like it's a lot easier to work together and build consensus. Certainly we need executive support in moving forward plans, but when we have consensus, we have a lot more opportunity for project success overall. I mentioned before we're headquartered in Austin. We have done scads of projects literally up and down the Austin, san antonio corridor. Here's just a representative list of the view as well as projects in downtown Austin. And we have extensive experience in city and county government, municipal facilities, planning and program management projects as well. Just briefly, the scope that we were asked to address started out with reviewing some of the existing data that the county had been gathering with relation to the site surveys. Geotechnical soils reports for the two different sites. Phase one environmental analysis of the sites. Looking at view corridor locations as it impacts both of the properties, an historic analysis of the properties that are located on the two sites in question, physically the connection in term of ability to physically connect either above or below grade to the existing courthouse, any restrictions or state restrictions or other associated with being adjacent to the governor's mansion in particular on the usb side mely to the south of us here today. And as well as looking at parking concepts and what demolition might be -- any construction costs might be on the site as well as overall schedules and then kind of help with identifying what the next steps would be from there. For the purposes of our preliminary discussions today, these are the topics that we would like to cover. Some of the findings from our initial meeting we actually met with representatives from the governor's office as well as the state's historic preservation office. We've done historic records review. And chris is going to talk with you a little bit about some of the physical site analysis of the properties. We'd like to say that we probably maybe have taken things further just in when we're doing site analysis we always have to think about beginning with the end in mind. So we're always thinking about the issue of implementation and how you can physically do something beyond just the matter of whether a site is clean and buildable or not. Just to go over this very quickly, our -- we did actually -- sort of I guess this goes to some of our effort of going and trying to be inclusive in the process. We actually went and met with representatives from the governor's office, the state historic preservation office and a representative from the security detail that handles the capitol complex to talk very specifically about, and in particular the usb site which is immediately to the south of our building here and directly to the west adjacent to the governor's mansion across the street.
>> [one moment, please, for change in captioners]
>> where he did ask them a couple of different questions, kind of pointedly, in particular about the usb side, what would you like to see there? They said well if we could get in ballards along the street for security that would be a great start. What other kinds of things. We talked about the view corridor and grandfather clauses, they said the site would could be a large parking lot. I thought they were going to fall out of their chairs, that is quite a security concern. Certainly a concern for folks out in the parking lot. We also talked about the notion of what if it was just a park, everybody said well, wow, a park, you know, that sounds really nice. And we said it could be open to the public. You know, we could have two city parks, county and city park adjacent to each other. We could have eeyore's party down there. All of a sudden they said maybe the park is really not the best idea for right next to our site. What if you had the opportunity to be involved in developing a wall. They said what do you mean a wall? A wall like a facade to a building, exterior building wall. They said that's kind of an interesting idea. We said if you had the opportunity to be involved in confining and designing from a security and technical perspective the wall that faced in from a securities perspective into the governor's mansion would that be something that would be of interest to you. They resoundingly said absolutely so. That was some of our, we don't done a lot of other investigations with agencies in that regard. But we thought that was probably one of the first starting points, because it's the ultimate not in my back yard project, there there was legislative initiative, for the governor's desk. The second thing that we did, that we are going to talk about today was our historic resource review. In particular associated with these two site locations. So -- so just to kind of orient you here, this site a is what we are referring to. As the usb site. And so wear in the building just north of that. Here's the existing courts complex and here is what we will refer to as the san antonio garage silent which is just south of the courts. The general site location, if you can kind of think about the broader context and orientation of the plan, it's almost fundamentally kind of built around the capitol. Which is a very kind of philadelphia town center model. A lot of cities overtime have sort of built their -- their -- their downtown planning principles around this notion. This kind of sits road at the crossroads for one of the four primary parks if you imagine wooldridge park in this location, the other four primary parks that flank the capital to the south. It sits right between the central business district, west Austin residential district and obviously the -- right at the edge of the capitol complex. Historic context and sensitivity. For the historic analysis, there's a little bit of a blowup of the two locations. So we are right here. And this is the -- can you see the -- the mouse on this screen over there? Okay. And here's the usb site, the san antonio garage. The first one that we looked at, what became an issue as we had our refresh my recollection analysts kind of look at this, we had some concerns about this issue right along nueces in here. What we found was the -- the site structures at 901, 903 and 905 nueces were built around 1927. These structures together with the bacon house is actually the oldest structure on the site, immediately to the north and just below the garage, you can see the garage and the background, along with the rest of the historic, most of the intact area of nueces while it's not currently has the potential to -- to be an area contributing to an historic district. It has the size, character, historic records. One of the issues associated with those three buildings there, they are actually a designation of confident craftsman style home, these were three intact facilities that sort of designate that. There's some historic context that we would probably advise that -- advise the courts to be sensitive in that regard. Then there's one other side, one other building that's a 1935 era building that's located on the site just below the garage, probably -- probably with -- probably need to consider some issues of relocation of the facility. But -- but it is probably not in the same environment of his -- of contributing to any kind of an historic neighborhood simply because most of its historic context is surrounded on the garage one side, other buildings on the other side. On the usb site, I think the single biggest issue that was raised to our attention was the issue of the view kept corridors from an historic perspective. Actually the preservation Texas, a non-profit organization that -- that fundamentally focuses on the historic resources of Texas in their February newsletter just announced that Texas capitol view corridors as the number one most endangered resource on their historic resource list. And so we think that's an issue of -- of great concern and sensitivity as we consider anything on this -- on this usb site and proper. The other one that -- that you might find mildly amusing, but as you look at historic context, the way the -- the preservation community looks and the national register sort of looks at historic properties, it goes back to a 50 year window. We are actually starting to consider post world war ii era buildings now. The actual usb building immediately across the street starts to fall into the character that might want to begin to have some kind of -- I知 sorry, some kind of consideration at least with at least maybe in terms of documenting what's there, if it were to be removed. With that I知 going to let chris talk a little bit about some of our preliminary analysis of the site and the massing of these properties.
>> thanks, steve. What you see here are three different views of the san antonio site. These are all generated by computer model. That have been done with gis information, so it's -- so we can tell that it's the most accurate relative to the view corridors, how to plot those using a computer. And one of the upper left image is this san antonio site, excuse me, with just the garage. If the garage was to be raised and rebuilt upon, how much could we build on that space. And it looks like you can -- based on existing zoning and the height restrictions, in that area, you could potentially build up to 185,000 square feet. Of building. In the lower left-hand corner you can -- you can see one of the view corridors, I think that's the Barton Creek corridor that comes down here in the blue. A portion of it is -- is kind of slicing off a piece of this building, although the zoning allows for -- for a corner of it to continue up a little bit higher. In this case so you can see the garage, it has gone back to this gray box here. So we -- we went through each of the scenarios of what could be built on each of these two sites that -- this is the site of one of the existing houses that's currently there on property that is not owned by the county. And then the third one would be well, what if we got the house and that one property and were able to develop both the garage site and that house site and how much could you build on that. Certainly based on the existing view corridor, you could get a significant amount of -- of square footage. But we are talking at nine to 10 story building. Fairly tall up against that residential edge. But it can technically be done.
>> 110 -- nine or 10 stories?
>> uh-huh.
