A Court on the Move

“I love a good law­suit. It’s fun.”

Alan Alda

“Lib­erty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no con­sti­tu­tion, no law, no court can save it.”

Learned Hand

For sev­eral weeks I planned to write a “Case Study” col­umn for today that announced the juve­nile court’s relo­ca­tion and informed peo­ple where to find us after a suc­cess­ful move from our for­mer loca­tion at 88 North San­dusky Street, a move that was to be com­pleted today. The fire that destroyed the Lit­tle Sheep’s day­care and severely dam­aged the office build­ing to its north thir­teen days ago changed those plans dramatically.

Sev­eral media out­lets had erro­neously reported that the juve­nile court was sim­ply going to move into the new space early, but that wasn’t pos­si­ble as it was still under con­struc­tion and new fur­ni­ture had not yet been deliv­ered. Instead, the court oper­ated the past two weeks out of space nor­mally used by the Pro­bate Court, the Gen­eral Divi­sion of the Com­mon Pleas Court, the Commissioner’s Office, the Depart­ment of Job and Fam­ily Ser­vices and the Sheriff’s Office. Nearly every sched­uled hear­ing was conducted.

The “move” finally hap­pened today, but it involved only peo­ple since the court’s files, com­put­ers, phones, copiers, print­ers and every­thing else are off­site being cleaned and repaired from smoke and water damage.

Still, the new space is a mar­vel. Mas­ter­fully designed by Delaware archi­tect Bruce Gard­ner, the new juve­nile court, located in the Ruther­ford B. Hayes County Admin­is­tra­tion build­ing simul­ta­ne­ously solves the court’s space needs, addresses the prior building’s secu­rity con­cerns and saves the county money by relo­cat­ing the court into space already owned by the county. All of these con­cerns had been raised by Probate/Juvenile Judge Ken­neth J. Spicer shortly after his elec­tion in 2003 and years of con­ver­sa­tions and plan­ning have finally come to fruition.

The con­struc­tion team from Elford and their sub­con­trac­tors have been work­ing over­time to get the build­ing fin­ished in time for our relo­ca­tion. Coordination/construction man­age­ment on the county side was skill­fully han­dled by county Facil­i­ties Direc­tor Jon Melvin and the court’s point per­son, Pro­grams and Facil­i­ties Depart­ment Head Wen­dal Horlocker.

Once we open for busi­ness in our new space on Mon­day peo­ple will need to know where to go depend­ing on what they’re look­ing to accom­plish. Every­one will now need to enter the Hayes Build­ing through a single-point secu­rity entrance on the ground floor, Union Street side of the build­ing. That access is hand­i­cap acces­si­ble and pro­vides easy access to stairs and elevators.

Those look­ing to get a mar­riage license, han­dle an estate or file for a name change will still need to go to the Pro­bate Court, which moved to the third floor of the Hayes Build­ing in May. The third floor also houses the Juve­nile Court’s medi­a­tion, vic­tim ser­vices, CASA, men­tor­ing and school liai­son pro­grams. They’re located in the north­east cor­ner of the build­ing next to the Prosecutor’s office.

On the ground floor of the build­ing you will now find the main court oper­a­tions includ­ing the clerk’s office, intake and fis­cal depart­ments and court­rooms. The for­mer Board of Elec­tions door­way is now a direct entrance to the court’s pro­ba­tion depart­ment, allow­ing adults and juve­niles appear­ing to meet with a pro­ba­tion offi­cer, sub­mit to drug test­ing or com­plete com­mu­nity ser­vice, to enter right into those areas, thereby cut­ting down traf­fic into the clerk’s office and wait­ing room. Pris­on­ers will now be brought into the build­ing through a sep­a­rate secure entrance, they will be held sep­a­rately from the gen­eral pub­lic wait­ing room and they will be trans­ported to the court­rooms through a secure hallway.

A space that is larger, cleaner, safer and cheaper is hard to argue with. Whether you’re join­ing us in the build­ing for a juve­nile case, a cus­tody mat­ter, a child’s traf­fic ticket or sim­ply to come in and look around, we hope you’ll like the space too.

David Hej­manowski is a Mag­is­trate and Court Admin­is­tra­tor of the Delaware County Juve­nile Court and a for­mer Assis­tant Pros­e­cut­ing Attorney.

Posted by Dave Hejmanowski on Oct 14 2010. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.