Council deals with reality, politics as decision on the Government Center nears

For nearly three hours Tuesday morning, Columbus Council listened to a parade of experts outlining the serious issues with the 47-year-old downtown Government Center and the potential solutions.

This summer’s multiple flooding incidents in the building, which houses city departments as well as most of the Muscogee County court operation, have left more than half the courtrooms unusable and forced some judges to move their offices to another building.

The picture that was painted for council was not a pretty one and will likely come with a costly price tag.

“I think it got everyone’s attention that a decision has to be made,” said Columbus Mayor Teresa Tomlinson, who leaves office early next year. “I am pleased with council’s intensity to come back in short order with directions on how to get courts up and running, as well as find a long-term solution.”

Noting that money can fix anything, Councilor Glenn Davis described the situation he and his fellow councilors face.

“There is harshness, then there is reality and there is politics and they are all intermingled,” he said. “And there are a lot of questions, at least in my mind, that need to be answered.”

Several judges including Chief Muscogee County Superior Court Judge Gil McBride, Superior Court Judge Maureen Gottfired, State Court Judge Ben Richardson and Juvenile Court Judge Warner Kennon attended the lengthy presentation that took most of the morning. Sheriff Donna Tompkins, who is charged with securing the Government Center, was also in attendance along with other court officials and attorneys.

McBride stressed to council that the situation in the courts is urgent and needs to be addressed.

“Our main concern is being able to do our constitutional duties and being able to have a place to be able to work,” McBride said. “That’s what it all comes down to. Our interest in going back to those floors is not because we fail to grasp at some point we must move out. We understand that. And under any scenario that has been presented today ... have us moving out. We get that. The big question is where do we have court tomorrow? Where do we have court next week?”

The city hired Aaron and Clements, a Columbus-based project management firm, to give an independent assessment of the situation after hearing a report from city officials in late August. Aaron and Clements worked on the assessment with two local architectural firms, 2WR and Hecht Burdeshaw Architects.

They reviewed the 2017 Mayor’s Commission Report on the Government Center, met with city staff in the city manager’s office, public works, engineering, the fire marshal and inspections and code. They also discussed the building’s existing fire and safety issues with contractors WT Miller, Batson-Cook and Brasfield & Gorrie.

One sentence in Newt Aaron’s more than an hour and a half presentation underscored the difficulty of the situation facing council.

“The building is characterized by failing systems — the HVAC system ... the emergency generator has failed completely and a temporary one has been put outside, the fire alarms are out of date and we are having extensive water piping and drainage piping deterioration,” Aaron said.

Aaron outlined four possible options for council, then immediately said two of them would not be feasible.

The first of those options was to build a new building to house the courts and government on another site. That would leave council with what Aaron termed “a real estate problem” because it would still have to deal with the existing tower and two annex buildings in some fashion.

The other option Aaron said would not work was a floor-by-floor renovation of the existing tower. He said that option would likely require an addition to the tower and could take as long as five years in the construction process.

There are two viable options, Aaron told council.

The first is to tear down the tower and annex buildings and come back with all new construction, including a new court building on the 10th Street side of the property and a new administration building on the Ninth Street side. A parking structure would need to be built in the city parking lot south of Ninth Street between First and Second avenues.

The other option would be to vacate the tower and demolish the east and west wings. That would allow for a new judicial building to be constructed on the 10th Street side and then the tower could be gutted and renovated, Aaron told the councilors.

“Our definition of renovate is complete renovation,” Aaron said. “We believe that the building would have to be stripped down to the frame.”

If council found the funding and started the process almost immediately, it would be sometime in 2023 before the projects were completed, Aaron said.

Factoring into any decision that council must make is the insurance settlement for the two flooding incidents in June. The city has reached a tentative agreement with its insurance carrier, Travelers, Director of Inspections and Codes John Hudgison said. The first incident that occurred on June 18 was caused when a 12th-floor water main feeding a water main to a boiler broke. That settlement is $855,796. The second settlement for a June 30 incident has been settled for $239,702, Hudgison said.

The total construction settlement with Travelers is nearly $1.1 million. There is a $50,000 deductible per claim, but the city has already paid Serv-Pro, which did the clean-up on both incidents. That will cover the deductible.

The flooding has rendered four of the county’s seven Government Center courtrooms unusable, placing an immediate judicial strain on the seven Superior Court judges and two State Court judges, McBride said. He is pushing for immediate repair of the water damaged courtrooms, which Hugley said could not be completed until January or February and would eat up the insurance settlement funds.

“What you are doing here has to be coordinated with the insurance,” Aaron said. “It doesn’t make sense to repair all of that stuff if you are going to move out of the building. ... The desire to get back in the building will not give you the best end result.”

There is also an additional $7.1 million of emergency repairs to make the building safe. Those include pressurizing the stairwells, installing a sprinkler system, replacing locks and other expenses, council was told.

City Manager Isaiah Hugley told council that he would bring two options back to them for consideration in two weeks.

The first option would be to appropriate $2.5 million for the most immediate work to make the building safer in the case of a fire and to use the insurance proceeds to put the damaged floors back in use at a condition similar to where they were before the flooding. The other option is to begin to look for suitable property to rent or purchase to relocate the courts.

Though no cost was attached, council did hear about potential funding options. Both of the funding options would come with an additional cost to taxpayers, Finance Director Angelica Alexander told council.

The first option would be for the city to borrow the money by issuing bonds, but that would increase the millage rate and raise property taxes. This could be done without a referendum that would have to be approved by the voters.

If the city issued $100 million in bonds, it would cost the owner of a home with a fair market value of $150,000 an additional $62.40 a year in property tax. If the city borrowed $200 million, it would cost the owner of a home with a fair market value of $150,000 an additional $124.80 in annual property tax.

The other funding option is through a Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, Alexander said.

The current sales tax in Muscogee County is 8 percent, with 4 percent going to the state of Georgia, 2 percent going to the city, 1 percent going to the Muscogee County School District and 1 percent going for regional transportation. The school district Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax expires in June 2020 and the transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax expires in December 2022.

The Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax would have to be approved by voters.

As much information as council has, it still needs more, Aaron cautioned.

“The process that we are recommending to you is that you don’t know enough to make a decision today,” Aaron told council. “... You have to understand the scope, the quality and you need to understand the cost.”

There was no cost attached to the options that Aaron presented to council.

“Any numbers that anybody can do right now are in the category that we call ‘Big Guesses,’” he said.

This story was originally published October 9, 2018 at 5:29 PM.