$70-Million Court Plan Impressive : Escondido Council Hears Details; County Is Next Hurdle

Plans for a $70-million county courts building and private office complex in the heart of Escondido’s hard-hit downtown business district impressed the Escondido City Council on during an unveiling Wednesday night but still must pass a tougher test before the county Board of Supervisors next month.

Proposed by Lusardi Construction Co., the eight-story governmental high-rise would house 50 courtrooms and replace the existing North County courthouse in Vista. But it requires subsidies from Escondido’s redevelopment agency and approval from the supervisors, who have expressed interest in the plan but say they have no funds to lease such an enormous structure.

Revitalization Predicted

Kenneth Lounsbery, vice president and general counsel for Lusardi, said the North County courthouse could revitalize Escondido’s downtown by attracting financial institutions, attorneys’ offices and other court-related businesses and support agencies to that area, which has been losing stores and customers to the new North County Fair regional shopping center at the city’s southern edge.

The reviews ranged from a “very nice” from Mayor Jim Rady to a “marvelous” from Councilman Ernie Cowan to a “beautiful” from Councilman Doug Best.

The 325,000-square-foot Escondido courthouse--large enough, consultants say, to meet North County’s needs for the next two decades--would be part of a 1-million-square-foot office complex proposed by Lusardi east of the new Escondido civic center being built at Broadway and East Valley Parkway.

The proposed complex also would include a 100,000-square-foot office building and a similar-sized building for the Escondido Times-Advocate newspaper. A 2,200-car parking garage would be built to serve public and private buildings.

Government Aid Sought

If the Escondido redevelopment agency assumed ownership of the courthouse, Lounsbery said, long-term government financing could be used for the project, cutting its costs substantially. The city agency then would lease the courthouse to the county, while the other buildings in the complex would be privately owned and financed.

Additional assistance from the redevelopment agency--in the forms of land acquisition, write-downs of tax revenues or applying the tax revenues generated by the private portions of the project against the county’s lease payments--also could lower the county lease costs for the courthouse, Lounsbery said.

Such contributions by the city would offer the county some court space at below-market rates--”at rates which they would find it hard to refuse,” Lounsbery said. He estimates that the plan would save the county about $1 million a year.

The plan--and other public-private developments being weighed in Chula Vista and El Cajon--has drawn the support of the county’s Superior Court judges, who voted this summer to support transfers of court activities from downtown San Diego to any city that succeeds in building space for the courts unless adequate room can be found downtown.

The Escondido City Council, sitting as the redevelopment agency, is expected to act on the Lusardi proposal in closed session next Wednesday. County supervisors are scheduled to consider the project Sept. 14.

“We’ve worked long and hard since early spring on this,” Lounsbery said, “and if the county is prepared to pay reasonable rents, this project is altogether feasible.”