A Courthouse For Stalingrad

Mendocino County’s next courthouse remains on track despite opposition from everyone except those in line to profit from its construction.

Conceptual drawings of the building come from Khayun Lee, a Colorado architect who says she has 15 years designing public buildings.

We invite her to bring samples of her previous work to a Ukiah art gallery so we can have a look.

Her “drawing” if that’s what architectural renderings are known as in 2024, shows a big white box with mean-looking vertical stripes that suggest windows.

It includes a collection of posts (the word “pillars” might suggest the posts are attractive). The posts are not attractive.

The renditions were displayed alongside a recent pair of front page Daily Journal stories by Mike Geniella, and responses ranged from it looking like a prison to maybe a barcode.

Feelings back in Colorado apparently were hurt. But no one, not even from Colorado, was willing to say the building is beautiful, grand or in the long, proud tradition of American classic buildings, including courthouses.

Instead, Robert Shue, California’s Judicial Council project manager, said “We believe the design incorporates the best of the county.” Maybe so, given the undeniable visual squalor that is Ukiah.

Ms. Lee, upon whose shoulders this big box of ugly rests, insists “When the project is complete it will reflect Mendocino County and what its citizens want in public buildings.”

How she came to utter this nonsense will forever be a mystery. She says a visit to Montgomery Woods inspired her, although she probably meant Montgomery Wards, the abandoned retail shell squatting at Ukiah’s southern fringe.

Or maybe the “artist” deep within her truly was inspired by time spent among the birdies, bunnies, butterflies and redwoods west of town. She says shafts of light beaming through tall trees sparked a vision from an English poet, leading her to create the courthouse design. Amusing, but dubious.

If Lee indeed emerged from the woods and translated her experience into this calamity of a structure, I gently suggest medications.

Let’s take a poll of county residents. Show the drawing and ask what it reminds them of. So far we have two documented answers, jail and barcode.

Other potential responses:

1) Legos.

2) Ninety percent of the office buildings in San Jose.

3) A computer-generated drawing of a big building that pops on the screen following a few keystrokes in the Architecture 101 program.

4) A generic cube of potential construction that violates every rule of classic civic structures, especially libraries, courthouses and museums. These buildings are meant to reflect our rich heritage of classic western design still evident in libraries, courthouses and museums that remain standing and have not yet suffered violence at the hands of subsequent generations of indifferent public officials and architectural vandals.

5) The Soviet Union Bureau Headquarters for the study of Agriculture Advancements, Ballet, Vote Monitoring, Media Propaganda Services and Five Year Plan for Factory Construction.

6) A big refrigerator tipped over in a Lake County back yard; two toddlers feared trapped inside.

7) First Place winner, Most Unappealing 2023 Public Building Design, Drab and Boring category.

8) The big white box that the real courthouse will come packaged inside.

VANDALS EVERYWHERE

Graffiti and related vandalisms suggest a city incapable of keeping order. For years Ukiah has remained indifferent in the face of ugly gang-inspired tagging, mostly confined to the town’s southern portions.

The message it sends out is that no one cares about this building, this block or this neighborhood. Go ahead, take it over, make it yours.

It is dangerous policy. It leads to further, and worse, crime(s). The vandals’ surges have reached north and now disgrace one of Ukiah’s most notable structures: Todd Grove Park.

The old, hand-built rock wall surrounding the big beautiful park has been attacked. Along the west-facing wall, nearest the golf course, the message “ATF 14” has been sprayed in red paint.

It shouldn’t require me or any other private citizen to prod the city into removing it.

(Tom Hine and his invisible writing partner, TWK, wish to clarify a message in last week’s tagline. It should have read that the women mentioned were draped over Donald Trump’s Steinway piano and Willie Brown’s Hammond organ. We regret the oversight.)