County Reneges on Courtrooms for El Cortez : Justice: The decision, due to impatience with the developer, means crowding probably will persist at Superior Court for four more years.

The County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to kill the troubled plan to build nine courtrooms at the El Cortez Hotel Convention Center, leaving the severely crowded San Diego Superior Court without immediate prospects for more space.

The board voted unanimously to bring an end to the El Cortez project, saying that the developer’s financing woes and, more recently, stalled lease negotiations had undone it. The site had been tabbed in late 1989 to alleviate a crush that has forced judges into cramped temporary quarters in a downtown hotel.

“I think we’ve been jacked around for two years on this project,” Supervisor George Bailey said. “It’s time to terminate it.”

New courtrooms could be four more years away, county staffers said after the vote.

The 5-0 vote reopened a long-running conflict between the board and court officials because supervisors also opted Tuesday to explore the notion of housing new courtrooms outside downtown.

Court officials prefer downtown expansion. But John MacDonald, the chairman of the board, said there “should be options” at or around existing court space in Vista, El Cajon or Chula Vista--or elsewhere around the county. The board set a May 21 hearing for a progress report.

Judge Judith McConnell, the presiding judge of the Superior Court, said court officials intend to “present some plan to the board, to make sure the court stays in downtown San Diego.”

“Frankly,” McConnell said, “the need is downtown. That’s where the work is.”

Since 1987, felony filings across the county have increased 43%, and civil filings have risen by 30%, according to court records. Meanwhile, the court now has 71 judges, up from 53 just two years ago.

Seven of the 71 judges work in hotel rooms in the Hotel San Diego, across Broadway from the downtown County Courthouse. All day long, shopping carts carry court files back and forth across the street.

At the downtown courthouse, Judge Arthur Jones doesn’t even have a courtroom--he hears cases in his chambers while another judge sits on the bench a few feet away. Elsewhere in the county, other Superior Court judges operate out of trailers, cafeterias and weight rooms.

To accommodate the new judges and the rapid growth in cases, the court lobbied the county intensely in 1989 for space. Four new courtrooms in the South Bay are scheduled to open this November, and four more in El Cajon are supposed to open next year.

Downtown, the court asked for nine more courtrooms for civil cases.

In December, 1989, supervisors picked the El Cortez site, at Beech Street and 8th Avenue, over another downtown landmark, the Walker-Scott department store at 5th Avenue and Broadway. The El Cortez was supposed to be cheaper and, more importantly, the courtrooms were supposed to be available sooner--by early April, 1991, just a few weeks ago.

Work on the complex began, then abruptly stalled three months ago. The developer, Minami California, which paid $27 million cash for the property, said it ran out of money to finish the job.

Minami California is a San Diego-based subsidiary of Minami Investment, which is part of the Minami Group of companies, a Tokyo-based holding company with real estate and hotels scattered around the globe.

The Japanese conglomerate was stung at home earlier this year by higher interest rates, a collapse in stock prices and jitters in the real estate market, all of which combined to squeeze cash flow, according to Roger Moliere, executive vice president of Minami California.

In mid-March, construction at the complex resumed after Minami got a $4.5 million loan from a Japanese bank. To finish the job, total building costs have been put at about $12 million, according to county and Minami officials.

The county “right now is not out a dime but lots in time and effort,” said Robert Maxwell, the county’s assistant director for general services.

Although construction resumed, the county and Minami were negotiating an amendment to the lease, a common event in a complex business deal, Maxwell said.

The county wanted more space, Maxwell said. Minami, meanwhile, wanted the county to pay $3 million rent up front, he said.

Unable to reach an agreement, Masao Nangaku, the Japanese billionaire who heads Minami, sent county officials a letter dated April 19.

In essence, Nangaku said he would be willing to let the county build the courtrooms and take the cost as a credit against rent. The county board said Tuesday that was not the way the deal was supposed to work.

The county appears able to back out of the El Cortez project without fear of suit. That’s because the nine courtrooms originally were supposed to be completed by the beginning of this month, according to the lease for the site.

It was unclear Tuesday whether the broken deal will lead to legal action against Minami, county staff members said.

Moliere said Tuesday that Minami was uncertain what to do with the site. “Maybe try to convert it to some other kind of use, possibly close it up,” he said. “Quite a number (of options), I suppose, but we haven’t thought it through yet.”

Construction at the site, meanwhile, continued Tuesday afternoon and was likely to keep going for as long as two months, said Jerry Morrisey, operations manager for Brodwolf Construction. Certain concrete and masonry jobs were already paid for, he said.

When that work wrapped up, though, he said, workers will board up the building, which is now open to the air on two sides. Then, Morrisey said, “We’re going to be looking at another boarded-up building with graffiti on it for the rest of our lives.”