Courthouse Expected to Reopen in April : San Fernando: Quake repair estimates lower than expected despite six-week delay in target date, officials say.

The San Fernando courthouse, which was damaged extensively in the January earthquake, will reopen in April, Superior Court officials said as bidding began Monday on the first phase of the multimillion-dollar fix-up job.

Court and city officials had hoped that the four-story building, which provided a steady stream of customers for nearby businesses in downtown San Fernando, would reopen next March.

But hassles with federal disaster relief officials and with insurance adjusters pushed the target date back about six weeks, said Judge Judith Ashmann, supervising judge of San Fernando Superior Court.

“As these things go,” she said Monday, “that’s not too bad.”

Mayor Ray Ojeda added that an April, 1995, reopening was particularly good news for downtown merchants, many of whom feared that the courthouse might never reopen.

“If they can do it that fast, it would really help our economy, since we depend a lot on the courthouse,” he said. “I didn’t realize until they had to pull out the impact (the courthouse) had.”

Virtually every part of the 11-year-old courthouse was damaged in the Jan. 17 quake--support columns, concrete walls, stairwells and pipes. At first, officials with the county’s Internal Services Department, which maintains county buildings, were not even sure the building could be salvaged.

The initial repair estimate came in at $30 million. Officials were not sure a fix-up was feasible.

When bidding for the first phase of the project opened Monday, however, cost projections were only about one-third that much, about $9.5 million to $13.5 million.

The first phase--lugging broken goods out of the courthouse and fixing surface cracks--is due to begin in early December and cost $500,000, Ashmann said.

The second phase--the reconstruction of columns and walls--is due to start mid-January, she said. It should cost $9 million to $13 million, she said.

Contracts will include a penalty for late completion and the incentive of a prompt payment guarantee for on-time work, Ashmann said.

When the work is done, it will take the court’s 13 judges, 60 staffers and 50,000 files a month or two to move back in, Ashmann said. For now, most of the Superior Court judges, staffers and files are camping out at the Van Nuys courthouse.

The smaller San Fernando Municipal Court is still in operation, at the old courthouse across the street from the police station. Quake damage to that court building was light.

“As you know, a lot of small businesses in the city are suffering from our being gone--the restaurants, the cleaners,” Ashmann said. “I’m sure they’ll all be happy to know we are coming back. We are.”