>> I believe it goes up, the smu zone, the dmu zone, the mixed use zone is up to 120 feet. I may actually end up being about 8 stories, depending on what the floor to floor heights end up being. Of course there was a significant grade change from --, from san antonio down to nueces, it drops 120 feet. There's a big retaining wall there. There could be functions tucked can underneath that as well. It could be talking 8 stories above grade, a couple below.
>>
>> [indiscernible]
>> well, that's the question. How much parking are you going to need to -- if you tear down the garage, you are going to have to replace that plus what you are going to need for the new facility. Where does all that go.
>> but 185,000 square feet, if it were a tall building or all parking, that's probably the maximum square footage that you could get.
>> right.
>> so yes -- accommodate the parking somewhere else.
>> tough to do on this particular site. The other site south of us here, has a multiple of view corridors that are just above it and what this shows is the site assuming all view corridors remain. The lowest one is the one --
>> sorry?
>> the yellow -- well, here's wooldridge park, kind of the -- the open space, here's the existing courthouse facility here. This is the building that we are in today. This is the new, the site. The yellow is a wooldridge park view corridor. What you can see is a small sliver of building because at this slower corner, at guadalupe, lower corner, it is only about 12-foot above the ground. So you can only get one story of building above that and then the blue one is the Barton Creek that jumps up to about 75 feet or so, then on this corner you get a little bit of a -- of a relief that goes up to then what stops based on the current zoning. So -- so in this particular case, above ground you would get about 175,000. If you want to get any more than that, it will have to be below grade.
>> how much could you get total below grade --
>> I知 looking at ed how far below grade we could go based on the borings.
>> were we thinking two levels?
>>
>> [inaudible - no mic]
>> then we could get as many as two floors, but we would have to have a significant light well to take light down into those levels because it would be fairly untenable to have two stories, two block size stories underground with that -- without a significant light well.
>> what kind of square footage do you gain by adding those two stories as office space? As person space rather than car space?
>> I think the site, if you maximize the site, in other words what you see is that base block, the entire block if you build out to the property line, about 70,000 square feet per level.
>> potentially get another 140,000 square feet. Of course we would shave off some for the light well. Conservatively speaking 120,000.
>> probably, might be less than that: in that neighborhood.
>> that wouldn't include any -- any property setbacks or security setbacks or any -- that's gross square footage, it's not any net assignables, you would have to take out any circulation, so on, so forth.
>> the 175,000 square feet above grade, also doesn't take into consideration setbacks or -- or utility mechanical either, does it?
>> right. It's gross. It's gross square footage.
>> yeah.
>> comparing apples to apples, you have gross 175,000 square above grade, the potential of another say conservatively speaking 100,000 below grade?
>> yes.
>> of course at the time we were thinking that could be parking under or -- or obviously parking lot will be dealt with at some point.
>> in each of these two scenarios, there's of course a parking issue. As we look at the san antonio garage site, if we looked at that property and -- in and of itself as being a courts facility, if we use that 185,000 square feet just for -- for facilities, we are going to need to do a makeup requirement for -- for the existing parking garage, which would be raised, plus -- plus the new -- the new square footage parking that would be required for a building of that size. The -- the likely location for that would probably be the usb site. So you would end up with, you know, somewhere over here a new building that would go up, that would -- that would, you know, house the court's facility and then this property would be raised to put in below grade parking. That comes up no -- no higher than, you know, 10 or 15 feet above -- above grade. So there's -- there is some limitation. Now the court -- the county also owns the property that's right in this location here as well. So -- so anyway this is kind of the point that -- that we got to where we said well if -- if we have some limitations on our site, we have got some historic building constraints on one of the blocks. So we don't actually get a full city block that we can work with from a contiguous perspective and -- in developing a -- an appropriately scaled building for the neighborhood and the context and with -- also within the context of the adjacentsy of the capitol complex. How do we think about a facility that could, you know, what does that facility kind of want to be. So -- so it started pushing us to do a little further analysis of the usb site proper. In particular because this was the one with the largest constrictions on it or restrictions related to the view corridor. So we started thinking about the notion of -- of what is the view corridor really look like today? And spent a little more time analyzing that.
>> there's a couple of other quick diagrams that we were able to pull off the Austin city website, which is really I find interesting that this would ridge park you can see in green, does extend acrossed guadalupe by probably 50 or 60 feet, so it does -- it starts to affect the corner of our site, which I will come back to in a minute in another slide, but thinking about how we could use that as an opportunity and not something that -- that can take away from the site itself. Once again, this is a -- a view of the two sites. A and b. B being the san antonio and the -- the various view corridors, also the capitol dominance corridor that doesn't affect us, it's a funnel that goes from high to low towards the capitol. At this curving line point is really is kind of out of play for us, fairly high. I知 not going to walk through all of these photos that we took, only a couple of them. This upper view yellow cuts diagonally across to slide 10, looking back to the capitol. This time of year, walking around the park you can see actually the capitol from most of the park. Not having any shots that are exactly the same to look at from the summer we said well okay what would be the tree foliage canopy in the summertime. Of course that starts to obscure some of those views to the capitol. We did also take a shot with the computer model and the ground level, you can see if I back up one, here's a pavilion, doesn't line up exactly. Here it is here in the park. Of course the park drops down as the grade comes down from the capitol. These two floating planes are the upper planes of the view corridors that are going significantly overhead. Green is the one that comes into would ridge park in front of us. You can see how it starts to slice through. This gray box is existing building on the corner there.
>> the whole building, yeah. The whole building.
>> constable 5.
>> so that then comes in about 11 feet above that. And what this -- what this does show is if we completely were to abandon the wooldridge park view corridor, you built up to those next two view corridors, what size and scale that building might be. We just thought that was kind of interesting contribution of the box. Walking -- ex-trusion of the box. You can also see the capitol here. Draw in the foliage, summer you may not be able to see it quite as clearly. But there's those two floating view corridors. It's interesting because -- because a lot -- where I知 currently standing above -- above 9th street, in front of the Austin history museum, the sidewalk is significant higher than the street. The street will drop away from you, on the far corner you actually have to come up about seven or eight feet of steps. Your eye level is probably a good 12 or 13 feet both of street and the park. So the question is kind of is the view corridor from that sidewalk or from the street. It's not very clear in the dimensions to know exactly where it's from. So it's -- it's a very complicated thing to try to figure out these view corridors, as they warp with the plane of the street, also trying to level itself out once it gets to the base of the capitol. So it's this warping plane as it comes through the site. Which actually I have in the computer model to help us really kind of figure out what the piece of cheese is that we are left with underneath those view corridors as far as building footprint and vietnam is concerned. Volume is concerned. As we start to look at the overall site, this is an aerial view, you can see the capitol here. Thinking about what are the front door and back doors of the buildings that -- that we are in that are adjacent to us. Here's the courthouse here, the original front door faced the park. The history museum faced the park. The -- the governor's mansion faces to the east and the capitol both north and south. We thought well wouldn't it be interesting if there was a way that we could rethink about the corridor in a way to capture that view, from the park to the capitol, what's shown in the dash line here is kind of that wall that protected wall that -- that is the back side of the -- of the governor's mansion there. You start to come up to the corner, it is starting to -- the view is lost somewhat because you are significantly below it to the base of the capitol. But once you get up to the corner, you still really can't see much of it. It's there a way that buildings could act as portals. There's -- there's beautiful buildings all over the cub. This is rice university -- all over the country. This is rice university. Actually a residence hall up at the university of maryland that is framed within the very strong intent on the -- on the little chapel on the campus. Of course in -- in oxford england they are done all over the place, queens college. Et cetera. Here's princeton as it focuses on the library itself. So one of the interesting examples, thinking about wooldridge park, connecting the capitol, the notion of the gallery I can't in milan that connects the main theater square in the upper corner here that has a statue of da vinci. The yellow is a gallery that connects the main piazza, the duomo is here. Here's the main entrance to that galleria. It looks something like this. One of the most famous I think connectors of all time. It used to be an old street. They covered it, made it the very public of course now there's all retail at the lower level, office space above et cetera. So there's this kind of beautiful front door and through public space connecting to public spaces back and fort to each other. We thought wouldn't it be interesting if we have the view corridors and is there a way that we could create a site to enhance that view? To make it actually better than what it is today by -- by subdividing our space up and making it more of a public promenade from -- from the wooldridge park to the capitol. Of course this is once again thinking about how that space might move through there, if there's a way to create and going back to that earler diagram that I mentioned, carves a way into the corner this actually could be part of the park system as that diagram was drawn in the city of Austin's drawings, whether or not you could connect two greens across from each other and make that a public promenade. Once again there's this image once you come up to the corner what it is today. Of course with the beauty of photo shop, one can take photographs, sketch at will, wouldn't that be interesting if we could make this a public connective space and also relationship of here this notion of what the galleria was. Here's also another version of that, may not necessarily be connected but physically there's a notion of a -- of a public piazza, if you will, that then allows one to move through it on to the capitol and/or to have a view to it. This is a project up in washington d.c. That's quite a beautiful project that works similar to that.
