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Council to consider courts again Date published: 11/24/2009
BY EMILY BATTLE
Talking about building a courthouse is becoming a fall tradition for Fredericksburg's City Council. Just as they did a year ago, council members tonight will consider whether to move forward with plans to put courts on a Princess Anne Street site, this time at the current site of the fire station. If they vote tonight to move forward, City Manager Beverly Cameron has told them they could expect to see a new courthouse open by June of 2014. One year ago, council members were considering whether to move forward with plans to build a new courthouse on the post office site on Princess Anne Street. At the time, they were told the project could be complete by fall 2012. Two years ago, council members were preparing to vote on whether to put the courts downtown or to consider another site off Lafayette Boulevard. At that time, the projected finish date for the courts was October 2010. The courts plan that council members will consider tonight would take four years because it requires buying land for and building a new fire station, then building a three-story courthouse on the old fire station site and renovating the current General District Court building. The all-inclusive price tag on the project is estimated to be $39.7 million, making it the second-most-expensive capital project in Fredericksburg's history, behind the more than $50 million the city spent to build James Monroe High and Lafayette Upper Elementary schools a few years ago. The price tag is smaller than what was on the table a year ago. The post office plan would have required buying land for and building a new carrier facility for the United States Postal Service. Council members scrapped that $47.1 million plan last winter in favor of exploring cheaper options. They then hired the architectural team of Glave & Holmes and Perkins Eastman to examine building options for two city-owned sites that had already been recommended as court sites by another study the city had commissioned from Moseley Architects two years earlier. Out of the most recent architectural study, Cameron recommended building on the fire station and General District Court sites two weeks ago. Cameron said tonight's vote will signal to city staff whether they should begin working in earnest on the pre-development work this plan would require.
Read more stories about Fredericksburg Date published: 11/24/2009
The fire house is now perfectly located to protect the historic structures downtown. Where would the new house be? How long would the transition be? Is the new fire house built first then the courts? How much will it cost to build the new house? Is it included in the $39.7 million? The article says the land is included in the all-inclusive court costs. What does the fire department think of moving? Will response times be affected? What happened to the new fire house that was to be built near CP?
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