Contract Approved for Courthouse

The Ventura County Board of Supervisors this week approved a $333,500 contract for design of a new courthouse in Simi Valley.

The board on Tuesday awarded the contract to Rasmussen & Associates, a Ventura firm that recently designed the renovation of a county social services building in Oxnard.

Construction on the East Valley Courthouse, which will be located at a six-acre site on the northwest corner of the Simi Valley Civic Center on Tapo Canyon Road, is expected to cost $5.5 million. It is scheduled to open about mid-1989, said Arthur E. Goulet, the county’s director of public works.

Goulet said the new building will house about six municipal courts and replace a smaller courthouse nearby that is now used about two days a week. The county is swapping the land on which the temporary courthouse sits in exchange for the Civic Center parcel.

The Board of Supervisors picked the Simi Valley location in July, after also considering an 80-acre site in Thousand Oaks that it owns jointly with that city. The county is building a permanent facility for the East Valley Sheriff’s Station at the Thousand Oaks site.

Goulet said opposition by residents of Sunset Hills, in Thousand Oaks, convinced the county to build the courthouse in Simi Valley instead. County officials said they will finance construction by selling bonds.