>> in terms of the path forward, we have presented this to the steering committee to judge dietz and the steering committee last week, we said we think that we are at a point here where we have some preliminary information that -- that they felt might be appropriate to share with you. There's sort of a point of go or no go. Look at preferred location for primary building, do you actually start looking at it more as one project where -- maybe utilize both pieces of the property, do you maximize square footage, do you work within the current context. How do you work within the context also of the community participation plan and outreach and other kinds of issues. I believe that -- that's what we had to present if you have any questions.
>> I actually had a question for roger just to refresh our memory. What his thumbnail was for the additional costs of building below grade.
>> we are working on the --
>> [indiscernible] take the whole 276 by 276, going down about like 60 to 80 feet, about four or five stories down, this is only the excavation, the retaining wall is going to add about $12 million to the cost of rebuilding a project above ground. So 12 million to excavate 60 to 80 feet below grade. 60 to 80 feet conservatively speaking, if you are figuring 10-foot floor to floor, even 12-foot floor to floor, that's five floors underground, right?
>> the normal what we have for -- for floor to floor is -- is the lobby to the first floor is about 19 feet, but it's floor to floor it's 16 feet.
>> 16. So four -- three or four underground.
>> that's correct.
>> okay. 12 million. Besides, I知 sorry, just there's also some saving from energy if you go underground than if you go up ground. Positive if you go underground. It goes about like -- first about 20%, now really up to about 40% if you being underground.
>> 40% energy savings would offset the 12 million or is that considered in the 12 million.
>> no, we have about 385,000 a year to why you have set a for building -- offset for building. Only $285,000 per year savings.
>>
>> [indiscernible]
>> lighting would cost more.
>> that's correct. But would not be offset balance hike break evening, we still have savings because it's going underground.
>> if there were a bomb line to the report -- a bottom line to the report, it would be that to comply with the various quarters that come into play possible, but we are very limited as to what height we can achieve.
>> yes, sir.
>> and we could go a floor or two underground for either parking or -- or space, but -- but however you use that, we still -- we still have additional parking that we have to account for and we are limited as to how much 7 floor space we end -- court space we end up with no matter which one. But we could build a building in such a way that we could accommodate, we could enhance the capitol view, but do we know what that will cost?
>> to build a new facility?
>> one that complements the capitol view.
>> two buildings join in such a way that you enhance almost like looking at the capitol through a special lens. Will our historical society people agree with that?
>> we love it.
>> you think that they will love it.
>> I think that's part of the process that you would need to take a look at. If you think about it as a view corridor enhancement project,, you know, this is a view that you are looking at right now that doesn't exist today. If the county does nothing, it won't ever exist as long as that existing facility sits in its current location. You know that's -- there are, you know, between the usb building and I知 sorry Commissioner eckhardt it was --
>> constable 5.
>> constable 5 facility, there -- there are limitations around the -- around the existing wooldridge park view corridor. Certainly restricted more in the summertime when there's leaves on the trees. Obviously if go out right now and walk around, you can see those. If we start -- we tried to kind of take the blinders off, sort of look at this from a lot of different angles. If you remember one of the earlier diagrams on the north-south streets, there is -- you think about our discussions with the governor's mansion earlier, their security concerns on the -- on the eastern most side of this site, on the western most side of this site on guadalupe it's actually viewed as one of the transportation corridors for -- for the city of Austin, which is also looking at enhancing the ground level retail activities along that area. So -- you know, if you start thinking about a modification, which is what this would require is a modification to the existing legislation of the view corridor, it would provide you the opportunity, you know, whether it's some of the facilities space along the edges for the county to engage ground level retail, it actually also provides just back over here to the south of the site, down across 10th street, there's the current parking lot site that you own right there. The potential for you to -- to maybe have a -- accommodate some additional parking on that location as well. Anded potentially some ground level retail. Again infusing a new level of energy and excitement to this wonderful old historic Austin park. If you kind of go back and think about wooldridge park within that -- the context of that philadelphia plan, the original Austin plan that laid out the capitol. The idea of actually getting people on to the park, out into plazas, out into retail space in the downtown area is very consistent with the urban objectives of the city.
>> do we have the luxury of worrying about all of that if we are trying to generate courtroom space.
>> it's going to be difficult to build the kind of facility on this site to -- on the southern most end of the property without some kind of modification. It's going to be -- will be severely limited, yes.
>> I知 sorry I always end up doing this drawing. But this line that you see here is about where -- where the view corridor comes through today. This is essentially what you would be looking at 10 or 11 feet above existing grade. Even to get the first floor in that level, you would have to go four feet down to get into that initial level, if we assume the view corridor was to stay exactly as it is for folks.
>> so the conclusion there is that realistically unless we get some -- some view corridor waiver, we are looking at very limited courtroom buildout space.
>> the majority of it would have to be underground.
>> the majority of it or 100,000 square feet of it? Because I believe that the -- the numbers in the report were 175,000 square feet above grade?
>>
>> [indiscernible]
>> yes. That goes up to the -- this this tower piece over here. The difficulty with this part of the plan is that it's a big triangle. It makes it difficult to lay out the big rectangular shaped courtrooms. In a shape like that. I知 sure it can be done.
>> I think it goes back to perhaps my line of questioning, looking at the stats and the numbers that we are having these days. Perhaps that's where the planning
>> [indiscernible] jury trial courtroom access and then since -- since our numbers of jury trials have gone down significantly over the last 10 to 15 years.
>> further questions? Was that a question?
>> let me ask this question then. One or two more, I will be done.
>> so if we look south of what you have, if we can build that then we look south is that the governor's mansion in the background there?
>> yes, sir.
>> to find that. Okay. Then we build south of there how high can we go. Did you look at that? Now there's a law office there, there are some bank stuff, but the county owns part of that parking lot, also.
>> right. Is that a one or two story --
>> I think that's -- it would be based on existing zoning which I think is central --
>> the corridor comes through there, too.
