We Pegged It Back In 2011: The Mother Of All Eyesores

In May of 2011 the Supervisors’ meeting was dominated by a discussion of the State Court’s plans to build a gold-plated new Courthouse somewhere in Ukiah.

A local advisory committee had worked with the State’s courthouse construction project team to rank possible sites, but not to object to the idea or force the courts to pay for the impact on the County’s auxilliary offices. The new edifice, which we declared a major eyesore before plans had been drawn up, was expected to require at least two city blocks. The Taj MaCourthouse wouldn’t even house any support staff, but would be devoted solely to the convenience and ease of their majesties of the Superior Court. The DA’s office, probation, public defender would stay separate.

The two sites that ranked the highest (by far, reportedly) were the downtown block that contained the library, and the abandoned railroad depot on Perkins, three long blocks east of the present Courthouse, owned by the Democratic Party and former Congresman Doug Bosco through their North Coast Railroad Authority (NCRA), since reorganized into the Great Redwood Trail.

The “Library site,” as it was called, would require the acquisition of several separately owned parcels in the two-plus blocks from what they called “willing sellers”; if they’re not willing the site would either be condemned or the Taj would become a high rise of five or so stories.

In 2011 the project was estimated to cost at least $120 million with construction set to begin somewhere around 2014 and to end sometime in 2016, both estimates of course being wildly optimistic.

The project manager for the Taj MaCourthouse who appeared before the Supervisors was a stern, tightly-wound woman from the State’s Administrative Office of the Courts in San Francisco named Anne Ording. Described by one meeting attendee as the AOC’s “dragon lady,” Ms. Ording was confidently brusque, her graying hair pulled back into an almost painful-looking utilitarian, un-Frisco bun. Ms. Ording answered every question put to her with such robotic aplomb that several people were tempted to disagree with her just to see how she’d handle dissent.

San Francisco’s court facilities are lavish beyond all reason. Ms. Ording works for Frisco’s judges. She could be depended on to bring wholly decadent Bay Area standards of judicial comfort to Ukiah.

In 2011 the new Courthouse was already a done-deal. No resistance would be permitted. Everyone in Mendocino County who had any contact with the courts whether from traffic tickets, fines and fees to other miscellaneous “court costs,” have seen their costs go way up to pay for it.

Ms. Ording assured the Board that the design their high-priced, East Coast architect would devise would be “compatible with Ukiah’s downtown aesthetic,” making the thing an even more frightening prospect than we had thought.

Oblivious Fifth District Supervisor Dan Hamburg was more than happy to accept Ms. Ording’s promises that the new courthouse would be attractive. “Please make it fit,” gushed Hamburg. “I know this building won’t be a monstrosity like a couple others downtown. Please make it beautiful.”

There hasn’t been a beautiful public building erected anywhere in this country in many years, and the only interesting one in those many years, also an eyesore, but at least imaginative, is the Marin County Civic Center designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and that one houses all Marin’s public functions — all of them. We might have a shot at an attractive building if this County’s architects were permitted to design the new Courthouse, but they don’t charge enough money to get a public contract. Predictably, the Mendo judges’ silence on the issue has been and continues to be deafening, as it was on the Willits “Courthouse,” the ugliest concrete bunker of a structure its size in all of America.

Supervisor Pinches asked if the new courthouse would require more county staff and more county cost to operate.

“I’m not prepared to answer that at this stage,” said Ms. Ording. “But we will insure the operational viability of each design. What we build will be affordable.”

Given that the $120 million courthouse (now estimated to cost tens of millions more than that) is already not affordable, this smooth assurance wasn’t particularly comforting. Since then, seeing how little consideration has been given to Mendo’s ancillary court offices, it’s been shown to be blatantly wrong.

Ukiah City Planning Commissioner at the time, the late Judy Pruden, for many years the only person trying to prevent utter squalor for Ukiah’s public areas was also the only person to ask pertinent questions:

“What happens to the current courthouse?”

“Who pays for demolition or remodel of the current courthouse?”

“What happens to the other offices that are in the current courthouse now?”

Ms. Pruden, however, was speaking as a public citizen and so the Board and Ms. Ording, as usual, simply ignored her, as they did a few other skeptics speaking from the floor.

