A plan to replace one of the busiest courthouses in Massachusetts has been coming together over the past few months, but the public-private partnership it calls for has some locals irked – and asking the state to reconsider.
At Springfield City Hall Wednesday, city councilors, residents and others weighed in with questions as state officials discussed replacing the Roderick L. Ireland Courthouse next door.
Earlier this year, the state’s Asset Management Board greenlit a proposal to use a public/private partnership to replace the massive court complex that houses Springfield District Court, Hampden County Superior Court and other entities and offices – long considered a “sick building” beset by mold problems and other issues.
Endorsed by the Massachusetts Trial Court, the proposal would involve the state renting a space assembled by a private developer, entering a lease agreement of at least 40 years, with possibly two 10-year extensions.
“We lease, now, nearly 8 million square-feet across the Commonwealth, in virtually every community in the Commonwealth, every part of the state, and we deliver, obviously, a whole lot of public services and public functions in leased space,” said Adam Baacke is commissioner of the Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance or DCAMM. “This is not a particularly new or novel model in that respect.”
According to DCAMM, it could cost approximately $640 million for the state to demolish the current courthouse, relocate its services, and rebuild a 318,000-square foot facility at its downtown location, 50 State Street.
To save time and resources, the partnership route instead sees a private developer put together a space satisfying the state’s conditions – all while the current courthouse is still in operation. Once done, the courts move in and the state pays a yearly rent of at least $30 million, according to a previous Asset Management Board meeting.
DCAMM hopes to be receiving proposals by the end of 2025 and have one picked by early next year. However, with few stipulations set so far - like the courthouse having to be in Springfield - locals like lawyer and former city councilor Pat Markey are concerned one of the current courthouse’s best qualities might be lost – its centrality.
“I’m a lawyer in town, several people here are lawyers downtown - I've been here, with the law office, in walking distance to the courthouse for 26 years, other lawyers have been here for even longer,” he said in the council chambers, filled for the meeting. “We have our offices here in the heart of Springfield because we can walk to court. If the court is not in Metro Center, those offices will disappear. COVID was bad enough – there’s all kinds of vacancies in these buildings.”
Some speakers at the meeting, broadcast by Focus Springfield, pointed out the present location is accessible by bus service and has ample parking facilities and other amenities nearby.
At one point, Councilor at Large Jose Delgado asked if there were any plans for the state-owned portion of State Street post-courthouse.
“I don't want that site, whether it gets demolished or not, just to sit there vacant for who knows how long, right? That's a pretty important site within downtown,” he said of the address between city hall, Symphony Hall, MGM Springfield and other structures.
Baacke replied there are no specific plans for the lot while adding that, in other gateway cities, the state’s helped redevelop former court facilities.
“We've basically facilitated the redevelopment of those properties in partnership with the host municipality - in many cases, using a tool where we actually convey the property for $1 to the municipality, and the municipality actually runs the entire process for the redevelopment,” he replied. “We also, in cases where the municipality doesn't prefer that option, we have done a number of different processes for working with developers, but I can say pretty confidently … we don't anticipate a state need for that site at the end of this when the new facility opens.”
Another former Springfield City Councilor and retired judge, Philip Contant, raised the fact that, given enough time and rent renewals, the state could end paying what it would have cost to build a new courthouse in the first place – citing Westfield District Court, where he once served, and the leases that have gone on there for over three decades, he says.
“I think, in general, it's very short-sighted to be leasing courthouses, especially in major cities where you have a major court facility with multiple, different departments in it,” he said. “There's always going to be courts in the Springfield area, because it's one of the largest cities in the state, and so, we're talking about a kind of ‘forever business.’ It's not something that's just going to be in business for 10 years or 20 years.”
Contant and others asked DCAMM to reconsider its current approach, saying courts operating in Greenfield were successfully moved as work on the state-owned Franklin County Justice Center got underway and wrapped up in 2017.
DCAMM officials reiterated the current process is what they are focused on. Earlier in the meeting, they also acknowledged that as DCAMM's gathered input and “community priorities,” accessibility and sustaining local economic development downtown have been among the “key priorities” voiced by local stakeholders.
They said Wednesday’s meeting, technically a Springfield City Council Finance Sub-Committee meeting, was another opportunity for gathering public feedback and learning what factors mattered most to locals.
Baacke also used the meeting as an opportunity to emphasize that no site has been picked for any courthouse and that DCAMM anticipates receiving a healthy amount of bids for what’s tentatively being called the Springfield Regional Justice Center.
While answering a question from Council Vice President Tracye Whitfield, he also said that while time will be saved by effectively skipping the demolition phase of construction, it’s still going to be a while before a new courthouse comes together.
“I want everybody to leave with the right impression - it's going to be a little longer than two years. It's going to be faster than it would have been for us to build it ourselves by several years, but it’s likely to be a few more than two years,” he said, adding that four years, as mentioned by Whitfield, would be a “closer target.”
In response, another speaker in the council chambers mentioned a previous report on the matter – one indicating the process could take seven years. Baacke responded work could take “up to” seven years, and that if the state were to build a new courthouse itself, “it could be well into the 2030s by the time we'd be able to complete it.”