>> the corridor does come through that site as well.
>> actually a modification to that view corridor to, you know, start framing the view, would actually provide potentially the opportunity to free up that entire block to the south for -- for -- for more responsible development. Right now even south of the property, the parking lot that the county owns, there's actually one story drive through bank buildings on that site because -- in part because of that physical limitation.
>> sorry, I was trying to go back. So you can see here that the wooldridge park goes right through -- through that line there. So this is that block.
>> one story as it is.
>> it would fall in that same one story. The one story as well.
>> I will save my comments. I don't know if you can quickly get back to the -- you were annotating the precinct 5 constables office in red.
>> oh, the one that he was drawing on?
>> yes.
>> right. Yes. The thing to realize about, that at the light signal, I知 sorry, that's at the corner there, the limitation is approximately 10 feet. And take line as it runs east rises up to 14 feet. That area that's underneath the red line is not view corridor protected. In other words, a -- you could build a wall from 10 feet to 14 feet and any six foot individual, five foot individual, Commissioner Gomez and i, as we walk down that sidewalk, we do not have a protected view. I mean it's -- the plane of the view corridor protects only that which is above it. Part of the reason that we were excited about this notion is taking that which is not protected and developing a brand new view that is in the same -- the same is true as this goes back to wooldridge park, I may be wrong, but I believe that if you are standing in the bottom of wooldridge park, you are underneath the protected view corridor. What you would provide with a notion similar for however is that you have the opportunity to providing a view corridor that is -- that doesn't exist but would enhance that -- that which is supposed to protect which was wooldridge park. If you visit in that view corridor, when you go down to the banks, you cannot see the capitol because the banks block and everything else.
>> right.
>> is it possible -- you know, is that -- I知 sorry, could you go back to what we -- what we called milano. It's three back. There. All right. Okay, I will get there. There.
>> if you did go subterranean, two, three stories, it would allow at least I think that you would -- you would certainly comply with the two other view corridors that intersect. And we -- we need to statute it in more detail, but I believe that you will derive pretty close to your 250,000 usable, if you went two to three stories underground. And you could provide the lighting, light tunnels, underground and still have that which I know is dear to your heart, but a building of significance in terms of the Texas courthouse.
>> the idea of connecting the heman sweatt to the subterranean tunnel. So no matter if it's for office space or car space, we are still discussing the possibility of -- the probability of excavation one way or the other or connecting the two courthouses for security purposes.
>> that was the possibility that would be discussed during the design phase of the project. But the idea has always been to maintain heman marion sweatt for all of the other services connected to the civil courts, so we would maintain and renovate and remodel the heman -- the historical had heman marion sweatt courthouse and then build the new courthouse to carry the activities that are now needed.
>> I really think that we ought to bite the bullet and go under. I really do. We have kind of danced around that excavation issue for quite a number of years. And but I think that it's -- we need to bite the bullet and do it.
>>
>> [indiscernible]
>> if we go subterranean, do we also need to reframe the capitol view corridor.
>> only if -- to be clear this also would require an exemption to the wooldridge square view corridor, whereas the other drawing just in photo shop, we did have a much more detailed drawing previously I believe that you all presented Thursday of that other scenario would not require us to ask for an exemption to the wooldridge scare view corridor. This is --
>> this is the other drawing. This is a view as if -- if the wooldridge parks stayed as is and you created a -- an outdoor plaza, but it's -- then elevated.
>> in truth the other -- the piazza rendering also has two essentially triangular buildings with a corridor through the middle. We still have the space utilization issue that we have in this rendering of a tri angular side to the building.
>> judge?
>> I just have one other question. That was when we had the space plan, that we had been working on for quite a number of years, I think that you mentioned the plan that we adopted, we also talked about this building, that we needed to vacate it. Now, is this building in any capitol view corridor?
>> not that I know of because it's blocked by the westgate.
>> but the zone -- does it come under the zoning of height?
>> I think this building is probably close to 50 years, I知 sure it's going to have some sort of historical architectural importance.
>> I doubt it
>> [laughter]
>> developing now, noits -- a small portion of it is clipped.
>> I believe that's the afl-cio.
>> one is fairly high.
>> I guess if we have vacated this building, that it would be available.
>> do we need to run the idea of framing the view corridor by the heritage society, historical society, see how they respond to that? If we are going underground, that's fine with me, we didn't do that back in my own time, back in tyler, but we certainly did it at the state capitol, it was done before I realized it. When I went over to look at it I was kind of amazed that it looked so nice. I would be interested how far down do you go over there? Three stories? Seems to me that we could find out what it costs them and it costs quite a bit, they did run it into construction glitches. Right? Before they completed it.
>> judge, they have the advantage. They were able to -- dig up I think limestone? And they sold it to pay off for the -- for the construction. I don't know -- I don't think we have limestone, do we?
>>
>> [one moment please for change in captioners]
>> as far as I know they haven't had any use issues.
>> well, the issues with the excavation are that we have to excavate between 12 and 18 feet of clay out of it anyway. So that's kind of free space because we have to take the clay out because we don't want it under our building to begin with. And then as you take the limestone out, the issues are that the deeper you go the more it cost per cubic foot of stone to get it out because you basically have to ramp out of the hole and carry that out in big trucks. It doesn't really make all you have to lift it out, which is very expensive, lift it out with cranes. As you get deeper into the stone the cost to excavate it gets higher. What people normally use as a rule of thumb is after you get down to about 30 feet, 35 feet beyond that point, it gets pretty expensive to take it out. You're also shoring the walls and the shoring of the walls basically to hold back the dirt on the four sides that you're excavating, that gets more expensive as you go down.
>> if you quantify the particular costs that you're mention, the farther you go down, the more the cost, it would gob to know overrule what that option would actually cost.
>> I think we can quantify some of those.
>> because we have various options that we are being entertained by, and it would be good to maybe put some cost figure to each one of these.
>> junk, my question was earlier and I just wanted to hear how you want to handle it. And that is, it is a public hearing especially on this item, and I知 just trying to figure out how you want to do that portion of this, this agenda item as far as when do you think that -- how are you going to do that?
>> I think we ought to figure out what direction we're going to head and after that determine how to go about obtaining public input. My own view is that I don't know why -- if you ask the public to authorize the spending of a great deal of public money to go down, I don't know why you would spend a whole lot of money to frame the view corridor. It would seem to me that you would figure out a way to use what you can above ground and then go underground for the rest and state the cost and try to justify it. That may mean going a little farther south than we would like to.
>> why take on both issues if you can take on one and get it done? The other thing is the two and three people that I致e heard from the historical societies have sort of drawn the line in the sand. And I don't know that framing the capitol or doing anything else to enhance the view will be found credible by them. My guess is they may well think that we're trying to get their support by misleading them. But going underground -- what I知 hearing, there's not a whole lot of options near here besides going underground and we can always go out. Then the question is how does the public view that? I don't see us doing any of this really without some sort of election anyway. The amount of money you have to spend to build this project requires a voter referendum. But I don't know that you want to go to the heritage and historical people and discuss a whole lot of options unless you seem to be -- unless you have a preferred option that requires their approval. In my view. But if we want to get the feedback, if you cost so much to frame the capitol, it may cost as much as a floor underground.
>> judge, may I be presuch shus?
>> yes, you may.
