New O.C. Courthouse Plans Double Price Tag : Bureaucracy: Increase to $168 million blamed on faulty federal projections. Local congressmen irate.

The new federal courthouse planned for downtown Santa Ana will increase more than 60% in size and more than double in cost, to $168 million, under government plans about to be forwarded to Congress.

The increases, due to inaccurate estimates by federal agencies, have led to a round of finger-pointing and rankled Orange County congressmen who have pushed hard for the project.

The courthouse, to be completed by 1998, will house federal judges, prosecutors, public defenders, probation officers and other government officials. It is to be built on a 3.9-acre parcel in the Santa Ana Civic Center, and is expected to give the downtown area a significant economic boost. The planned site is bounded by 4th, 5th and Ross streets.

The new size and cost estimates, to be submitted to Congress later this month, do not pose an immediate threat to construction plans, government officials said.

But two local congressmen said they are not happy about the estimated 110% increase in the building’s price tag, and will work to contain the cost while continuing to support the project.

“I would find that kind of disproportionate increase in cost unacceptable and will see to it that the numbers are brought into line,” Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) said. Cox noted that the building has not yet been designed and that at this stage cost estimates can vary widely.

“Everybody better take a deep breath here . . . before we double the cost,” said Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove), whose district includes downtown Santa Ana. “My good friends at Disney learned the hard way what asking for the ideal (project) can cost.”

Dornan was referring to the Walt Disney Co.’s unsuccessful bid last year to persuade Congress to authorize nearly $400 million in federal highway spending for projects near the Anaheim amusement park.

Despite the concerns over cost, Congress already is moving to pay for design work for an enlarged facility. The House has set aside nearly $4 million for Orange County courthouse planning in the 1993 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. The Senate, apprised of the need for a much bigger courthouse, added $5 million to the House figure. The differences are to be reconciled, perhaps as early as next week, by a House-Senate conference committee.

The planned expansion poses no problems for Santa Ana, said Pat Jordan, the city’s Washington lobbyist. “There is still enough land and space to accommodate the increase in the size of the courthouse,” Jordan said. “It’s the linchpin of their economic development plan.”

Orange County has no permanent federal courthouse, although a handful of judges sit in temporary, 30,000-square-foot quarters in the Civic Center. Cox, Dornan and other local lawmakers have argued that the Los Angeles courthouse, where many Orange County cases are referred, is choked with litigation, and too far away. With a population of 2.4 million, Orange County deserves its own federal bench, the congressmen say.

Last year, the General Services Administration, the housekeeping arm of the federal government, called for construction of a 219,000-square-foot courthouse in Santa Ana at an estimated cost of $79.8 million.

GSA officials, who said they based their estimate on a survey of federal judges and court administrators, said the building would meet the federal court system’s needs into the early 21st Century.

But since then, court officials have taken strong exception to the GSA estimates.

At a congressional hearing, L. Ralph Mecham, director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, said the GSA’s space estimate was wrong and that the courts really need 348,000 square feet in Orange County, nearly two-thirds more than originally recommended by the GSA.

Mecham was especially critical of his sister agency, saying that it had failed to consult with bankruptcy court judges before submitting its space estimate. In addition, Mecham said, “space for the probation, pretrial services and federal public defender’s office was left out of the original projections.”

Another federal court official said Thursday: “The GSA did the survey on the need and size and came up with 219,000 square feet. We wrote a letter saying it’s too small.”

That’s not quite the way that the General Services Administration tells the story.

“It’s not an exact science, either for the courts or for us,” said Mary M. Filippini, spokeswoman for the GSA’s regional office in San Francisco.

“When we were first asked to do the (space and cost survey) we went to the courts and said, ‘Congress has asked us to do this, and we will need your requirements,’ ” Filippini said.

But court officials for the Central District of California, the seven-county territory that includes Orange and Los Angeles counties, said they had not yet completed a thorough assessment of the district’s long-term space needs. Therefore, according to Filippini, the officials said they could give the GSA only a “guesstimate.”

“We said, ‘Well, just go in with what you think you need and we’ll worry about the rest later,’ and that is basically what we did,” Filippini explained.

“After a year, they finally completed their 30-year plan, and sure enough, it was for more space,” she added.

Based on the new space requirements, the GSA already has completed and forwarded to Congress a formal prospectus for the design portion of the Orange County courthouse project. Design work will begin as soon as Congress formally appropriates the money.