Fourth District Supervisor Kendall Smith asked if it’s the State’s responsibility to relocate the library if the library site is selected.

Ms. Ording blandly replied, “We have statutory obligations to pay for moving existing buildings. The ultimate development will be compatible. I can’t say exactly what the final design will look like. We will make a wise (sic) decision for the ultimate location of the library.”

It wasn’t even a take or leave it proposition. We’ll handle this thing for you rubes, and you chumps will get whatever Hizzoner Big Bro from the Big City brings you. We are only here to tell you what you’re going to get. Your job is to shut up and accept it.

Ukiah City Councilwoman Mari Rodin, an ongoing, multi-faceted hazard to local progress, was of course giddily enthusiastic about the done deal Courthouse:

“This project is like a gem falling in our laps! We’re so fortunate to have this happen now and to have the wonderful staff and the thinking-outside-the-box advisory committee.” (In all our years in Mendocino County we have yet to hear a decent idea from inside the box, much less an idea coming from outside the box).

Ms. Rodin did at least ask what would happen to the criminal justice staff that needs to be nearby. (But she didn’t demand an answer.) “You need to look at this project holistically,” Rodin declared, “and look at the whole community. This is a very wonderful opportunity.”

Ms. Rodin now sits on the Ukiah City Council where she hasn’t uttered a word about the problems the new Courthouse will bring to her city. The huge boondoggle descends on Ukiah during a time of holistic economic distress everywhere in the land which serves no one but the over-large Mendo judicial delegation whose primary function is to process economically distressed persons in and out of the state prison system.

Curry’s Furniture, a family-owned business on the proposed library site, since abandoned and closed, appeared in the form of the woman who owned the failing store with her husband. She told the Supervisors that the current owner of the furniture store parcel “doesn’t want to sell it. This is a family building in perpetuity. There are no other sites for us to just pick up and move to. This is very stressful for my husband. We were not expecting to give up our business now. We have a long-term lease, 10-12 years. We generate a lot of sales tax and we as a county need it. If we can’t function somewhere else that tax revenue will be lost.” Unfortunately, Curry’s closed a few years later and, like several other old-landmark Ukiah buildings, the classic old furniture store has remained vacant ever since.

As the presentation wound down, Supervisor Carre Brown said she wasn’t happy with the limited amount of information provided and wanted to have the subject re-reviewed in the next few weeks at an upcoming Board meeting. It wasn’t, of course.

But even as early as the project was in 2011 it was already obvious that anyone who gets in the way of Ms. Ording’s courthouse train will wind up dead on her cowcatcher.

There were and remain a number of behind the scenes factors also in play, which, of course, went unmentioned in the public part of the meeting.

Any well-funded state-run project draws great flocks of vultures.

Ukiah uber-realtor Jack Cox, who owns the “Brush Street Triangle” north of town which was once a possible site for a combined “criminal justice center,” which turned out to be too expensive after $200k was spent studying it, was jockeying for the real estate pole position on the courthouse project. Mr. Cox’s daughter, Kerri Vau, along with Mr. Cox and former Supervisor John Mayfield have been constant presences at Ukiah Valley Area Plan meetings regarding the new Courthouse. Cox and Mayfield, along with one of the Thomas brothers, control the Brush Street Triangle, now slightly less triangular after a piece of it was sold by Cox to the Rural Communities Housing Development Commission based, naturally, in Ukiah. Cox and Company made it clear that they’d be happy to sell some land in the Brush Street Triangle for a new courthouse or satellite facilities because their nearby holdings would also be greatly enhanced in value.

But this Republican-dominated Ukiah realty combine didn’t really have much chance at success, even if their idea was priced right.

The long-abandoned North Coast Railroad Authority’s Ukiah depot site, then-owned by the the County’s insider Democratic Party, had a the time and has majorities on the Ukiah City Council and the Board of Supervisors. So when the Democrats/NCRA said they were ready to sell their old train depot if the Courts would pay for the toxic clean-up of the site — which they later did — the highly inconvenient railroad track site was picked.

As we now know, the Black Robes’ monstrosity’s final resting place over by the railroad tracks inspires much holistically entertaining local comment but no public benefit, holistic or otherwise. It was and is a grand farce that could only be pulled off in Mendocino County — without objection and without even trying.