>> it seems to me that what you have is have you a continuum. The only reason to go underground is to try to mitigate the effects on the capitol' view corridor as it exists today. And so on this continuum you have those who are very concerned, extremely concerned about the capitol view corridor, and at the other end of the continuum you have those that are not concerned with the capitol view corridor at all. And it seems to me that it is -- because if the majority of the population or a significant or preponderance of the population was not concerned at all, then there's little if any necessity to go underground other than to do the foundation work and that type of -- and that type of thing. So it seems to me that --
>> what about lawsuit that protects the view corridor?
>> well, it requires a mod -- it requires a modification --
>> of the law.
>> -- of the law.
>> that's where I see the biggest problem.
>> and the problem again is compounded. Even though I agree with you, judge, that it's a reasonable and tailored request for an exemption for a public building of significance, and in a vacuum that sounds like a pebly reasonable thing to ask for, but when you consider the full circumstances with -- when you look at the fact that thoap in our community are looking to reconsider other view corridors as well, well, then the slippery slope argument that the heritage societies are making has a lot more resonance and I think an appeal broader than we might yet know.
>> what takes a majority of the residents to put it out of the question is that there is a law that protects the view corridor. And in order for us to circumvent it, we've got to go ahead and get the legislation modified, get the law modified. And based on what I致e heard and what we have to do to achieve that, that's a great obstacle at this point. The other thing, judge, is that the last two sessions we've kind of talked about this and toward the end kind of backed off, and the reason we backed off is that it's an uphill battle. And to be honest, it looks like a more fierce battle this year than I think I appreciated during the two previous sessions. Now, it's toes have that fight -- it's easy to have that fight and either you win it before the legislature leaves town or you have lost it again and got to wait until they come back. So I was trying to figure out a way myself to get this project done without them.
>> I知 going to say something probably in politics. It's a balancing consideration. So far we've had two people appear before this court and say don't seek this modification. We have not had a voice other than me for the hundreds of thousands who have visited our courthouse over these 76 years to the 30,000 or more jurors we bull in each year, to the 30,000 visitors we have each month. And I wish at some time that we gave as much weight and moment to the legitimate justice needs of our population as we do to the nay sayers. There's never been a building in the Texas counties that did not have some nay sayers. And if we listen to them all that time, we would have never done anything. But what we're balancing, ladies and gentlemen of the court, is literally hundreds and thousands of people who are going to come to our justice system and this -- and you're presenting them with an inadequate, unsuitable, 76-year-old being. And I hope that weighs on your mine as much as these considerations to view corridors that were crafted in 1983 by whom we don't know that do not protect people who stand on the sidewalk and look at the capitol. Thank you. It would be good to hear from the persons that use the courthouse and have a vital interest in the courthouse because it is for the public good. And of course you know I state staited earlier that those folks that don't have to be downtown in my opinion we need to move from downtown and get out of here and decentralize this area the way it should be, but of course maintain those things that need to be downtown such as the courthouse need to stay down here. Again, I pose the question about a public hearing. Is a public hearing is from those folks that would love to be hur water. That's where I was coming from as far as the public hearing. But if there are folks in the community who say, listen, we would like to have a courthouse downtown, the most reasonable amount of money that can be spent on that, they're constituents also. And of course I think we have to kind of listen to what folk are really telling us. And right now I don't think I had any e-mail -- I値l check with staff when I get back upstairs. I haven't had any e-mail from anyone in the community to suggest that they would love to have this courthouse at this site. And as far as what has been expressed here today. But the bottom line is there is a need for it and I realize that, but it would good to hear from the public also. I hope you understand what I知 saying. I知 not trying to defuse anything that's been said here today, but I don't want to make sure that what we're doing is something that the folks in this community want. And I see the need. I see the need to deal with this situation.
>> I think we also see the need to renovate the heman marion sweatt courthouse as well. I hear you that it's substandard at this point. We're also not utilizing floors six and seven at all. And so this is also part of -- has to be part of the consideration as well.
>> one is that have you to have at least four of the five of us to pursue legislation. I don't know that I have counted four. Two is that when you go to the Travis County legislative delegation, they will ask, are there other options? And really there are two or others. And then they will ask where does the commission were court stand? And when you tell them what that vote was, if it's 4-1, not 5-0, I think it gives them cause for concern. And if you tell them, if we have a public hearing, those who oppose waiver of the view corridor are a lot more likely to come down than those who support it. Those who believe in a new and better justice system will rely on us doing the right thing probably. And you get a bill filed over there in the Travis County legislation, let's say they're that's yas tickly supportive of it. Those who belong to the Texas heritage society will contact their legislative members and then you have penal in other parts of the state who will care a lot more about the view corridor than I think the Travis County justice system. So the reality of the deal is if we go to step one, do you have five members on the Travis County Commissioners court enthusiastically supporting wear of the view corridor? I don't count five. I do count one right here. That doesn't mean that I知 right, but it does mean this court is kind of divided on that. And now I haven't taken a vote, but I致e certainly listened to what other people have had to say. And that's the reality of being here. The other thing is that when we have chatted with the members of the Travis County legislative delegation historically, that's what they've asked us basically, where does the court stand, are there other option snz so this will be a struggle. So in my view if we can get it done without the legislation, we're a whole lot better off. But now, that fight is a short one because it takes place during the session. So if our vote is the five of us to go ahead and get a call on it, then we have our public hearing, we go to the legislative delegation, we pursue it just like we do other legislation. But I知 just no convinced that we'll get the necessary votes at every step of the way as we need to to prevail. So that's the reality that I知 sort of reading.
>> judge, and I hear what you're saying. That's why I asked for those didn't options, judge, to put some money -- quantify and put some money to each one of them. We looked at those options that come back. I think we need to move forward one way or the other on this. So I would like to ask staff when could we have that information back to look at the various options and also the amount of quantified dollars that would be per option. When could we get something back on this?
>> what we have in study is only -- is two sites as was directed by the court to look at san antonio and to look at the usb site. The reason that we're bringing this to you now is because we're -- we appreciate that the window for fo legislation is very short, and if you were going to move forward it would be now. On this session. There is another session in two years that we could certainly --
>> we need to do something this year.
>> we can look at that. But if it is this year, I don't know Commissioner Davis, if there's enough time for a public hearing given again that short legislative window to have a public hearing to get input from other community activists because it's not just historical commission and that area, but it is also the business community, the central business district.
>> we were supposed to post a public hearing for two weeks. Whoever comes will come. Whoever doesn't want to come don't come.
>> I think the window of opportunity for legislation is closed by then.
>> the legislation is a bigger time issue than the public hearing. You could vote to initiate legislation because you could always vote to terminate it. And really -- the thing is why do we have a public hearing if the majority of the court -- if four members of the court don't topt pursue that -- don't want to pursue that option?
>> wented to bring you the information so you could consider it in your deliberations.
>> may I respectfully ask the court and the Commissioners to do this? Working backwards I think that our next window to stay fiscally conservative is approximately 2009 to go to the voters on another bond issue. I may have it wrong by a year, but I think --
>> close. Close enough.
>> close enough. If this site is not going to work, then we need to be aggressively moving on another alternative. Respectfully Commissioner Davis, I have brought three former presidents and three presidents of the Austin bar indicating that they were behind the study. I致e brought them a couple of time. I will have no trouble rallying members of the business community and the lawyers. But the fact of the matter, judge, is if there is not the will to take on this fight, then actually, respectfully I知 saying because of the need, we need to be aggressively exploring and moving on our other alternatives.
