Bird feces, a strange injury and a SPLOST vote: What’s going on at the Government Center?
While Columbus’ Government Center undergoes safety inspections and air testing for bird fecal bacteria, judges and city leaders are making plans to keep the court system moving.
Alternate court sites in the downtown area have been identified and will be used if tests show the courtrooms are not fit for use, Mayor Skip Henderson and the Chattahoochee Judicial District’s chief judge Gil McBride told the Ledger-Enquirer.
The pair said they are hopeful that the sites won’t be needed for trials, but the preparations come following a series of safety concerns.
A failed storm runoff pipe leaked potentially toxic materials, including bird feces, into Judge Gil McBride’s office on the 11th floor in mid-June. Last week, a court official was taken to the hospital after a piece of nearly 80-pound wood paneling fell from the wall of a courtroom.
The Columbus Council will continue to allow alternative sites to be used for court proceedings. The sites have been used during the COVID-19 pandemic to hold jury selection hearings outside of the government center.
However, the order could be applied to trials as part of a short-term solution. A longer-term solution could come in the form of new judicial and government centers if voters approve the special purpose local option sales tax, or SPLOST, measure in the fall after years of issues inside the city building.
“You can’t have court without facilities,” McBride said. “Continued problems like we’re having now, if not addressed, will cause further delays. ...There’s no way to sugar coat it.”
What’s been going on at the Government Center?
The storm pipe leak and the fallen paneling point to ongoing issues with the building.
The leaks aren’t new. The 11th floor sits above the building’s mechanical floor where pipes, boilers and chillers are located. A lot of water and wastewater flows above McBride’s space.
The leaks on that floor have occurred on and off for about nine years, but last month was the first indication that those pipes carried something other than rainwater. Water and debris were found in McBride’s conference room and his legal assistant’s office. Bird feces and other organic matter were in the pipe.
Courtrooms on the 11th floor, the largest in the facility, are not being used for in-person appearances until air tests clean.
“You don’t have a choice to come to court,” McBride said. “I’m not going to be ordering people to show up for scheduled court proceedings in courtrooms that require testing for airborne fecal bacteria. It’s just not going to happen.”
Henderson told the Ledger-Enquirer the city doesn’t anticipate any negative findings from the air testing, based on preliminary conversations with those who conducted the testing. The results of the test have not come back.
The building’s other courtrooms are also being inspected after paneling fell on a court official in late June. The employee was taken to the hospital and required stitches, McBride said.
Safety inspections for every courtroom were ordered after the panel fell. Henderson said those inspections are being done by the city’s construction and inspection and code staff. They haven’t been completed as of Friday afternoon.
Moving trials to new venues
McBride said he’s hopeful court will continue at the Government Center. Paneling issues could be easily fixed, but if air tests show courtrooms are not safe, proceedings will have to be held elsewhere.
Potential locations for trials include the Columbus Civic Center and ice rink. The Columbus Trade Center was used to try a criminal case in 2018 after flooding rendered courtrooms useless. Henderson said the city has also offered up the council chambers at the City Services Center.
The Columbus Council approved a resolution earlier this week allowing the courts to use outside venues just as the state’s COVID-19 judicial emergency was set to expire.
McBride said the court system has used the Civic Center for jury selection for the past three months, and the building’s staff has done a great job accommodating their requests. Still, the building does not meet the specific needs running a trial requires.
“But it’s still not a courtroom. There’s no jury room. You have problems with moving a larger number of inmates,” he said.
Continued facility issues could cause trial delays if they are not fixed. But the county has emerged from the peaks of the COVID-19 pandemic without greatly increasing its murder trial backlog, McBride said.
“I would hate to think problems with facilities replaced the pandemic as an obstacle to being able to move cases in a timely and orderly way,” he said.
What’s next for the Government Center?
A presentation by Deputy City Manager Pam Hodge before Columbus Council on June 22 outlined the possible future for the city’s courts and government structures.
An estimated $400 million would be collected over a roughly ten-year period through a SPLOST. In conjunction with the tax, $200 million in general obligation bonds would be issued for the Judicial Center.
The city hired consultants including architectural firm SLAM, Barnes Gibson Partners Architects, Gilbane, and Freeman & Associates to provide a Government Center masterplan and needs assessment.
The group recommends the city build a new 310,000 square foot courthouse and an additional parking structure on the current Government Center site. A majority of city administration would be relocated to a new building on a separate site or to available space in another building in the city.
“There are other options the council could consider,” Henderson said. “They’ve also talked about stripping that tower back down to the bones and just remodel it. Because it’s structurally sound.”
Pipes at the Government Center leaked in early 2017, leading to a June 2017 Columbus Council vote to approve $350,000 for emergency pipe repairs.
Multiple floods in 2018 led the Columbus Council to use $1.1 million in insurance settlement funds to repair damage to courtrooms as well as $2.5 million in bonds issued by the Columbus Building Authority to address safety issues in the building. Another $1 million was approved to plan, engineer and assess for a new building to replace the Government Center.
A vote on the Government Center SPLOST was scheduled to appear on the ballot during the November 2020 election, but the election was postponed by city officials.
This story was originally published July 2, 2021 at 3:17 PM.