City Council Votes to Spend $20 Million to Fund New Downtown Court Complex

The San Diego City Council has agreed to spend $20 million over the next 25 years for an expansion of the county courts downtown.

Acting as the city’s Redevelopment Agency, the council voted Tuesday to pay San Diego County $800,000 a year for 25 years to fund a court and office complex near the existing 30-year-old structure on Broadway, which is beset by rats, bugs, sewage leaks and asbestos.

To become and then remain eligible for the cash, the county must maintain a significant number of Superior and Municipal Court rooms downtown, rather than spreading them around the suburbs. Plans for a 16-courtroom complex within several blocks of the Broadway courthouse are in the works, county planners said Wednesday.

It remained unclear Wednesday when the County Board of Supervisors would consider either the $20-million offer or the courthouse annex. It probably won’t be until next month that county officials will meet with developers to discuss interest in the project, and board action is not likely for weeks after that, county staffers said Wednesday.

At a Nov. 5 meeting, the board put off considering the offer, saying it wants staffers to take another look at proposals for the 16-court building.

Recent studies indicate that about 40% of downtown business is related in some way to lawyers and the Broadway courthouse, and the city considers the legal business the “cornerstone of downtown redevelopment,” City Manager Jack McGrory said Wednesday.

“We need to ensure that the courts currently here will stay, as well as a commitment from the county that we would get our fair share of court expansion,” McGrory said.

Referring to the $20 million offer, he said, “Through this agreement we have accomplished that objective.”

The agency in charge of downtown redevelopment, the Centre City Development Corp., voted Nov. 1 to fund the $20 million. The council, however, must ratify agency action.

CCDC would finance the deal through revenue it receives from the Columbia Redevelopment Project, an area mainly of office buildings roughly centered on the West Broadway corridor downtown.

As part of the Tuesday vote, the City Council asked supervisors to make a “good faith” effort at persuading judges to consider night court, or at least longer hours, at the Broadway courthouse. Judges consistently have balked at the notion of night court.