>> ic not agree more.
>> and --
>> if I致e got that, I need to be quiet.
>> as to the view corridor, I don't think you have an enthusiastic Commissioners court to get it waived.
>> but that won't be building a building across the street.
>> absolutely. That does mean one option realistically should come off the plate. And I致e been waiting on one member of the court to disagree with me and nobody has so far. So there are other options and I think -- there are other options. Dwloos I moved and said going underground, you know, three weeks ago I thought was most out land hishish deal in the world, but when you look at other options and the fact that the state did it, and when I recall the facility, I do recall the price tag being large, but I don't recall what it was. But roger, we should maybe talk to the state facilities people, all that's a matter of public record, see what the cost was. And we would not think of anything that grand, but we would think of a significant civil courts building. We can look at the other options I think and get a good civil courts project way down the road so when it's time to go to voters we have something specific to talk to them about. The other thing is that going underground, if you haven't considered it, is a kind of far reaching idea, but if you have time to kind of think about it and maybe go over and look at the state capitol, it is a public building, take the elevator down, you would be kind of surprised. And I think we ought to give ourselves a greater opportunity for public education, otherwise I think that a lot of people will think that we've lost our minds when we think about going two, three floors underground. But my thing still is if I were going underground, I would much as much above ground and make it as nice as possible within the limits of the view corridor. That way we have our cake and eat it too.
>> judge, I知 not going to turn my back off this site for the usb building currently. And of course, I知 still looking for a way to do it. If underground is part of that, so be it. But the bottom line is eye still like to work with numbers and that's why I question those numbers so to let me see exactly where we are with that. I知 not going to -- I知 not turning my back on this. I just want to make sure that what I do as far as my decision is concern is based on what I think is the best thing to do. And to this point I think it's the best site that exists now. But of course that's just me speaking. There may be some change. Right now -- in fact, I was in the underground deal just here recently. To go to the state capitol, you go underground. You don't even think you're underground, but you are. And that's a far cry from the way things have been traditionally around here. So I can respectfully look at those things that folks are talking about, but I also have to respectfully look at a justice system and what we must to ensure that we get something adequate enough for the users of the justice system who need that location down here or downtown and also as had ties into the heman marion sweatt, old Travis County courthouse building. So those options are the things that I want to still consider and still look at. I don't want anybody to get any false signals from me because I don't throw out false signals. I tell it like it is the best way I can. I just want to let you know that. But I want to see some money figures as I requested earlier.
>> it's impossible for you all to bring us back any sort of figures in the next couple of weeks on this stuff that we would even remotely want to buy off on. The last thing we want to do is go out half cocked with here's a set of numbers that we think. We don't topt worry about the view corridor, we don't topt worry about the courthouse. Dwoan want to worry about anything because the citizens of this community will hand your hat to you. We're not doik that. I mean, you know, I agree with you judge dietz. At some point in time you've got to stand up and say this is the more prudent thing to do and my response would be to one of the ladies here that cost does mean something to me and I think that cost means something to a lot of people in this community. And if we don't have the votes here -- I think it takes a 5-0 because I don't think that we've got a delegation over there because they will be heavily contacted by owe and just like we know the public hearings. The public hearing will be #- 800 people down here not nting this thing except for -- not wanting this thing except for the several hundred judge that you can get down here as well. But yowch got to at -- you've got to at some point in time make your call on whether or not if unt a courthouse, and I think all of us want a courthouse, then you go about if you're going to go ask the public to say, this is the most prudent thing for us to do from a cost standpoint. And say that's why we're bringing it to you. I don't know. I mean, maybe we want to send a message today from the court whether or not we have enough votes to go forward with taking on the view corridor.
>> let me ask staff this question. I don't really want to put any numbers in my head. Do you feel that how much time you think you may need to come back -- in other words rltd I may not be talking about the full nine yards. What I知 trying to say is what would it take with those particular options? We had several options to work with and I haven't heard. I知 just trying to get a feeling for what you think would be appropriate to bring some money back here so we can look at it. I don't know.
>> Commissioner Daugherty is right, it will be very hard to come up with sound numbers. We could come up with percentages of premium that we thought it would cost to go down below the 20-foot level for the excavations, but to come up with good numbers we would have to have achimmatic design -- a schematic design that we will wrap the numbers around versus just saying 25-foot excavation versus a 35-foot or 40-foot excavation. That would be difficult to come up with good sound numbers in two weeks. That would be very divment.
>> okay. I just nted to hear because when I requested that I hadn't put a time line on it. I wanted to see what you guys could come back with, not two weeks, just bring something back.
>> but one thing we haven't really done was if the will of the court is that we not ask for exceptions to the view corridors, we haven't really developed what we can do on the site without any exceptions to the view corridors. What can we do, what kind of a building could the county build on that site within the existing parameters and develop that a little bit and see if there are any other constraints that would not be acceptable or that you would not want to live with? We would really have to develop the schematic design a little bit to see what the implications of putting that much of the building underground. But if you look at the needs of the spaces and whatever, they're fairly compatible with building underground. Courtrooms don't need windows. It witld be nice to have some natural light in them, but we don't need views out of them and they're traditionally enclosed spaces. A lot of the county functions aren't functions that need views out. I mean, they're internally focused functions, and there are some advantages to being below grade. There are a lot of security advantages to being below grade. And so it's not unrealistic to say that we might come up with a very interesting building totally or mostly underground with a is story or two above grade. But we really need to explore that in achimmatic -- in a schematic way, much its way that we've looked at the sites in the schematic way, we need to look at that block if in a schematic way and say what kind of spaces could we get? How much could we develop into a light well to get light into it and what would that do to a courts building?
>> what you have here in this diagram is just a very rough test fit that just says if you were to build up under the corridors, what could you get in there?
>> this was -- this just started Thursday morning, am I correct? That y'all really weren't tasked with even looking at your possibilities within the envelope until sometime around Thursday last week. So I want to cut y'all some slack. And I would like to make a motion that we charge our consultants with fleshing out our options of working within the corridor for the block across the street. And for further discussion two weeks from now, would that be appropriate?
>> I think we ought to see all the options in writing before we do anything?
>> judge, it is an option --
>> we can have it back on next week.
>> I think that the original charge that we've kind of -- that has been determined that the original charge to analyze site a and site b relative to one another, it's clear to us, I think, that if we developed -- if we develop either of the sites within the view corridors that for instance if we develop this site your honor ground that we will have to develop some parking on another site. So it's not either or sites, probably both sides are involved in the development no matter which site you choose to put the courts building on and which site you choose to put parking on or whatever. It's not an either or decision.
>> I respect that. And also just speaking for myself, I am most interested in fiing out how to maximally use our resources downtown irrespective of which portion is courthouse, which portion is clerk's offices, which portion is garage so that if we do choose the block across the street that what we do with the san antonio garage, your efforts are not wasted than what have you looked to in san antonio projects.
>> may i? I知 sorry, judge.
>> quick question. Are we able to take an underground building under a public road, under a city of Austin road?
>> that was a question that actually came up at our discussion on Friday afternoon. And I don't know the answer to that. Given the right-of-way that you guys have, I think there's probably some opportunity for negotiation. If you're thinking about the property that's to the south.
>> we own part of the property to the south of that.
>> that's correct.
