New Children’s Court Sought; Monterey Park Site Proposed

The long hunt for a new home for the children’s dependency courts is over, say proponents of a detailed plan expected to be presented to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors later this month.

“If they get it (the plan) in December, they’ll probably act on it in January, meaning they’ll push the green buttons then to go forward,” said Superior Court executive officer Frank Zolin.

Designed by Kajima Associates, the $45.1-million facility would be built by Kajima Associates and developed by Kajima International and California Partnerships by 1991 or 1992 on a 4.2-acre site at the intersection of the Long Beach and San Bernardino freeways in Monterey Park. An adjacent parking structure with 875 spaces is also planned.

“If the Board of Supervisors approves it in January or February, grading should begin by November or December, with ground breaking in January or February, 1990,” Zolin estimated.

When completed, the six-story, 275,000-square-foot building would be “the largest and most innovative facility of its type in the United States,” said Christopher J. Campbell, president of California Partnerships.

Known as the Children’s Court, the building would house 25 Superior Court hearing rooms, where decisions would be made determining whether or not minors placed under judicial protection should be returned to their parents, and a cafeteria. No juvenile-delinquency cases would be heard in the building.

The Children’s Court would have what Campbell termed “an academic link” with Cal State Los Angeles “to address causes of child abuse and neglect.” In addition, training programs would be held there for law enforcement, social work, education and health-care professionals.

Campbell views the project as an example of “can-do cooperation among public- and private-sector interests” in terms of team development, site acquisition, project management, facility design and financing. In response to a supervisor’s request for private participation, the Los Angeles Rotary Club is organizing a 10-member committee to provide The Children’s Court with expertise.

Zolin said that private financing is also being sought to defray some of the cost of the building, “and we’re trying to get $1 million in donations to help finance some features to directly benefit the children.

“We might do a better job of furnishing or finishing off the shelter-care areas with the $1 million, or we might buy toys or equipment for the older kids, like TVs.”

For more than 10 years, judges have wanted a new, permanent home for the children’s courts, which has shared space in the crowded downtown Criminal Courts Building.

Zolin said, “We’ve been asking for a building for 14 years and for an expansion for the past decade.” Until recently, however, dependency was not a big issue, he conceded.

In 1978, the dependency courts, then in a temporary facility at Sunset Boulevard and Broadway, were moved to the newly completed Criminal Courts Building.

Citing a need to separate the innocent youngsters from hardened criminals, supervisors agreed in August to relocate some of these dependency courts to trailers in Van Nuys and to try to move the rest to more outlying areas.

“We call these ‘interim facilities’ until our headquarters building, the Children’s Court, is completed,” Zolin explained.

The Van Nuys trailers will be operational in April or May, he said, “and Downey is being considered as a second site.”

A proposal two years ago to relocate five of the children’s courts to Irwindale and the remaining 20 to a building next to the former Sears office tower in Alhambra was rejected as “not being very cost beneficial,” he added.

That plan became news in November when Baxter Ward raised the county’s 1987 purchase of the former Sears tower as an issue in his campaign against Supervisor Mike Antonovich.

The tower was purchased from Alexander Haagen, a major contributor to Antonovich and other supervisors and a big-time retail shopping developer, for $53 million--$37 million for the tower that Haagen had purchased less than a year earlier for $27.9 million, according to a newspaper account, and the balance in improvements and new buildings that Haagen would provide.

The building next to the tower was not included in the county’s purchase, Zolin said.