Report Picks Santa Ana for Court

A new courthouse for the 4th District Court of Appeal should be built in Santa Ana, according to a state courts staff report, despite the reported wishes of most of its judges that it be built at UC Irvine.

Santa Ana deserves the Appeals Court because it has offered 2 1/2 acres for $1; construction can begin a year sooner than in Irvine; Santa Ana will provide ample parking; and the site offers room for expansion, according to the state Judicial Council’s Office of Court Construction and Management. The staff’s recommendation, dated Tuesday, was obtained by The Times on Thursday.

The 27-member Judicial Council is scheduled to approve the project in a vote today in San Francisco. The council, headed by the state’s chief justice, sets policy for California courts and has final authority to approve the project.

Putting a court on a college campus “would be a significant departure from the pattern of locating appellate courts near the government center of the region that is served by that court,” according to the report by Kim K. Davis, director of the court’s construction and management office, and Clifford Ham, senior project manager.

The stakes are high: Santa Ana wants not only to preserve its standing as Orange County’s government center but also to bring new development to its downtown; UCI officials believe a courthouse there would boost its chances of developing a law school.

The pro-Santa Ana recommendation extended good spirits at City Hall, where officials were celebrating last week’s voter approval of a 37-story commercial office building, which would be the tallest in Orange County.

The current Appeals Court operates in a leased building blocks from a state and federal courthouse and is so crowded that two of the eight judges assigned there maintain their offices in other buildings. The Santa Ana court, with 65 employees, is one of eight appeals courts in California, serving six state appellate districts.

The new courthouse is expected to cost about $17 million. While Santa Ana offered to give land to the state for $1, UCI wanted $2.4 million for a 2 1/2 -acre site at its University Research Park. The Irvine site would also require an additional $1.1 million for a site study and parking lot.

News of the court staff’s recommendation pleased Councilman Carlos Bustamante.

“We have been working on this for a long time,” he said. “It’s something we really care about. Besides the eight appellate court judges, we have seven federal judges and 109 Superior Court judges that have made Santa Ana home for many years. We are really proud of our downtown.”

Assemblyman Tom Umberg (D-Garden Grove) said the staff’s report “was a pretty strong recommendation for Santa Ana. It makes sense from every perspective, particularly in terms of public access and from the taxpayer angle.”

Neither Mayor Miguel Pulido nor the Judicial Council staff returned calls seeking comment.

In a prepared statement, UCI spokesman Jim Cohen said: “The university trusts the Judicial Council to evaluate the merits of our proposal and will continue to refrain from publicly debating the merits of the bids while awaiting its decision.”

The staff recommendation revealed details of the UCI proposal that university officials had not previously released. According to the report, for instance, Presiding Justice David Sills, a former Irvine mayor, “reports that a strong majority of the justices in the division prefer” Irvine.

The report disclosed that the university wanted to limit use of the property to an appellate court and that, if the court closed, the university could repurchase the property at the land sale price plus the depreciated replacement cost of the improvements.

While the justices could move into the Santa Ana site in August 2007, the Irvine site would not be ready until June 2008, according to the judicial staff.

Speaking at an April 6 meeting of the Judicial Council, Richard Demerjian, UCI director of campus and environmental planning, said the university hoped to develop the land around the campus for appropriate ancillary uses.

A court, he said, would provide multiple opportunities for collaboration among students, faculty and court personnel, including internships, research and teaching opportunities.

For their part, Pulido and other Santa Ana officials boasted of the city’s public transportation and the site’s proximity to other government facilities.

“We’re a city that is working well,” Pulido told the Judicial Council, according to a transcript of the meeting. “We’re doing good development, and that’s why we care so much about this court.”