>> I think that's something that could -- that it would certainly be worth exploring because if you took this diagram that you said here and just did kind of a quick seat of the pants calculation, we're talking about 70,000 square foot of floor below grade, which we were discussing on Friday. If you figure that was three floors, that's about 210,000 square feet, plus this diagram right here with some kind of a plaza indicates about 140,000 square feet above grade, which by my calculations is about 350,000 square feet. So if we backed out the number that has been discussed of 250,000 for a court's facility, we have about 1,000 square foot left over, which is highly unlikely that that's going to be enough square footage to accommodate all of the parking need for a new 250,000 square foot building. Which would require either looking at additional parking on the san antonio site, additional parking on the property south of usb property or a much more costly approach is additional property acquisition in the downtown business district. It's a difficult financial proposition today.
>> I guess I知 trying to understand where we're headed. Are we -- when would we reach an up or down on the a side?
>> my religious would be for -- my recommendation would be for a committee of us to meet between now and next Tuesday and come in next Tuesday and vote on the specific direction. Sacialt of today -- as a result of today's discussion, I have personally taken the view corridor off the list of possibilities. However, if somebody wants to vote that on next week, that's fine with me too. I壇 be happy to be surprised with a 5-0 vote in favor of it. But I don't see that right now. I do think that if we pursue underground and specific things need to take place, and what I知 hearing is court space underground and parking space elsewhere or another parking strategy. So we may as well put both of those on the table at one time. Now, judge, there is a -- we have an opportunity to acquire some other property, which is why I wouldn't wait a lot longer than next week. If we can use it, then we ought to acquire it. And I don't know that that window of opportunity remains open a whole lot longer. But hopefully it will be open at least another week for us. But it would impact an underground courthouse facility. So in answer to your question, in my view as to a specific direction next Tuesday.
>> we've had discussions because I have visited with y'all since I致e been presiding judge the last five years, many times. And we have talked about a building of significance given the heritage, since we're in history, the heritage of Texas courthouses. Are y'all satisfied that a subterrainian courthouse such as conceptually rendered here would be a building of significance that y'all are happy with?
>> the capitol annex is certainly a building of significance.
>> that's why I would mull over it one more week. And if after mulling over it one week we conclude that being underground is not that cool, if it's not a building of significance, then there's no reason to do a whole lot of additional work on it. Y'all kind of convinced me today that it's not as unreasonable as you thought three or four weeks ago when other options were out there. But after I mull over it another week, I may come in convinced that we can do better than this. But I do think that we quickly run out of options downtown. Then the question is where else do we go? And the logical place, the first logical place is south. The next one is out toward airport where we've got other other county facilities already. Disodz r. South makes a lot more sense than north when you think of a courthouse because we've got courts out south. And then the question is can we put the kinds of court facilities out there that would allow us to easily educate our residents where to go when they need those services as opposed to downtown? But as to whether or not above ground versus subterrainian is a big enough difference not to go underground, I知 open. I don't know that I would do a whole lot of additional work underground if we're not convinced that ourselves that we ought to go that way. Because it seems to me that we ought to feel out some residents and feel out the bar association and feel out others that do business down here and residents, historical folk.
>> would there be any problem with the consultants, since we have them, making their inclusive contacts with the historical people to discuss some of these options? Is that out of order?
>> well, I don't know that they would know after today's discussion exactly what they will inquire about, would y'all? If we're going to do that, I will rather let them know the next Tuesday also. Next Tuesday is not a magical dairks by the way, but it's the day that allows us to do an additional week of work in preparation for it and hopefully to kind of land on some direction that we have a strong majority of the court in support of, don't you think?
>> the other thing, it occurs to me, judge, that I think the city of Austin has picked a second location for -- for I guess an extension of their city hall. And I don't know why it wouldn't make sense for us to do the same thing since we're running out of space downtown to build things because of the corridor view. But I wonder why we couldn't -- I guess that was in the report too that we should have done to pick a secondary site for an extension of courthouse offices and business. So we're kind of -- we are kind of lagging behind to where we could be.
>> isn't the whole city focusing on dense? I watch the planning commission in the city and what we're getting is not a decentralization, but a centralization in the central business core moving up. And the reason that I thought we looked at at the land we already had, we we knew wouldn't be perfect, is it would be very expensive to condemn or buy other land to build. That it was certainly a possibility. The other thing, and I was just thinking the other day when the ladies from the historical society came in and that is there is an infrastructure of law offices around this building. It's a significant infrastructure development. And the reason they locate there is because that's where the central courthouse is, that's where the federal courthouse is going to be in the downtown area. So there really is -- it's not like a building that just goes someplace else. We already have kind of a legal structure for that building. And the other thing I thought, because I知 always talking about property taxes over at the legislature, is that when people from outside the state come in and say, look, the idea you want that you're talking about is the most creative idea you can think of with the land that we have. But it isn't perfect. And they're saying, you know, we don't like that idea. We want a perfect view to the corridor. But the truth of the matter is if we have to buy extra land downtown, it's Travis County taxpayers that have to buy that. The rest of the state doesn't really contribute it. It doesn't mean they're not important, but the people here are the ones that really have to pay for it. In the 18 years I致e been here, as I致e seen us construct things, I sit on the committee and my advice is don't settle for less than you need because the most expensive thing is to build a building three quarters of what we need and now we're downtown and looking at the same view corridor and there's no place to put it and we're splitting everything up. So it seems that we started with -- it cost too much money to buy new land downtown where the courthouse needs to be, connected to the courthouse we already have. And something that looks good in the downtown area. And other governments are doing that downtown. I mean, they're building very nice buildings downtown. So I guess one thing as you're talking to the public, we probably need to say what would it cost if we weren't concerned about using property we already had, but buy other downtown property? Because that is another -- there is ideal property downtown someplace. There is no building that I think in watching the planning commission and the zoning and city council that anyone wants except the person that's building it. Neighbors don't like it, it's too tall. It's this, it's that. So thrbl opposition -- so there will be opposition to almost anything, but I think we started Commissioner Daugherty with your idea that you really did not want to acquire new land. So if that's the presumption that you start with, we're not going to acquire new land, then you go one way. If you say this is one option, but we have another option and we could downtown acquire new land, and if knew that, you would be looking for things that connell on the market --
>> not only do I not want to buy public land that takes it off the tax roll, that doesn't make any sense at all.
>> so that's a cost factor in what you're looking at here, and one of the trade-offs of you want to fight the fight on the view corridor, do you want to pay more for land and you're right, take it off. All that is an issue. And I thought -- I only think money. It's my brain wired that way. That's where we started. I think it's important to remember that's why you started and there are some trade-offs to save that kind of money. So I guess that's it.
>> I don't mind buying new land. But it should not number the capitol view corridor. And really we are disinclined to condemn.
>>
>> that's always a hard thing. And if we were going to build a big building like that, you might have neighbors downtown that say, gee, if we had known that we would have sold you our land. I don't know what they think. But there isn't a perfect --
>> I think when we were -- let me go fwookt space committee because we worked on these issues. We did say that the courts belonged downtown. But we did say for instance the offices in this building probably didn't have to be downtown, but -- we just haven't, I guess, moved on to carrying out some of those recommendations. And I would leave all the courts here, but maybe they could be at this particular site. This site plus the garage. I don't know. Perhaps we could go across the street in a lower building. I think there are some other things that we can look at, some other possibilities with the land that we already own. But it interesting that this building is not in the capitol view corridor and you can go up much more than you can across the street. But it means -- I guess it means leasing land so that we can get out of here and they can use this for a civil courthouse. I think there are some other thing that we can look at. We have some recommendations. We have that space report that we worked on for two years and trying to come up with something. We just need to implement some of the recommendations.
