UCI Will Bid for State Court

UC Irvine has told state officials it will make a proposal for a state appellate courthouse in Orange County to be built on campus, challenging Santa Ana for the $17-million project.

Santa Ana, home to the 4th District Court of Appeal, has pitched the idea of a new court for two years as a vital part of the city’s redevelopment, while UC Irvine had said it would act only if Santa Ana’s bid failed.

University boosters said moving the appeals court to campus could help long-standing hopes for creating a UC Irvine law school.

Santa Ana City Manager David N. Ream said court administrators in San Francisco told city officials Friday morning that a proposal from the university was forthcoming. The City Council is scheduled Feb. 7 to approve terms of the city’s final offer.

The California Judicial Council, the administrative arm of the state courts, had received nothing from UC Irvine by late Friday.

Judicial Council spokeswoman Lynn Holton declined to comment, saying real estate negotiations are confidential. The state has budgeted $17 million for the project.

“We have been in discussions with the Judicial Council about the possibility of locating the appellate court on campus, and UCI views that as beneficial to both the court and the campus,” university spokeswoman Susan Menning said.

Former Republican legislator and secretary of education Marian Bergeson, who sits on an advisory task force reviewing the new courthouse, said she was told Friday of UC Irvine’s impending offer. “UCI is interested, as is Santa Ana,” she said. “A decision hasn’t been made.”

Santa Ana civic leaders have long hoped that the new court would be built downtown. The proposed Ross Street site is next to the Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse, the Orange County Superior Court, state and federal government offices, and an Orange County Transportation Authority bus terminal.

UC Irvine has long expressed an interest in snagging the courthouse. University officials sought support from state Sen. Joe Dunn (D-Santa Ana) and Presiding Judge David Sills, a former Irvine mayor.

Sills and Dunn have expressed concern that the Santa Ana site would cost too much and said they would consider the university if it were a better deal.

Sources familiar with UC Irvine’s offer said it would involve a $2.4-million sale of 2.5 acres in the University Research Park, an Irvine Co. development adjacent to the campus on land owned by the university and the company. Opened in 1996 with a goal of tying together the university and private industry, the research park houses about 40 companies with 4,000 employees.

The proposal would include a 54,000-square-foot building and about 130 parking spaces.

Santa Ana has offered to sell the site of the city’s former jail in the Civic Center, which is slightly less than 2 acres, for $2.2 million. The city would provide free parking at a three-story structure the city would build.

“Irvine really can’t beat [our] location,” Ream said. “We have a world class proposal that should be difficult to turn down.”

UCI Chancellor Ralph Cicerone said in 2003 that a nearby court would be a boost for a law school.

“Just the experience it could give our students would be wonderful,” Cicerone said then. “We could tell new faculty that a court would be here and that would be a real draw.”

Cicerone, who is leaving UCI at the end of the school year, has wanted a law school so badly that he was trying to raise the $40 million it would cost to demonstrate to UC officials that the proposal had wide support.

The university faces several roadblocks. The California Postsecondary Education Commission said in 2001 that the state had enough law schools. Later that year, the UC system’s second-ranked official said proposals for law schools at UC Irvine and UC Riverside should be postponed until the state’s economy improved.