Municipal Court Unveils Plans to Build Downtown Courthouse : Justice: As the Superior Court’s designs for new courtrooms foundered, the lower body moved ahead smoothly with planning for a six-story building.

Without public fanfare or fuss of any sort, the San Diego Municipal Court is planning to begin building a six-story, four-courtroom downtown courthouse to handle civil lawsuits, court officials disclosed Monday.

On what is now a parking lot on 4th Avenue, about a half block north of Ash Street, the court expects to have the facility opened about a year from now, officials said.

Money for the $6.2-million project is expected to come from a countywide fund designed especially for courthouse repairs and construction, officials said.

About all that remains before official groundbreaking, officials said Monday, is to wrap up a few architectural details and to secure approval from the County Board of Supervisors.

If it gains that approval, which court officials said they expected, and construction sails along, the project will stand in marked contrast to the Superior Court’s downtown civil courthouse plan.

Nine new courtrooms at the El Cortez Hotel Convention Center, the planned cure for the Superior Court’s civil crush, were originally scheduled to open April 17. However, the developer’s financing woes and, more recently, lease negotiations, have stalled the project, and it is unclear whether it will be completed.

The El Cortez site, at Beech Street and 8th Avenue, was tabbed in late 1989 to alleviate a crush that has forced San Diego Superior Court judges into temporary quarters in a hotel. A Municipal Court judge also holds court there and is about to be joined in the next few weeks by a second, court officials said Monday.

The county board is scheduled to discuss the El Cortez site today.

The board is scheduled to vote May 28 on the Municipal Court project. Court officials said Monday that they expect approval because it is a financially attractive deal and because county staff members--not court administrators--have largely put it together.

“We have gone through all the normal county channels and have worked closely with the county, but they deserve the credit,” said Judge Patricia Cowett, the court’s presiding judge.

The project, which has attracted virtually no press attention, has been in the planning stage for nearly two years, court administrator D. Kent Pedersen said Monday.

The civil courts figured to be the easiest to spin off because they are virtually self-contained, Pedersen said. The clerks who work on civil cases handle those alone, he said. Municipal Courts handle civil lawsuits of $25,000 or less. Superior Courts decide disputes over that $25,000 maximum.

Three--about to be expanded, to four--of the court’s 28 judges are assigned to civil work, Cowett said. The San Diego Municipal Court handles about 25,000 civil cases annually, Pedersen said.

It also processes about 20,000 to 25,000 small claims cases and 380,000 criminal and traffic cases, he said.

Unlike criminal courtrooms, a courthouse that handles civil cases alone has a significantly lessened security concern, and that has made planning the 4th Avenue site easier, Pedersen said. Civil courts do not require jail cells for prisoners, he said.

According to court plans for the new building, the four courtrooms take up the fifth and sixth floors. Two of the courtrooms would include jury boxes and two would serve judge-only trials, according to architects’ sketches.

The fourth floor is designed for deputy marshals and court research attorneys. The third would hold the court clerks. The second is for parking. The first includes a lobby and more parking.

Funding for the project comes from what is commonly called the courthouse temporary construction fund, a pool of cash generated by fees assessed in criminal cases, Pedersen said.

A person who pleads guilty or is convicted of certain kinds of crimes pays a surcharge along with whatever fine a judge assesses, Pedersen said. For a moving traffic violation, the fee is $1.50, and that $1.50 goes to the fund, he said.

Around the county, the fund generates $5.5 million to $6 million annually, Pedersen said.