>> I guess one thing, because the legislature is in, is if you need to test the view corridor, know it now. If you don't -- judge, you're right. If you don't have enough people to talk about the view corridor, then that really kind of takes that off, that takes that option away. The other thing is you could go ask and if you don't get it, then that takes it off.
>> if we head in that direction, test that very issue, all we need to do is put an item on next week. Consider and take appropriate action on request to ask the legislature -- request to seek legislative approval to waive capitol view corridor. We always get public input anyway. So the ones that show we listen to. We could take a vote and apply our policy on bill.
>> is that your first step in the decision process? I don't know. Is it?
>> I think we've already taken our first step in the decision process. I think we could probably put that issue to bed today.
>> formally we should do it next week to be legal. I told judge dietz my reading is that the support's not there, but we can formally find out next week. I do feel that it would be appropriate to put a specific item on, not to attract a whole lot of attention, but that way we clearly comply with the law and if there's an affirmative vote we can proceed. Maybe we want to do that and post in the alternative, which is why I did this kind of generally to say let's give a charge that will take some options off the table, leave some others on, but have us working in a direction to making a final decision one way or the other. From where I知 sitting right now it's almost under the ground or out south.
>> or another piece of property downtown if you could find it.
>> got to be real big downtown. This building?
>> how many square feet to this? Roger, where are you? What's in this building?
>> I知 not sure about that. I値l get you the number.
>> is this a building of significance? I like it.
>> [ laughter ] I like it a whole lot.
>> we've always felt it was significant.
>> part of that is a huge financial consideration, finding a place for them to go, setting that up, knocking this down, building something else that. Now is -- that is maybe the thing to do.
>> that's the final thing that we can do without asking anybody else for permission.
>> when it comes to spending a whole lot of money, I think you still need court authorization. And if you were to acquire this, renovate it into a courthouse structure, my guess is you would be looking at a fairly substantial investment of dollars, right, roger? Even if the square footage is appropriate?
>> I would have to tell you I would be surprised if this building even comes close to the square footage of our present courthouse.
>> it can't be more than 50,000.
>> this one is just a little bit over 100,000 square feet. It's about 20,000 each floor. I get this from my staff right now.
>> and judge, on behalf of all the people that I do represent, here's what we're hoping. Number one, we're hoping we get a commitment which we interpret as a vote, out of the Commissioners court at some reasonable time to build a courthouse. We hope that we obtain it with enough time so that we can do what we regard as our ex-senl particularly job of planning and programming. And that this --
>> and during my lifetime.
>> and do it in my lifetime. And then thirdly, that you allow us -- I致e said it to some of y'all individually, but I have been working with the bar association during this time also. They're ready to shoulder a bond campaign. We're ready because this is so necessary, and that we're hope to go do it that will give us time to plan, program and then have a detailed concept. So if I seem a little persistent and/or you areient, it's because I just see how fast time runs away. I mean, it seems like only yesterday that I appeared the first time here and it's five years now. And I sincerely would like to get it done and get a direction and get a vote and a commitment within this first half of this year.
>> I think the court's on board as far as a new civil courthouse. It's when you start dealing with the specifics.
>> the reality.
>> the site. We have to be prudent about where we put it. And we have to -- as I keep saying, we've got to maximally utilize all of our resources. Irrespective of whether it's a courthouse that's across the street or not, we have to utilize that block or sell it. That's our obligation as public servants. We can't just let it sit there being underutilized as it is today. And so whether a courthouse is across the street or we move across the street, whether we build that and move all of the non-courtroom -- specific courtroom functioning items over there and build more courtrooms in the san antonio space, irrespective of all of this is productive. This is not a waste of time. We are in the act of figuring out how to productively use every resource we have downtown. I don't believe we can let go of a single inch of dirt we hold downtown. It would be just unwise in the extreme.
>> what if we take a shot at outlining specific steps that should be taken. Indicate what order they should be taken. And see if it's covered by the broadus contract and if not whether or not broadus will take on additional services and at what cost. Find out exactly what we need to find out about the state subterrainian facility and given some thought to whether that would be a significant courthouse. I think every time I致e gone through I致e gone through the capitol building. So maybe my significant building image is still in my mind as I go in the elevator to walk underground and walk over to the underground part. And while I知 over there the next time looking around I値l see if we can get a small great intr free loan from the state to do a similar facility. Let's try to do that next week and I think we'll gain -- I can -- one question will be whether we ought to get with the heritage society, the Travis County historical society on framing the capitol or whether they think -- whether we're left dead on arrival. Respectfully I would ask that we let broadus do that.
>> that's fine with me. On the list.
>> it gives a little distance between -- it's just a concept and they're very friendly.
>> plus if there's a whole lot of heat, broadus will get it, not us.
>> that's my thinking, judge.
>> I would also suggest had inblying this stake holers, in addition to bringing in those, that we also -- I know you've been in contact with the bar, but it would be great to have a rent of the bar here also to speak on their needs and their view of a building of significance, how it operates for them. Because this point is so well taken. We have a symbiotic relationship with the whole private industry that is reliant on the location of the courthouse. And they are an important piece of this puzzle.
>> and will we be able to get a time certain. Will that be too inconvenient for y'all next Tuesday?
>> we've been doing the legislative item at 11 and it's been taking 45 minutes to an hour. So in the afternoon around 2:00. What I will do is get with staff and come up with some of my ideas by noon tomorrow, circulate those to the courthouse and I think I can do this. Let chowrt members add to that, -- let court members add to that, not delete. Then on Tuesday we can go down there and delete ourselves.
>> I wish we could make it similar, that we could refer people who are opposed to removing the -- waiving the capitol view corridor. If we could refer them to y'all to see what's going on. I don't think they'll bite your head off. I think just to kind of say this is the thinking that's going on.
>> the concept is important to share. Enhancing the view corridor, make ing it usable, improving it is a concept that I don't think has been shared with them.
>> I think that would be very useful and it's not that we're trying to talk anybody into seeing that our way, but I think that since we're also going to go out for -- on a bond election, we're going to want to have close to 100% approval of those monies, especially if it's going to be a large figure. One question. Can I have a summary of what I need to do by next Tuesday? I think I have outlined specific staff and we have priorities. Look at the capital construction construction involved.
>> do you want to give me your list so I can tweak it? I may have the ideas I have in mind. We can add it and get it to judge dietz and sheryl, whof you want to, and at some point we need to get it to broadus. I知 going up to dallas for a rail review on Friday. So I値l be leaving town after -- that's why I said tomorrow I would do my part. But if we can just get that circulating so everybody has seen it by at the latest Monday, that would give at least one day's review before the Tuesday discussion.
>> you're not going by rail, are you?
>> no, sir.
>> if you are, you better get out there.
>> [ laughter ]
>> thank you. We'll have it back on next Tuesday.
>> thank you, Commissioners.
>> maybe what we'll do is we'll put on the agenda 2:00 p.m., okay? That way maybe we can be sure to stick with it. Now, we do have a few other items before we get to executive session.
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
Last Modified:
Wednesday, February 21, 2007 2:08 PM